Monday, Dec. 22, 2003.<\/b> Let’s look at plagiarism, one of journalism’s big topics in 2003, culminating in the revelations around Jayson Blair.<\/p>\n
Plain definition is that plagiarism is thievery, the taking of others’ words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs — the ideas of others — as one’s own. Theft. So obvious and so wrong<\/p>\n
Students in my upper-class ethics class understood this clearly this past spring. Stealing is forbidden in the 10 commandments. So I turned it on its head, how they — and I — stole ideas, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs rather a lot. What is downloading music about? What is soft attribution in papers or student publications? What is the purpose of a press release, when so many of the journalism students are in the advertising\/PR concentration?<\/p>\n
Yes, this messed with their heads. Students in earlier journalism classes needed specifics of the rights and wrongs because when it’s stealing no longer is obvious.<\/p>\n
In popular culture, musicians doing covers — or sampling — of the songs of others is legit, it’s even a sign of respect, an homage. Not plagiarism. Spin-offs are OK; they’re flattering. Not plagiarism. Currently the Ron Howard, a great and legitimate director, has out The Missing,<\/i> which most critics acknowledge is an update, or a retelling, of an earlier Western, The Searchers.<\/i> Not plagiarism.<\/p>\n
“Immature poets borrow; mature ones steal” is more or less the quote from T.S. Eliot but other classic writers acknowledged the same. Shakespeare, or whoever passed for him, borrowed from histories and mythologies of the time, heavily.<\/p>\n
Is fiction wholly invented, or autobiography\/memoir disguised, to greater or lesser degree? Is stealing from truth plagiarism.<\/p>\n
Press releases. Marketers would be insulted if their copy wasn’t borrowed as background information, and surprised if the material was fully attributed. When’s the last time, outside of Cook’s Illustrated<\/i> or Organic Gardening<\/i> magazines that you saw food or growing advice based on a named specialist, expert or the writer’s own trial-and-error. Just-cuzes and other sorts of hypotheticals are whole-cloth cheating. But accepted.<\/p>\n
But get sloppy with footnotes, and you’ll be mocked out of the academy<\/p>\n
As we get closer to blatant plagiarism, the offense crosses the line and looks like stealing. Or maybe just laziness. Plagiarism is not black-and-white, though shallow ethicists would have us think so. Deep ethicists know it’s murky.<\/p>\n
As for me, I cringe at plagiarism because I value originality. I run away from ideas that I run across that got there before my imagination. I want to be original, or what’s the point of saying anything? In fact, being original is so important that it’s what blocks me: What can I write that’s different?<\/p>\n
Other people go at it differently. It may be easier for them, or just different. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Copyright 2003 Ben S. Pollock Monday, Dec. 22, 2003. Let’s look at plagiarism, one of journalism’s big topics in 2003, culminating in the revelations around Jayson Blair. Plain definition is that plagiarism is thievery, the taking of others’ words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs — the ideas of others — as one’s own. Theft. So obvious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":266,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/01\/death-by-editing\/","url_meta":{"origin":36,"position":0},"title":"Death by Edit","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A news release from the public relations office of the University of Arkansas, the \"University Relations,\" recently announced that noted writer Ellen Gilchrist, of the UA Creative Writing and Translation Program, had an essay published in last November's Smithsonian Magazine, \"Watching Water Run: My Kind of Town.\" The essay is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":366,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/10\/alas-richard\/","url_meta":{"origin":36,"position":1},"title":"Alas, Richard","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"October 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Humorist Richard Allin died Thursday in Little Rock. He was 77. The following is why he's important. It's from the acknowledgments page of my journalism master's thesis, spring 2003. At the family breakfast table in Fort Smith, 30 to 35 years ago, Dad laughing would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":415,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/03\/famous-columnist-school\/","url_meta":{"origin":36,"position":2},"title":"Famous Columnist School","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Book report: The Art of Column Writing: Insider Secrets from Art Buchwald, Dave Barry Arianna Huffington, Pete Hamill and Other Great Columnists, by Suzette Martinez Standring The reviewing trade has a law that a critic doesn't write up works created by friends. It's a group of laws, actually. When a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3471,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/01\/know-when-to-folder\/","url_meta":{"origin":36,"position":3},"title":"Know When to Folder","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This column first was published as the \u201cPresident\u2019s Message\u201d in the January 2012 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Who among us still owns a typewriter? My Smith-Corona manual portable that saw me through high school and college is in the attic, but it works. On a desk\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3339,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2011\/12\/occupied\/","url_meta":{"origin":36,"position":4},"title":"Occupied or Vacant, Engaged or Vacant","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"An excerpt of this long-form column first was published as the \u201cPresident\u2019s Message\u201d in the December 2011 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds? Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! Croupier:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Air sickness bag from the old Frontier Airlines that otherwise could be placed on your plane seat to reserve it.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/frontier-bb-300x207.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":273,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/good-words-to-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":36,"position":5},"title":"“Good Words to You”","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Fishing around for a headline to this, I remembered the above. It's the outcue for the audio column on NPR's Morning Edition that the late poet John Ciardi used to do in the early to mid-1980s. He considered origins, histories and roots of words in them. Posthumously, in 1987, Harper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}