An ever present danger for college students, journalists and many public officials, plagiarism is a looming threat to the credibility of one’s work. What constitutes plagiarism? To put it simply, it is the use of someone else’s work without giving the author credit for said work and the effects can be devastating for everyone involved.
Sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental, plagiarism is committed rather often in academic settings. The modern digital age has given us a plethora of information at our fingertips, and, inadvertently, a means of which to pluck a sentence, or in some cases whole works, from the internet and claim as our own. According to The Handbook for Economics Lecturers, this practice “has grown in scale to the point where it is almost of epidemic proportions.” There are some students that are genuinely oblivious to the crime they have committed. Roy Peter Clark, a leading scholar at the Poynter Institute, says “many students are unknowledgeable about when to borrow and how much to borrow because their teachers and editors fail to set guidelines.”
There is plenty of information on the internet and in a student’s text books and style guides to avoid plagiarism. Many articles, written by journalists, academics and seasoned authors teach one how to avoid inadvertent plagiarism. Some articles even address the murkier aspects of using another’s work. A National Public Radio article entitled How Not to Be a Radio Plagiarist by Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, an NPR ombudsman, cites a particular incident where a reporter, with a deadline coursing around the corner, substituted a stored library recording of seagulls for sound he failed to record on location for a report on an Atlantic coast fishery. This would surprise some to be an act of plagiarism, but in radio journalism sound effects are not ethical unless they are recorded during the time of the story and in the exact place of the story being reported on. With a bit of research, these offenses can be avoided, and with plagiarism checking engines, such as Turnitin.com and Articlechecker.com, you can double check your work.
RodneyGlassman.com
An unfortunate example of academic plagiarism has recently come to light in the Arizona senate race between John McCain and Rodney Glassman. Glassman denies intentional plagiarism. According to an Associated Press article by Jacques Billeaud, Glassman’s 2005 doctoral dissertation plagiarized five sentences from other authors that he listed in references at the end of his 246 page paper. However, he did not attribute those authors directly when plucking sentences from the original work. Deliberate plagiarism or unfortunate mistake? The public may never know.
What we do know is reputations have taken a hit. Not only does Rodney Glassman suffer from his mistake, but the original authors will now be burdened with the reality that their work has been published under someone else’s name. The professors and other academics that reviewed and approved of his dissertation may now come under fire for their oversight. As for Glassman, his campaign for senator has been damaged severely. Much of his time is spent explaining himself to the media when he should be focusing on his campaign. We will not know if this supposed innocent mistake will cost Glassman the senate seat until November 2, but even then, he is still up against a seasoned senator with 23 years under his belt, affectionately known as the “Maverick”. Maybe the question is: Will the University of Arizona, from which Glassman holds five degrees, revoke his doctorate?
Exploration in Journalism 