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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."
...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.
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?