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Wikipedia Plagiarism Ends Journalist's Career
An anonymous reader writes "Tim Ryan, a 21 year veteran entertainment columnist for the Honolulu Star Bulletin, was fired yesterday after an investigation revealed multiple instances of his incorporating unattributed paragraphs from other sources. This case is unique in that it was first revealed by Wikipedia after an attentive Wikipedia editor noted similarities between a Wikipedia article and one of Ryan's columns. However he wasn't fired until after other news outlets started to run the story. Sadly, though the Star-Bulletin has admitted to the plagiarism, they failed to publicly acknowledge that Wikipedia was responsible for bringing this situation to light."
internet, meet timestamp.
timestamp, meet internet.
Plagiarism is a form of academic malpractice. It refers to the use of another's information, language, or writing, when done without proper acknowledgment of the original source. Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law. Like most terms from the area of intellectual property, plagiarism is a concept of the modern age and not really applicable to medieval or ancient works.
This post would be plagairism had I not included this link, for instance. Perhaps because the journalist wrote for a printed newspaper, and couldn't get hyperlinks to work on paper, he thought it was better to include no hyperlink at all. He thought wrong.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
That is not necessarily plagiarism. Not attributing the discovery to Wikipedia users is completely different from taking the story word for word from a Wikipedia article.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
How about plagiarism in educational institutions
All my work I produced for my MSc was tested for plagiarism using software, however my undergrad stuff was not. I think that plagiarism detecting software is used routinely in most universities and colleges now and even at highschool level.
Sadly, though the Star-Bulletin has admitted to the plagiarism, they failed to publicly acknowledge that Wikipedia was responsible for bringing this situation to light."
From one of the stories linked in TFA (pops):
CORRECTION Saturday, December 24, 2005
A portion of a review of the television show "Secrets of the Black Box: Aloha Flight 243" was taken verbatim from the Web site reference.com. The material was originally published in the online encyclopedia wikipedia.com. The article, on Page D6 Thursday, failed to attribute the information to either source.
Please see the applicable Corrections Page for more information.
tinfoilmedia
Ever seen the plagarism of the year awards? http://5thnovember.blogspot.com/2005/12/and-winner -is.html
The winner was the Daily Mail which made a two page spread of someones blog and passed it off as their own work.
It's not reuse that's bad, it's reuse without attribution. Even the loosey-goosey BSD license requires attribution!
This really makes one wonder how much additional plagiarism is present in the articles and reports presented by the mass media on a daily basis.
As the media spokesperson for the company I work for, we have stopped permitting any written media stories without requiring final draft review authority (meaning the media entity may not run the story with our quotes unless we have reviewed the final draft and approve it for release). We also tape all interviews and review quotes for accuracy with the recorded conversation. Television and radio pieces are less critical because they use source material for quotes.
We found that the frequency of errors and outright fabrication by print reporters was so high that we had to put in a policy to prevent recurrances. Things like comments attacking competitors which were never made (other than in the reporter's head - who defended it by claiming the quote was a "composite that reflected the mood of the interview") to articles that had dozens of inaccuracies - some material and some not - all drove us to lay down the rules.
A couple of suggestions I'd make for anyone that ever deals with the media:
1. Never, ever, go "off the record." They'll still use it and apologize later.
2. If you're not the official spokesperson, simply say nothing other than "Let me call my boss" and pass it along. They will burn you with quotes to advance their career.
3. Record every interview! Tell them you are recording it and you will compare the quotes with the recording. Tell them the company attorneys make you do that. This might make them be a little less loose with their writing.
4. If they're not recording but rather writing on a note pad, ask them to read back your quotes to you. Pros don't mind. If they do mind, you don't have a pro and need to take warning.
Bad reporting can hurt you or your company. I've seen good people fired for making the mistake of believing they were off the record. While there are some professionals in this field, the culture has gotten very competitive and ruthless as most of the papers have suffered major financial declines in the past decade. You either come up with hot stories or lose your job. So what if that means taking things out of context, making up quotes, or putting stuff on the record that was confidential.
From the article: "[...] a 21 year veteran [...]". Do you see the word "old" in there anywhere? No. His career was twenty one years old, but presumably he himself was significantly older.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wiki pedia
Second, your first sentence is one of the most convoluted I have ever encountered. I had to read it three times. Let me suggest an alternative:
Have a nice day.Well, speaking as an administrator, a long-time contributor, and a historian, Wikipedia doesn't plagiarize all that often, because anything identified as a copyright violation gets deleted. If you were familiar with Wikipedia at all you would know that our rules on images are strict enough to cause plenty of grumbling and bitterness. Thanks for spouting off without knowing the facts though.
No statement is true, not even this one.
As was mentioned earlier in this thread, plagiarism does not directly relate to copyright. Any time you use someone else's words or thinking with the intent to imply that *you* were the author of those words or thoughts, you are a plagiarist. This differs from copyright, which has very specific legal meaning.
To be more specific: copyright can be proven or disproven in court. Plagiarism might not be provable in court. But if you are a professional writer (scientist, newspaper columnist, etc), and are caught obviously using someone else's material, even if not in a legal sense, your career is likely to be in jeopardy.
Do you know what JCL is? If so, please explain how you would do the "whole damn thing" in JCL?
Who said anything about copyrights? This is a simple case of attribution, not legal intellectual property ownership and property licensing. When you write something with the assistance of sources, you must give attribution to those sources. Even when those sources aren't copyrighted, such as a reporter's interview with a source, the attribution is important to establish credibility for the reader and for researchers who may want to use the secondary source that the reporter is creating (so that these researchers can easily determine the primary sources without having to contact the reporter and ask).
You, and everyone else, need to stop presuming the existence of some kind of idea ownership. To assume that everything must be owned by someone is to be part of the problem.