Panel: Plagiarism By Rebecca Plevin
2006 AWSM Intern with Sports Illustrated When Sue Kopen Katcef, a lecturer at the University of Maryland and moderator for Sunday morning’s general session, asked how many audience members knew of a plagiarism incident in their workplace, almost every hand in the room shot up. That likely wasn’t surprising to Katcef or the panelists gathered to focus on the topic. Countless episodes of plagiarism have disgraced the journalism field in recent years. “One person in our profession soils it for the rest of us,” Katcef said. And, according to Howard Libit of The Baltimore Sun, it’s only getting worse. “People are reading every word of everything we write,” he said. “They are looking for ways to get us.” Four panelists weighed in on plagiarism – and on how to avoid it. Libit, city editor at The Sun, Jim Keat, a retired editor from The Sun, Steve Young, deputy copy chief of The Sun, and Marie Hardin, assistant professor of journalism at Penn State, shared their observations and advice. Keat said that journalistic standards and ethics have not declined in recent years. Rather, he said, the rise of the Internet has increased the ease with which reporters can plagiarize – but also the chances they will get caught. Keat defined plagiarism as “appropriating someone else’s work without attributing it.” He emphasized that the main ethical rule of journalism is to “play fair with the reader,” meaning that the reporter should never mislead the audience– including misleading readers as to the origination of a fact or idea. Newsrooms have developed policies and training programs on avoiding plagiarism. Libit suggested that newsrooms need to develop policies on a number of questions: How much is a proper amount of attribution? How much can a reporter take from another article – if anything? And when it comes to story ideas, images and page design -- how close is too close? Young, of The Sun copydesk, had a simple suggestion. “When in doubt, attribute,” he said. He said that journalists should strive to make their stories as transparent as possible so that readers know all the facts and can then form their own opinions. “We should err on the side of being really honest,” he said. Hardin, of Penn State University, offered another solution: better training for journalists and journalism students. “We in journalism education are doing much better addressing these issues,” she said. She mentioned the more advanced methods that professors now have to check for plagiarized material. Penn State professors have access to a database service called Turnitin, but she often just uses Google when she’s not sure about a student’s work. Back | 
