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Wikipedia Plagiarism Ends Journalist's Career
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Jan 15, 2006 10:32 AM
from the someone-quick-post-this-story-into-wikipedia dept.
from the someone-quick-post-this-story-into-wikipedia dept.
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."
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However (Score:4, Funny)
How much more that we don't know about? (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Indeed. (Score:5, Funny)
I think there's a lot. For example, 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.
Re:How much more that we don't know about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on that, the mainstream media fails to pass the most simple factchecks.
Re:How much more that we don't know about? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, this is no reason to entirely discredit the mass media, I would like to hope that 99.99% of them practice responsible journalism, but I am sure there is that
Re:How much more that we don't know about? (Score:5, Informative)
The winner was the Daily Mail which made a two page spread of someones blog and passed it off as their own work.
Re:How much more that we don't know about? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:How much more that we don't know about? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:How much more that we don't know about? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you tell us which news outlets have agreed to give a company's PR person final approval authority for their reporting? I'd like to know so I can make sure to avoid them at all costs. Thanks.
Like Swift Dead (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Well, maybe "sad" wasn't my first choice of words (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well, maybe "sad" wasn't my first choice of wor (Score:5, Informative)
Is it really that hard... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it really that hard... (Score:5, Funny)
should have added the {{plagiarism}} tag (Score:5, Funny)
Sooo What You're Saying Is... (Score:5, Funny)
That the story of a journalist plagiarizing wikipedia, that was revealed on wikipedia, was plagiarized by the Star-Bulletin, the paper that employed the plagiarizing writer?
Irony meter broken!!! Alert Alert!!!
What Plagiarism is: (Score:5, Informative)
This [wikipedia.org] 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.
Paligarsm ?? (Score:5, Funny)
then press ctrl + c
then press ctrl + v
But, but, isnt that feature of Windows ?
Referrences missing? No, not really. (Score:5, Informative)
From one of the stories linked in TFA [starbulletin.com] (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.
...and it won't be the last time (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
I thought "Love-Wikipedia" day was Tuesday (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How ironic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Presentation Laundering, and related ethics (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem isn't really that the Star Bulletin writer (Tim Ryan) used the facts without attribution or citation. The information is readily available from a large number of alternate sources, and so might be (with a bit of a stretch) considered 'common knowledge'. It might have lent more weight to the article to be able to say, "According to an NTSA report on the accident..." or something of that sort, but I guess that would be overkill for an entertainment column.
The issue was that Ryan copied substantial passages verbatim without attribution or quotation marks to indicate that the material came from another source. Someone (actually, several someones) at Wikipedia put in a fair bit of effort to convert factual information into an easily-readable and cohesive narrative form. By directly lifting the text, Ryan passed off their work as his own. The plagiarism Tim Ryan committed was in his failure to acknowledge the source of 'his' words, not in his failure to credit the source of his facts.
I am a regular Wikipedia editor, and I agree with you that Wikipedia doesn't always catch plagiarism either. However, we do take action against editors who reuse material from other sources (images or text) inappropriately. In general, we're usually pretty good at detecting when a lump of text appears that seems suspiciously well written, or that doesn't quite fit with the rest of an article.
Re:Meanwhile, back at Wikipedia... (Score:5, Funny)