Journalism and the Internet

[The Straight Story]

Teachers now have to fight the Internet
By Bill Mead
Posted by editor - Mon Aug 28, 2006 16:17:48 PDT


Steal from one source, it's plagiarism; steal from ten sources, it's research.
—Journalists' inside joke


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This is a new ethical challenge for the journalistic profession as a whole. Fortunately, I don't have any ethics but I could still get in trouble when I “borrow” stuff that other people have written. What if my editor gets her hands on the teachers' software and learns what a phony I am? She might even go on to uncover the outright lies and made-up stuff that pepper my stories.

This opens up an interesting moral issue. Which is worse, swiping well-written factual material or concocting yarns out of whole cloth? Don't kid yourself. These are options chosen by some big-time reporters, as you know from what has gone on recently at the New York Times and other prestigious media. Check with Dan Rather for more details.

If you think I'm pulling your leg about all this, let me give you a for-instance. A few weeks ago my editor got into a bind and had to call on me to write some material for a supplement about wind energy. What I know about wind energy wouldn't wet the bottom of a thimble. As usual I cranked up my computer and went to the Internet where there is tons of information about wind energy, information so good that it would be a worse crime to re-write it than to just grab it and run.

So I pulled an old newsman's trick. Instead of my name in the byline, I put “Staff Report” at the top of the stuff I had stolen. That way, I can look innocent and deny everything if the guy who wrote it in the first place tries to make a fuss.

If my boss calls me on the carpet for blowing the whistle in this way I'll swear I was drunk when I wrote this column. It's the only honorable thing an upstanding journalist can do.

http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/viewarticle.php?cat_id=388&post=20488

[NJCher]

1. as a writing teacher

I will say that this guy has entirely missed the point of source gathering.

The idea is not to regurgitate what's out there in yet another article (who needs that?), but to understand and evaluate the research and put it together with a new, original point. The other way to go about it is to synthesize what is found.

This guy is just plain lazy. He could make an original point if he had to--he's just too unambitious to do so.




Cher