Publisher’s Note: The publisher has had no role in editing this essay, which is published as the writer submitted it with the intention of publication in BEACONS.
By Jonas Ward
During this semester, as a class we examined many journalists who turned bad by plagiarizing or fabricating. These journalists did what they did for certain reasons. Some admitted their fault, and others denied their accusations. I will recap on the stories of these journalists, talking about why they decided to plagiarize and also about the ethical issues caused including the aftermath of these cases.
In the beginning of the semester we learned about the First Amendment. The article (State of the First Amendment) from the Freedom Forum Institute goes into detail about our nation's privileges allowed because of our first amendment. A survey was taken which shows that there has been a 20% increase in knowledge regarding the First Amendment since 2018. The article also goes into detail about how some people believe that the first amendment has “gone too far” when it comes to the freedoms it gives Americans in their daily lives. The article states that it can tie into misinformation and fake news across the internet. This can be an issue because of how quickly information is distributed across the internet. People are granted the ability to say whatever they want and it can spread like wildfire very quickly to countless eyes. This is why people believe that the first amendment has gone too far. I personally doubt this. The rules have not changed for many years even though our way of sharing information has changed greatly. That is why people say you must not believe everything you see on the internet.
(The Great Moon Hoax Was Simply a Sign of Its Time) is an article that talks about a 1835 New York Sun newspaper story that was one of the first works of science fiction written by Sir John Herschel. This story was published as a hoax which really confused its readers at the time. This is pre-internet, and pre-social-media. Back then people were very likely to misunderstand information compared to today. Herschel was an astronomer but this story he wrote was a complete fabrication and people bought it. He wrote that he saw a whole other world through his telescope with civilizations of man monkeys, flying reindeer and the list goes on. This greatly reminds me of the radio broadcast War of the Worlds narrated by Orson Wells. That was not intended to be a hoax, but it did terrify a lot of people. Hershcels story was a fabrication that people took seriously. Going back to the first amendment, Hershcels had all the right in the world to write this story. The story was published and people were able to read it easily. The response though is something he could not control.
We learned about fake news in this class. Fake news is general misinformation that is widely spread usually over the internet and social media. Generally fake news comes from un-credible sources that is later spread by people who get access to the information. The Great Moon Hoax was a vintage example of modern fake news. I enjoy the aspect of The Great Moon Hoax, but something like that in my opinion should stay in a novel like an H.P Lovecraft story. If Hershcel elaborated at some point in his story that it was a work of fiction, people would not have reacted the way they did. It could have been his motive to confuse people, and it worked. I enjoy reading stuff like that a lot, but I dont think it's in the right mindset to publish it in a paper just to mess with people's minds. The stakeholders of this accident could be Hershel himself because his reputation for accurate and credible work may have diminished.
A great example of fabrication that we learned about this semester is the story titled (Jimmy's World) written by Janet Cooke. If you don't know that the whole story is completely fabricated, it is a mindblowing read. It's even more mind blowing now knowing that it's a fabricated Pulitzer Prize winning hoax. Jimmy’s World would have been a fantastic story for a novel, but not something published on The Washington Post. I personally think that drug abuse is a mental illness and it should be treated with care and respect. You can't belittle people for having an illness like this, and I find this story somewhat disrespectful if that's the right term for it.
Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for Jimmy’s World, but it was quickly taken away after suspicions arose when sources could not be found. Later Cooke admitted it was a fabrication. The Washington Post article (‘Jimmy” Episode Evokes Outrage, Sadness) shows the aftermath of the realization of the article being a fabrication. Like I said earlier, this article in my opinion is incredibly derogatory towards any person who is suffering with drug addiction. In my honest opinion, it is not a topic to be taken lightly. Especially falsified and fantasized as a real story. This would be totally different if Janet Cooke right off the bat stated that this is a work of imagination and wrote a novel instead. I think that this really was a culture shock to society that there were people like that living under the grip of addiction, which is true, but not this story. This affects the readers because many of them wanted to find Jimmy and donate money but he never even existed.
