The thing is is that press releases do come with a sort of implicit permission to copy if you want; the publicist just wants to get the word out. It's just very, very, very bad and unethical "journalism."

The ludicrous thing about the excuse is that if a publicist includes quotes from other articles, of course he or she is going to cite them, since the whole point is to show how USA Today or whatever thinks the publicist's client is cool.

But Mark Williams was apparently confused by this over and over and over, which means his own excuse paints him to be a journalistically bankrupt moron now matter how you look at it. (Not that I believe he really did anything but Google articles and copy-and-paste.)