Plagiarism

Introduction

Plagiarism, the reuse of original ideas or words without attribution, is regarded as a serious violation of journalistic ethics. It is usually conceived as a form of stealing, taking facts or information that another person developed without giving credit to the source. In journalism, plagiarism usually entails words but can sometimes involve images or sounds.

It is an ethical issue and not a legal one; intellectual property or copyright law rarely applies because typical plagiarism does not produce financial harm. Most journalistic organizations treat plagiarism as a serious infraction that, in a majority of cases, results in the employee's dismissal. It is considered a journalistic taboo because it violates an expectation of originality— that the bylined author or on-air correspondent actually reported the story and wrote the words printed or spoken. The two leading professional associations for print and for broadcast journalists place plagiarism in the context of untruthful reporting. The Radio-Television News Directors Association ethics code lists plagiarism as a forbidden activity along with manipulating images or sounds. The Society of Professional Journalists ethics code locates plagiarism along with activities that distort reality such as unbalanced reporting or perpetuating stereotypes (Fedler, 24).

Discussion and Analysis

Although plagiarism can be defined as the reuse of original ideas or words without attribution, specifics are elusive, and not just in journalism. There is no agreement in any field on whether plagiarism is measured at the level of a paragraph, sentence, phrase, or word. Neither is there a formula for how many words, consecutively or cumulatively, constitute plagiarism (Lewis, 45).

Plagiarism applies to both the intentional and unintentional use of intellectual property, an issue that many find confounding. Plagiarism comes in many forms, from replicating a few words, to copying entire texts, to buying “custom” papers. Examples of what needs to be credited or documented include ...