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."

Comments

Re:How much more that we don't know about?

[A beautiful mind]

Since the only (ok, maybe not) thing I'm much more qualified in than the average from what is presented sometimes in the mainstream media is IT, I can only judge the media based on the IT news they are reporting.

Based on that, the mainstream media fails to pass the most simple factchecks.

Well, maybe "sad" wasn't my first choice of words

[kamapuaa]

Wikipedia isn't an organization, it's a website. The people who caught the plagiarism weren't employees of Wikipedia, or acting on behalf of the Wikipedia Foundation, why should Wikipedia be given credit? This is just another instance of Wikipedia supporters having a chip on their shoulder against the established media - I loved the righteous tone of indignation, you can almost forget just how commonly Wikipedia articles plagiarize printed sources.

Is it really that hard...

[dbolger]

...to use babelfish to translate the wikipedia article from English to Chinese, back again, and fix the grammer? The guy deserves to be fired. Sure, for plagarism, but more importantly for being stupid enough to get caught, imho.

Like Swift Dead

[quokkapox]

Often newspapers reprint AP content without any fact-checking or error correction. Check out the recent AP content related to Albert Hoffman. Many newspaper articles regurgitated the AP wire article which referenced a bogus name for LSD, "Like Swift Dead". Anybody ever heard that before? Nope. Even Google had no references to it, which could easily have been checked by the original AP reporter or any of the chorus of mass-media parrots who copied/reprinted the erroneous article.

Reminds me of Cyber Monday.

People have to learn to evaluate what they read critically and decide how believable it is. I'm not very optimistic about this happening in the U.S.

...and it won't be the last time

[embrown]

It wouldn't surprise me if more instances of plagiarism surfaced for two reasons 1. technology allows for better watchdogs and 2. at the most basic level, plagiarism isn't dealt with harshly enough.

I graduated with a journalism degree a few years ago and my experience truly left me disturbed regarding the issue of plagiarism. The cardinal rule presented in every single class was that plagiarism would not only get you a failing grade, but expulsion from the program and university. Students who catch another plagiarizing are, by the university's honor code, required to turn them in. Unfortunately, few professors followed up with any sort of retribution when a student was caught.

In one instance, a web project by a classmate was blatantly plagiarized. There were several style, spelling and grammatical errors which would have caught the attention of any veteran journalist/editor, let alone a student. Sure enough, when text in the project was Googled, two instances came up: the project and the source it was copied from (errors included). When it was brought to the attention of the professor, it was immediately dismissed and no action was taken.

And that's not the only case... another professor (ironically, the one who taught Journalism Ethics) shared how in previous semesters she caught roughly a quarter of the class plagiarizing their term papers.

If plagiarism isn't taken care of at the most basic level, why should we expect it to cease? What would make any aspiring journalist who got away with plagiarizing an article feel the need to adhere to ethical reporting?

Re:How much more that we don't know about?

[raju1kabir]

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).

The effect of which would be to limit "authorized" quotes from your company's staff to trade rags and the Podunk County Weekly Advertiser. No reputable newspaper would submit to those conditions unless you were providing the scoop of the century.

And of course you cannot prevent any newspaper from running any quote they happen to come by.