The story about Stephen Glass is another great example of fabrication that we learned about this semester. Shattered Glass published by The New Republic is an article about Stephen Glass who was a writer for multiple magazines. At the time he was only 25 and he had made a huge name for himself writing for magazines like The Rolling Stones and The New Republic. It all crumbled during a fresh issue for The New Republic. The article titled (Hack Heaven) by Glass talked about a teenage computer hacker seeking to export money from a huge corporation. Glass was confronted with questions about his piece because sourcing could not be found. He responded with a barrage of lies just to cover his rear. Glass was able to keep himself off the hook for a few years, but his demise was met when he was fired after conjuring up close to 20 stories. He was not able to fabricate himself away from the truth. The New Republic is a major stakeholder for this case. They were able to hold onto Glass for so long while he rained his lies all over his work. This can affect reader ratings for the paper.
Glass is just a great example of a pathological liar. I think to have avoided this problem, he needed to hand in a source list for every article he wrote so an accuracy report could be made. His editors really must have trusted him that much to never check immediately. This is an interesting story and it's a good read for aspiring journalists to learn about plagiarism and the hell it creates. Not only does it harm the publication, it also harms the readers because for years they thought that Glass had been getting wicked good sourcing for his articles. This was not the case, he just had good imagination.
Another example of fabrication we learned this semester is the cases of Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle. Patricia Smith of the Boston Globe fabricated on multiple occasions which later led to her demise in writing. (Boston Columnist Is Ousted For Fabricated Articles) is an article about Patritica Smith and her jaunt with the Boston Globe. This New York Times article is about Smith’s history with fabrication and how she was eventually caught for making up characters and ludicrous quotes in her articles. She came under fire after senior editors found some fishy things in her work. Smith eventually admitted her fabrications to the Boston Globe which ended her career. Before the Boston Globe, Smith was a typist for the Chicago Daily News. Smith was also a Pulitzer prize finalist.
One of the best examples of what not to do as a journalist is Jason Blair. Blair was a New York Times writer after completing an internship there and also at The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. After him being hired at The New York Times, accusations arose after several of his stories proved to be inaccurate.
(The Times and Jason Blair) is an article that goes into detail about the case of Blair and his inaccurate stories. This article questions the hiring process at The New York Times and why Blair was hired in the first place. This article also mentioned that the Blair accusations and the damage he caused affected the whole publication because of his falsified stories.
(CORRECTING THE RECORD; Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception) goes into fantastic detail about the information Blair fabricated, the sources he made up, and the first hand accounts he lied about. Blair on many accounts would pretend to be in a place and meet certain people when in reality he had not. According to this article, more than 600 articles Blair wrote ended up being complete fabrications. After resigning and taking a leave for “personal reasons” to cover his tail before getting caught, Blair was granted a second chance at The New York Times and his editors had believed that he changed his actions for the better. Almost immediately, Blair was caught fabricating scenes and quotes for a story about the Washington sniper case. Blair was fired.
Personally, I think if you need to take a break from your job to turn your life around, that should be understandable. Blair came back and lied yet again to the editors of the Times and continued to fabricate stories. Blair was capable of massive fraud because of how good he was at lying. Not only did he get himself fired after a second chance, he belittled the editors at The New York Times and left a very bad taste in everybody's mouth. Blair was a stakeholder in his own scandal. He ruined his questionable reputation and his editors were unable to catch him right off the bat. I don't know why so many of these journalists get away with so much over a long period of time. Those editors must really trust people.
Not only did we learn about fabrication this semester, but we learned about plagiarizing. Blair was a very good plagiarizer because he got away with it for so long. The next curated resource from the Los Angeles Times titled (He Stole a Lot More Than My Words) written by Macarena Hernandez is about a story that Hernandez wrote. Blair completely stole from Hernandez’s story and plagiarized it. When Hernandez originally got her hands on and read Blairs story, the key factor that gave it away was some Martha Stewart patio furniture that never existed in her story. Blair stole a good chunk of the story and twisted it into his own concoction. Hernandez was devastated and her editors were in the process of writing a letter to the New York Times just days before Blair resigned the first time.
