Plagiarism: No ‘Ifs,’ ‘Ands,’ or ‘Buts’

PLAGIARISM IS theft. Both as a form of dishonesty and for its consequences, the practice of copying someone else’s ideas and written work and passing them off as one’s own is one of the worst ethical offenses one can commit in academia, literature, public life, and journalism.

In journalism, plagiarism undermines the integrity of the profession while ruining individual careers and damaging the credibility of news organizations. If repeatedly committed, the offense can so poison the reputation of the news organization that it can lead to the public’s loss of confidence not only in its capacity to provide reliable information, commentary and news analysis, but also in that of the entire press and media community.

Despite its impact on both the profession and the practitioner, plagiarism is a recurring problem in the Philippine press and media. At times with the knowledge and even approval of some editors, in print the practice has been virtually institutionalized by practitioners who lift entire passages from articles in news agency dispatches without acknowledgment and include them in their own bylined reports, commentaries or analyses, regardless of whether the originals  were bylined or not.

Some say, or conveniently assume, that because their media organizations subscribe to and pay for a news agency service, they can do anything with the articles it provides. The absurdity of this argument is easily exposed: one doesn’t come to own another person’s work merely by buying a copy of it. Otherwise anyone would be a Shakespeare and a Rizal through the mere expedient of  buying copies of The Complete Works and the Noli and the Fili.

Others also plagiarize to conceal their lack of ideas and their writing ineptitude, with the hope that the deed won’t be discovered. Plagiarism is at times also driven by the ambition to be thought of as an exceptional practitioner despite one’s limited skills. In Philippine journalism some copy editors who make free with other people’s ideas, passages, or even entire works have also claimed that, having edited the articles involved, they’re already their co- or even lead authors. The claim hardly needs refuting. If  the claim were valid, without exerting the same effort as the writers of the originals, every editor would also be the author of the pieces he or she goes over daily.

Still others justify plagiarism by saying that ideas as well as words, phrases, paragraphs and entire works, once in the public domain via the media or through other forms of publication, are fair game for copying without acknowledgment. It’s a variation of the same excuse above. It would make everyone the  presumed owner of any work or part of it merely because it has been published.

The more sophisticated argue, although with some validity, that few ideas are ever really original, although they draw the line at copying passages from other people’s works. But the operational words are “few ideas,” which implies that some ideas can be and are original, in which case they must be acknowledged as someone else’s. Determining which ideas aren’t original can also be a problematic enterprise.

These unnecessarily complex responses to an offense that’s easily avoided is in the same league as those attempts to justify a journalist’s receiving gifts and even money by the practice in some media organizations of concocting all sorts of conditions in which accepting various forms of largesse from news source would be acceptable, such as putting a ceiling on the value of the gift and the amount one can accept, whereas the only valid ethical response is not to accept either.

The crudest argument to justify plagiarism in this country so far has come from that damaged but once respected institution, the Philippine Senate. Vicente Sotto III claimed that he lifted passages without acknowledgment from someone who was “only a blogger” for inclusion in a privileged speech. In another instance, the same senator argued that since he had translated the original from English into Filipino, he was free to use the translated passages in his speech without acknowledgment.

The public statements of prominent personalities seem to be especially prone to plagiarism. A commencement speech by a well known Filipino businessman, for example, turned out to contain passages lifted by his speechwriters from US President Barack Obama and TV personality and media mogul Oprah Winfrey. Manuel V. Pangilinan, however, did not justify the plagiarism. Instead he apologized for it and fired the offending staff members.

It’s in journalism where apologies, whether for plagiarism, inaccuracy, conflict of interest or some other offense have been rare and hard to come by. Journalism is a calling that encourages both a sense of entitlement as well as delusions of grandeur due to the undeniable power of the mass media. The media can make or break reputations; hasten or hold back change; help elect idiots as well as sages to office;  bring down, or prevent the fall of, governments; and generally,  shape both mass perceptions and responses to events, ideas, and individuals.

The power of the press and media endows practitioners with the responsibility to use that power in behalf of providing the information and interpretation human beings need to make sense of  the often confusing and complex environments—whether social, political, environmental, etc.—in which they have to survive and function. That responsibility cannot be served by practitioners who, by passing off  the work of others as their own, damage both their own as well as the press and media’s credibility as the primary source of information of the men and women who constitute their vast, often global, audience.

Some of the worst plagiarists have been online media practitioners who have discovered how easily one can cut and paste entire passages from the articles and papers that the Internet has so conveniently put at their fingertips. They forget, or have never realized, that the access to vast amounts of material the Internet provides makes it just as easy to check sources. It should be self evident, but apparently isn’t, to some of those practitioners who include entire passages from other authors into their work without acknowledgment.

Like the rest of the ethical protocols of journalism practice, avoiding plagiarism is a relatively simple matter. It consists of acknowledging the source of the ideas and passages the practitioner has accessed and is including in his own work, and of not passing off anyone else’s work as his own. About plagiarism, as in the case of accepting gifts or bribes, there are no “ifs,” “ands,” or “buts”—only a “Don’t,” as in “Don’t steal the work of others,” period.