In a deeply concerning development for the integrity of journalism, a sophisticated public relations and branding firm, TOP Agency, has been identified as the architect behind “National Today,” a website churning out a torrent of demonstrably plagiarized, AI-generated news. This insidious operation not only steals original reporting from a vast spectrum of legitimate news organizations – from major national dailies to small local outlets – but also disseminates it under the guise of authentic local journalism, often with bizarre errors and outright fabrications characteristic of artificial intelligence.

The Alarming Pattern of Theft: Futurism’s Experience

The extent of this digital pilfering first became glaringly apparent to us at Futurism. On a recent Tuesday evening, we published an original interview with a researcher whose intriguing study explored the nuanced effects of AI on human cognition. Within hours, by ten o’clock that very night, a site named National Today had sprung into action. It published a piece that was an unmistakable, reworded version of our exclusive story, including a direct quote obtained through our dedicated reporting. Yet, in a blatant disregard for journalistic ethics, National Today offered no credit to Futurism, nor did it provide a link back to our original article. Instead, it brazenly presented the information as its own, an act of unadulterated plagiarism.

This incident, however, was far from isolated. It was merely the latest in a troubling series of thefts. Just the previous week, National Today had run a story concerning Medvi, a controversial GLP-1 marketer. Again, the evidence of intellectual property theft was undeniable: a quote stolen directly from an expert we had interviewed during our investigation, with no mention of Futurism or any link to our work. Before that, the site had published a duplicate of a Futurism blog post detailing a realtor’s accidental inclusion of an AI-generated demon in a real estate listing photo. Each instance shared the same characteristic: uncredited appropriation of original content.

A Broader Attack on Original Reporting: From National Outlets to Local Newsrooms

As we delved deeper into National Today‘s activities, the true, alarming scope of its operation became horrifyingly clear. This wasn’t just an attack on Futurism; it was a systematic assault on journalism itself, targeting countless other publications across the country. Prestigious newspapers, specialized industry blogs, and vital local newsrooms alike were falling victim. National Today was leveraging stolen reporting to fuel a relentless output of what appeared to be AI-generated articles, frequently marred by bizarre errors, factual inaccuracies, and outright hallucinations. The sheer volume was staggering; in a single day, we attempted to count the number of articles it published but lost track somewhere north of 300.

The brazenness of the theft is particularly galling. Consider a recent article about writer and actress Lena Dunham. National Today plagiarized direct quotes from three entirely separate interviews Dunham had given to prominent outlets: The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The Guardian. Not a single one was attributed.

Perhaps the most disturbing example involved Mellie Valencia, a dedicated reporter at the East Texas broadcaster KTRE. Valencia had painstakingly reported a heartbreaking story about a local mother whose 10-year-old daughter tragically succumbed to a rare brain tumor. Despite the profoundly sensitive and personal nature of this original reporting, National Today still generated a plagiarized copy. Valencia expressed her dismay to Futurism, stating, “This is very upsetting to see. A lot of leg work was put into the story and real human connections were made with the family — and to see it pulled and replicated… is sad.” She added, “My hope is that since KTRE is one of the only stations covering this area, people will head to our website instead of other websites to get the most up to date information.”

Other journalists have also sounded the alarm. Ryan Burns, a writer for the Humboldt County, California-focused outlet Lost Coast Outpost, penned a devastating blog post earlier this week, directly calling out National Today for stealing stories from his employer and other local peers. Burns minced no words: “The Lost Coast Outpost’s content has likewise been stolen and rewritten, sans credit, by these soulless algorithms and their douchebag creators.”

Deceptive Local Branding and Google’s Intervention

National Today‘s strategy involves publishing this deluge of plagiarized material across dozens of sections on its website, each bearing a local-sounding title such as NYC Today, Sacramento Today, Cleveland Today, and Harrisburg Today. These sections are meticulously designed to mimic legitimate local news sites, creating a deceptive veneer of credibility. Alarmingly, we discovered that both Google Search and Google News were surfacing National Today‘s pilfered content, often placing it directly alongside genuine local reporting, thereby confusing readers and diverting traffic from original sources.

Following our outreach to Google with questions regarding this story, a significant number of National Today results promptly vanished from both Google Search and Google News. In a statement, Google affirmed its commitment to combatting such practices: “Our policies prohibit producing content at scale for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings. While we don’t comment on spam penalties against individual sites, we take appropriate action when we identify violations of our policies. We go to great lengths to fight webspam in our search results, and 99 percent of Search visits are spam free.”

The Absurdity of AI Hallucinations and Errors

Beyond the ethical violations, National Today‘s content is riddled with comically egregious errors, making it abundantly clear that no human editor is even superficially reviewing these articles before publication. These “AI hallucinations” undermine any pretense of journalistic credibility. A common issue is the AI’s tendency to replace actual names with generic placeholders like “Jane Doe” or “John Doe.” In one recent piece, National Today reported that a NASA astronaut aboard Artemis 2 named “John Doe” had dedicated a Moon crater to his deceased wife, “Jane Doe.” In reality, the astronaut’s name is Reid Wiseman, and his wife, who passed away in 2020, was Carroll Wiseman.