I personally think Blair is one of the worst people to ever have the opportunity to write for The New York Times. I think he is a master pathological liar. I also think that he has some great personal aspects to him that allow him to think that stealing and plagiarizing somebody's hard work is okay. I think that there should be more repercussions for advanced levels of plagiarism. He has zero respect for the people he stole from and even less respect lying to his editors about it.
We read some stories about the Rick Bragg plagiarism case this semester which offers some good information on what not to do as a journalist. Bragg won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The problem is, the stories that got him the nomination, and the prize at the end were written and reported by an unpaid intern. Bragg passed the work off as his own. He was later suspended from his Pulitzer Prize because of it. (Times Reporter Steps Down Amid Criticism) Is a New York Times article written by Jacques Stienburg. This article talks about how Bragg resigned after an editor's note was published about how he relied heavily on the reporting of a freelance journalist regarding an article about oystermen on the Florida coast. This was basically a kick in the pants for Bragg. Bragg resigned from the New York Times.
Another story about the Rick Bragg plagiarism case is a Washington Post article titled (Rick Bragg Quits At New York Times) which is written by Howard Kurtz. This article goes into detail about how Bragg quit writing for The New York Times after a two week paid suspension that left people uneasy because it was right after the Jason Blair fabrication scandal. This is a great article because it shows a bit more of the backstory because it explained how Bragg wanted to leave for himself before he “hurt anybody's feelings''. I don't know if he was sucking up for the mistakes he had made or trying to protect his image. Bragg did a better job than Jason Blair who denied a good portion of his fabrications.
Howell Raines was an executive editor for the New York Times. Raines wanted to transform the newsroom into a place that conformed into his ideologies politically. Raines was also the editor the same time that Jason Blair was writing for the New York Times. This in doubt was his undoing. Raines caused a massive tension that put everybody into a mood at The New York Times which also cradled the actions of Jason Blair. Nobody informed Raines about the problems that Jason Blair was causing right away which let him get away with so much more. To me, this is a very complicated issue because nobody wanted to talk with Raines about the fabrication and plagiarism problems. I think this was just a spur of events and the people at The New York Times exploded all at once. I don't know if their hiring process doesn't go into great detail about these people's backgrounds, but it does raise an eyebrow.
(Source for USA Today Reporter Disputes Details of Kosovo Article) written by Jacuques Stiendburg is about a reporter by the name of Jack Kelley who was at USA Today in 1999 who wrote an article about an ethnic cleansing in a Kosovo village. One of the sources from this article states that most of the details in this article were fabricated. This is just a classic fabrication story about a reporter who made stuff up thinking nobody would notice, and ended up ruining their career because everybody noticed. Kelley pleaded that he got notes mixed up, his translators duped him along with many other excuses. The Kelly plagiarism case is just a classic example of what not to do as a journalist.
On top of the classic fabrication and plagiarism cases we learned about this semester, we also learned about anonymous sourcing. An article titled (Few Sources Go Nameless in the Press, Survey Shows) talks about nationwide anonymous sources and the percentages they are used at over the years. A survey was taken that shows that anonymous sources were only used about seven percent of the time in newsrooms across the country in 2004. Just a year before newsrooms across the country were likely to use an anonymous source in 29 percent of their papers published. These surveys later show that readers across the country really do not like anonymous sourcing. Journalists were also realising that they seemed more credible if their source was non-anonymous. To me this would be the case also. I love knowing what kind of people journalists are interviewing. If a source is anonymous, I would have a very hard time trusting what the source has to say in the first place.
During this semester we also learned about methods to help prevent plagiarism and fabrication. In the article (Confronting the Culture) we learned about ways to help prevent and avoid plagiarism and fabrications. We also learned about how modern journalists' practices should have no place for plagiarism tolerance. Journalism is about integrity and honesty. Plagiarism is obviously the opposite of that. I totally agree with what Cathrine Manegold talked about in this article. She stated how she did not want to share anything with her editor until she knew her story was perfect and true with no errors because she did not want to take any chances with plagiarising or fabricating. To me, this level of attention to detail is what we need if you want to be a journalist. Double, triple, quadruple check facts and quotes to make sure attribution is correct, and take plenty of notes so you know the story is solid when you are ready to hand it in to an editor. So many of these people we learned about this semester seemed like they did not care about the outcome of their actions and would hand in a total trainwreck of a story to an editor.
