GOOD JOURNALISTS GONE BAD: An appraisal of plagiarism and fabrication by Shayne Ryan

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 Shayne Ryan

Throughout the semester, we read different stories about different journalists who worked their way up to the top of the industry, and how it all came crashing down by their usage of somebody else’s work. Some of these reporters had claimed to have done it by accident, while others openly admitted to doing it, and giving their explanation as to why they felt it was necessary. Some of these reasons were because they felt a large amount of pressure, and that they didn’t want to let people down. We began by learning the seven deadly sins of journalisms, but what seemed to happen the most in the case studies was plagiarism and fabrication. Plagiarism occurs when a highly touted journalist would rip content off from other journalists, their interns, or even joke books. Fabrication is when a journalist completely makes up a scenario in order to get an interesting story out. To make sure you stay away from these actions, all journalists should follow the golden rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and the phrase “Never plagiarize, always attribute”. What this means is that you should always give credit where credit is due. I often see times in the sports media world where a big reporter will give credit to a smaller reporter who would break the news or details of a move first. There is also the code of ethics. The code of ethics is a list of rules for what you should do as a journalist. It emphasizes the importance of being straightforward and succinct, since you don't want your terms to be misinterpreted. It emphasizes the importance of double-checking your work before submitting it. Not doing this is where a lot of Journalists get themselves into trouble, as they rush a story to make sure they’re the first ones to report about it, which as a result, would bring them attention. This type of behavior is seen all the time in the sports media world, as reporters throw free agent signings or trades out there, hoping they become true so they can say i told you so.

Firstly, I want to talk about how serious plagiarism, fabrication and other journalistic sins are and why it is a major problem for not only the individual committing the act, but others involved as well. Throughout this essay, I look into why these journalists committed these acts, and try to analyze it from their perspective. However, committing plagiarism, fabrication, burning of the source, deception, etc. is a major problem that isn’t negotiable. When a writer submits plagiarized work, he or she is committing fraud with the intention of profiting from it. If a civilian is reading a plagiarized article after reading where they plagiarized from, they’re not going to continue to purchase that newspaper, blog, etc. It’s also incredibly disrespectful to the journalist you copy from, taking their work and giving them no credit has got to be extremely frustrating, especially if the plagiarized piece managed to do better than the original. There is also Fabrication, which I believe is worse. Fabrication is a completely made up story, whether it’s just part of an article, or the whole article itself. When reading about all the cases throughout the semester, it seemed to me as if fabrication was always punished the hardest and it makes sense why: as not only are you spreading misinformation to the public, but you are also damaging the reputation of your employer, your colleagues, and sometimes even your consumers.

The first case we learned about was Janet Cooke, who was stripped of a Pulitzer Prize after it was discovered that she had completely fabricated a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict. The Pulitzer Prize is a huge award, only given to fantastic stories that are extremely deserving of it. Her winning this award almost brings some type of negative energy towards it, even though it was stripped from her after her story was found fake. Besides the completely made up story, what bothered me the most was how she lied to her editors about what had transpired when she had interviewed “Jimmy”, telling them that she had promised the nonexistent people anonymity. She even went a step further, and told the editors that the mother's boyfriend had threatened her life if any authorities or police discovered Jimmy's whereabouts. Putting other people’s jobs at risks for you to publish a fabrication is extremely selfish and made me felt close to no sympathy for her. As a result of the editors believing in her, and trusting that she was telling them the truth, they had their careers called into question, as they were described as being “not alert enough” by the editorial page of the St. Lewis Post Dispatch. I heavily disagree with this, how can you blame them for having trust that their star journalist is telling them the truth? It really showed quickly how others who don’t even commit the act of fabrication can negatively be affected by the fabricators actions. I tried to understand her reasoning for doing this, and see this from her point-of-view, but she hurt a lot more than she had helped. If she hadn’t made up an interview, and actually just talked about the ongoing problems in D.C. instead, she could’ve helped a ton of people. But due to her lying, those peoples issues almost got pushed aside because people completely threw out the story she was telling. To continue to read on and discover that she ended up working as a sales clerk in a clothing store, was honestly kind of shocking for me. I did expect a punishment for somebody committing an act of fabrication like she did, but from being at the top of the industry to working a regular job because of a single mistake, I'm not sure the punishment fits the crime. A story I found very similar to this was the story of Michael Finkel. Finkel wrote a story about a child who spent his days picking cotton, and after conversing with a wealthy person wanted better for himself and his family. In this article, Finkel lied about the duration of time the child was working as a slave for, so people immediately passed off his work as a fabrication, even though certain aspects of the story were true. Both of these stories could’ve had a huge positive impact, as they were talking about real problems that exist in different cultures. I do not understand why they felt they had to lie about these stories just a little to make them that much more interesting, was it really worth risking the possibility of genuine change? My answer is no. This would have a cascading impact, calling into question a lot of his other work. This exemplifies how a single blunder can have such a negative effect on your career as a whole, even though you've maintained credibility throughout your career.