Another recent National Today article about a grisly sex crime in Burlington, Vermont, attributed a quote to a “Chief Jane Doe.” There is no Chief Jane Doe in Burlington; the actual police chief is Shawn Burke. Further “slop articles” identify “Jane Doe” as a “Securities Exchange Commission official” (no such official exists) and as “Governor of Iowa” (the current governor is Kim Reynolds). The sheer scale of these nonsensical substitutions highlights the complete lack of human oversight.

The site even goes so far as to misquote the Pope. In one recent article concerning the supposed ongoing rift between President Donald Trump and “Pope Leo XIV,” National Today fabricated a quote, claiming the Pontiff remarked that “Jesus probably would not be on board with that” in response to Trump posting an AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus Christ figure. There is no historical or current Pope Leo XIV, and no evidence exists that any Pontiff made such a statement.

Compounding the absurdity, the site’s AI frequently gets “stuck” on certain quotes, repeatedly inserting them into articles where they make absolutely no sense. A prime example is the fabricated quote: “We must not let individuals continue to damage private property in San Francisco.” This sentence inexplicably appears in a slew of stories that mention neither crime nor San Francisco, including one about the Dallas Cowboys, another about a biotech company in the Boston area, and yet another about New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani hosting a tax day event. These glaring inconsistencies are undeniable proof of automated, unmonitored content generation.

The Architect of Deception: TOP Agency and Benjamin Kaplan

Perhaps the most unsettling revelation is that National Today isn’t some fly-by-night content farm. It is a project of TOP Agency, a self-described “flashy branding and public relations agency” that boasts an impressive client roster, including nationally recognized companies like Microsoft, Intel, Budweiser, Universal Music Group, US Bank, and Discover Card. Its CEO, Benjamin Kaplan, describes TOP Agency on LinkedIn as the “fastest growing viral publicity company in the world.”

Disturbingly, Kaplan himself is listed as an author on National Today, with his name attached to numerous clearly plagiarized stories. One National Today story bearing his byline, about San Francisco public health workers protesting clinic closures, directly lifts quotes from reporting by the independent outlet Mission Local. Another of Kaplan’s stories lifts wording directly from an interview by the Commonwealth Club. Neither instance provides any attribution.

Last week, investigative journalist Robert Cox caught National Today ripping off a local crime story he wrote for Talk of the Sound, an outlet serving New Rochelle, New York. Cox articulated his frustration: “Over the course of a week, I put in significant original work… to produce a timely, accurate article that set the stage for ongoing reporting as the case moves toward trial or a possible plea deal.” He added that the National Today duplicate “adds no independent sourcing, no new facts, and no original analysis. There is also no attribution, no link, and no credit given to Talk of the Sound or to my reporting. Just Kaplan passing off my work as his own. How is this not copyright infringement and theft of my original copyrighted work?”

According to a description on TOP Agency’s site, National Today exists to help brands “Create Ownable Viral Moments for your brand” and “reach 10M consumers, 100K media outlets, and 10K influencers across traditional, digital, and social media.” In essence, TOP Agency seemingly positions National Today as a marketing vehicle for its clients – a vehicle powered by the systematic theft of local journalism on an almost unimaginable scale. The exact mechanism by which this benefits clients, if at all, remains opaque, but it’s difficult to imagine such an elaborate, high-volume operation without some underlying scheme for financial gain or market manipulation.

From “Spreading the Love” to Spreading Misinformation

It’s not entirely clear whether TOP Agency built National Today from the ground up or acquired an existing site and repurposed it into this “firehose of pilfered, error-ridden fake local journalism.” Its website includes an apocryphal-sounding account of its founding, describing its mission as “spreading the love to all.” Historically, the site appears to have been dedicated to content about holidays. Its main landing page still features a daily calendar of holidays ranging from the profound to the utterly ridiculous; April 16 alone, according to National Today, is the “Day of the Mushroom,” “Save the Elephant Day,” and “National Joseph Day,” the latter ostensibly a day of celebration for all individuals named Joseph. The “about” page further states: “We keep track of fun holidays and special moments on the cultural calendar, giving you exciting activities, deals, local events, brand promotions, and other exciting ways to celebrate.”

While National Today has been active since at least 2017, this flood of plagiarized news content is a much more recent phenomenon. Archived versions of the site indicate that the news sections began to emerge and rapidly expand around January 2026, marking a stark and disturbing shift from its original, benign purpose to its current role as a major purveyor of deceptive, AI-generated content.

Unanswered Questions and the Future of Media Integrity

We sent multiple emails to both National Today and TOP Agency requesting comment for this story but have not received any response. The silence only underscores the ethical void at