Plagiarism, Fabrication Needs to Stop in Journalism World

By Bez Saciri
bs143110@ohio.edu


Unfortunately in the journalism world, plagiarism and fabrication does occur in some of the stories the general public reads.

In a world where there is pressure to produce content with visuals and other engaging materials 24 hours a day and seven days a week, a few journalists have restored to cutting corners to getting the job done. After all, arguably the best praise a journalist will ever hear from his or her boss is that he or she gets the job done. It doesn't matter if it's a story about sports or city council.

But how can someone live in a world where they put getting the job done over their proposed ethics code? I personally think that any journalist should have a strong ethics code that they follow all of the time.

The core values a journalist should include are truth, transparency and minimizing harm, just to name a few.

If a journalist wants to try to ruin his or her career by cutting corners, then he or she would be breaking all of those mentioned aspects of an ethics code.

Here are a couple of prevalent examples of plagiarism in journalism by professionals:

Fareed Zakaria, New Yorker 

Photo by Steven Senne/Associated.

In August 2012, Zakaria, who is a writer and television host, was suspended by CNN and Time Magazine after some of his passages in his column, which was titled, "The Case for Gun Control," closely resembled what was written in a longer story on guns in America by historian Jill Lepore. The similarities in the texts were spotted by website NewsBusters, and after that, Zakaria's plagiarism quickly spread all over the Internet. I know Zakaria has a lot of responsibilities, but he should've taken a different approach to the story and studied what was out on the Internet first. Also, if he were to do that, then he could enforce his ethics code on a more consistent basis.

Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto 

Plagiarism can also take place across the world, too. This case happened in the Philippines. Sotto gave speeches about birth control, which has been a hot topic of debate for close to 20 years in that country. While his speeches brought tears to his eyes, he was eventually caught plagiarizing one of his speeches in August 2012. He took information from five bloggers, which include at least two from the U.S., and from a previous speech conducted by Robert Kennedy. Sotto fought back. He said that plagiarism was not a crime in the Philippines. On Oct. 3, 2012, the Philippines Cybercrime Prevention Act took effect. This meant that the country created criminal penalties for a variety of online acts, which included identity theft.  I think this was a strong step to take by the Philippines, but I hope it doesn't limit free speech. This is a great example in the sense that one man's plagiarism led to legislation. That's how serious this problem can be.

Last Point
  
In doing my research for the blog, I came across a video on YouTube that I thought would be a good watch for students in the ethics class. This video talks about two different types of plagiarism and gives examples of each. The video even has a song about plagiarism, which can be helpful when people are trying to remember what plagiarism is.

I'm hopeful that we can eliminate plagiarism once and for all. It could be a long process, but if journalists develop an ethics code and stick to it, plagiarism could be eliminated for good, which would make journalism a much more respected career in the eyes of the public.