The article titled (Handling and Preventing Journalistic Fraud: Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair) is a fantastic article because it goes into detail about the cases of the previous journalists listed in the title. The article goes into great detail about the fabrication and the plagiarism that these journalists cause. It also talks about how fabrication and plagiarism is morally wrong for any journalists to carry out with. This article also talks about many ways to help prevent these occurrences with proper education, hiring process and proper journalists practices. I think that education about plagiarism and fabrication is crucial for the hiring process of a journalist. A test should be enacted for new journalists to test their knowledge about these subjects. This is just a precautionary step to hiring a reputable journalist at a publication.
(Jonah Lehrer resigns from the New Yorker) is an article which goes into detail about the case of Jonah Lehrer and how he plagiarized quotes from Bob Dylan in one of his articles. To me, that is a very bold move to steal quotes from a very well known musician like Bob Dylan. Lehrer apologized publicly one month before he left his position at The New Yorker. Later Lehrer stated that he will do as much as he can to correct his public image because of what he had done. This is just like every other plagiarism story in my opinion, it is the same thing over and over again when it comes to somebody taking somebody’s else’s work or words and pretending that they “had no idea” about the thing they were doing. I am sided with The New Yorker who later publicly said that it was a horrible situation and they are trying to preserve their integrity to their readers after the Lehrer incident. The New Yorker was the stakeholder in this situation because they were deathly afraid of their image to become tainted to their readers which is totally understandable.
(Wall Street Journal Intern fired for fabricating sources) is a Poynter article that shows the fabrication case of Liane Membis. The article Membis wrote titled (Bridging a Local Divide) was removed from The Wall Street Journal after he claimed to interview several people that never existed. This is a classic fabrication story that is all like the other ones. I have to side with the Wall Street Journal in this after they pulled the Membis story because of the falsifications.
All of these examples and articles are a good reminder that fabrication and plagiarism is all a real issue. These are very informative and easy to understand the issues that plagiarism and fabrication can cause. These are all real world people that attempt to get away with these unethical wrongdoings. It will always be unethical and I have to agree with the newspapers and publications that had to get rid of these journalists that plagiarize or fabricate.
(Journalism has a plagiarism problem. But it's not the one you’d expect) Is an article about a journalist named Fareed Zakaria who has had several accusations of plagiarism about his work over the years. He is a very prestigious journalist who has many followers but also many people questioning his work. The Zakaria case shows the struggle that the media has with fabrication and plagiarism. This article also explains in detail about the punishments that newsrooms have on plagiarizers. Punishment for these ethical issues varies from very hard to almost the minimum. This is the issue that the media has regarding plagiarism and fabrication. The repercussions are very widespread with how sincere they can be. Zakaria was briefly suspended from CNN and The New York Times for plagiarizing an article on gun control which he called a “major mistake.” This is a very interesting article that shows the struggle of dishing out punishment for fabrications and plagiarizers.
I think there needs to be a set standard for the repercussion that can be dished out for journalists that commit these unethical things. The media doesn't know how to handle certain situations, which then alters the view of a publication. If the media knows that some journalist fabricated or plagiarized, but they are too focused on something else, this may lessen the punishment of that journalist. If a story gets out that's totally plagiarized and the media explodes, that journalist could be fired on the spot. To fix this, I think there should be a set of rules which determine the punishment for a journalist that plagiarises or fabricates. This should be the case whether the media reacts adversely or not to the case.
Across the board there are a lot of ethical issues in journalism that have been addressed with these reporters and editors. I personally think that the hiring process at the New York Times had a loophole at some point which allowed a lot of these people who were hired to not care ethically about their job. One way to help with these fabricated stories is to have a mandatory accuracy report done with each one of these writers, no matter how trustworthy they are or popular they are. This would totally eliminate the issue of pulling stories out of thin air and publishing on paper. If I were an editor, I would communicate with my writers in a way that allows me to know the people they are using for sources. Lack of communication in my opinion allows slip ups to happen under the brow of many. We learned a lot this semester, and I know I gained great knowledge from all our readings about these ethical issues in the world of journalism.
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