A story that made a lot more sense to me was Stephen Glass. Stephen Glass often fabricated stories in order to get to the top of the totem pole when it came to journalism. Being a fact-checker himself, Glass knew how to finesse the system and continued to do so until he was finally caught, when it was discovered that 27 of his 41 published articles had fabrications inside of them. In response to this, during an interview for “Shattered Glass”, Glass exclaimed “In fact, I'd bet lots of the stuff in those other 14 is fake too. ... It's not like we're vouching for those 14, that they're true. They're probably not either”. This seemed like a simple case of Glass lying for as long as he could to gain as much popularity as he could. Although I wasn’t too sure what the punishment should’ve been for Janet Cooke, I think it's safe to say that Stephen Glass was very deserving of getting fired, and having his platform taken away from him. During that week, we also read about other Journalists who were caught. One that specifically caught my eye was Mark Hornung, who completely lifted 12 paragraphs from a Washington Post article in his 15 paragraph article for the Chicago Sun-Times. I would attribute this as a lack of passion for writing. At some point, it’s very possible that a writer or editor is completely worn out of constantly producing new material. It’s just incredible to me how he went through with that and thought it would work out. Interestingly enough, it did, as instead of being fired like other Journalists or Editors may be, he was given a job in their circulation department. Reading about these three cases immediately taught me something, and that’s that there is no consistency when it comes to punishing those who plagiarize, fabricate, etc. I feel that if there was an established punishment for these actions, not only would writers be a lot more careful, but it would be a more efficient way to prevent it from happening again. This would be exemplified in the “Ethical Lapses” story we read the next week, we looked into more cases of plagiarism and the consequences faced. Like I said, a lot of these consequences were inconsistent, which leaves a big gray area to what journalists can get away with and what they can not do. One big instance I recalled from earlier in the semester was the firing of Paige Wiser, who was fired by the Chicago Sun Times after incorrectly portraying the events of a concert she had to leave early to care for her sick child. Meanwhile, there are other journalists who commit much worse acts who don’t get fired, and instead possibly get relocated within the same company. There needs to be a more defined and clear cut judgement of someone's actions, as well as the consequences for those actions. We also went into detail about writer Patricia Smith, who resigned after she was caught fabricating stories during her career, as she could only name 2 out of a number of 6 characters that she could actually identify as real people. Her apology was interesting, as she stated “I wanted the pieces to jolt, to be talked about, to leave the reader indelibly impressed. And sometimes, as a result of trying to do too much at once and cutting corners, they didn't. So I tweaked them to make sure they did". By saying this she’s describing the pressures she felt as a journalist in the industry. The reality is you need to come up with stories that make the reader not only continue reading your current story, but also leave them with the desire to continue reading your future stories. Some stories just aren’t interesting enough on their own, so she cut corners in order to make the stories more interesting. The pressure of consistently putting out good stories is where I believe a lot of good journalists go bad.

Next we dove into a story about a writer by the name of Ruth Shalit, who was a rising star at The New Republic for her hard hitting stories on different politicians. When I first read her reasoning for her plagiarism, I didn’t believe her for a second. She described that she had a setup where she has the story she’s writing on one side, and on the other are the notes for that story -- original reporting she's done, as well as notes to herself and information transferred from Lexis-Nexis which is a massive computer database of articles that have run in other publications. Where Shalit got into trouble is when she confused another report for her own original reporting, saying that the writing style appears very similar, especially when you’re writing a piece as exhausting as 9,000 words. When I first read about this, I thought she was just making an excuse for plagiarism, and dismissed it as a writer who just plagiarized and came up with an excuse some people might believe. When I thought deeper about it however, I understood how her reasoning could make sense, especially as a college student who’s writing long essays for many different courses. It made me realize how even a simple mistake can largely impact your reputation as a writer, as even I, who had been taking this course for weeks reading about how different people could mistakenly plagiarize, immediately judged Shalit without hesitation. There are definitely consumers of the articles that don’t do a double take, and instead go on just thinking of a person who made a single mistake as a plagiarist.

The next week, we read about Jayson Blair. Jayson Blair was a writer for The New York Times who was quickly rising in popularity when it had been discovered that he had been fabricating stories. Blair had been reporting about military families in the war in Iraq, he was actually at his home in Brooklyn, instead of other states like he had dispatched from. He'd use the same approach to report on various news around the country, fooling viewers into thinking he was there when he was really at home. Journalists went back and discovered problems in 36 out of his 73 National articles. Whenever I read stories about people that plagiarized, fabricate, etc...it seems that much more incriminating evidence is found after a journalist gets caught a single time. Which makes me understand why the writers would continue to fabricate, plagiarize, etc when they’re not being caught. It reminds me of a baseball player using a foreign substance to boost his performance. They gain money, fame, popularity, and enjoy doing their career as a result of their cheating. And They continue to use those substances until they get caught, and once they get caught, a lot of people don’t look at them the same way. Barry Bonds is a great example, as he is undoubtedly one of the greatest baseball players to ever step on the field, but he is still held out from the MLB hall of fame due to his usage of steroids.I think making this comparison really helped me understand how a good journalist can go down a dark path. It’s so easy to get caught up in all the benefits that come with the results of your process. Even if it's just a one time thing to start, I can understand it can lead someone to wanting more. Macarena Hernandez saw this as well, as she didn't paint Jayson as a bad person, instead she expressed that she had felt some type of sympathy for him.

Following Blair, we read about four reporters named Rick Bragg, Jack Kelley, Carl Cameron and Michelle Delio. One that very much stuck out to me was the story about Rick Bragg. Rick Bragg was a reporter at the New York Times who resigned after receiving internal backlash of his passing off of other work as his own. Bragg used a freelance reporter to do his work for him and gave him no credit. Bragg had committed a deadly sin of journalism, which was described as burning the source. He enraged his colleagues by behaving as though this was a normal occurrence in the industry. After he had discovered what his coworkers thought of him, he decided to leave the New York Times, even though he was only officially suspended for two weeks. His reasoning being "...it's only going to cause more hurt feelings if I do. I don't want to cause any more hurt feelings, not my own or anyone else's.". Originally, this case confused me, as i thought why would Bragg all of a sudden care about feelings after treating an intern the way he did?” That was until I thought deeper about how other journalists had reacted to the situation. Some believed that Bragg was just using the so-called "legs'' in the journalism industry. Hearing this perspective made me realize that Bragg was not alone in believing this was a normal occurrence. Bragg might not have realized what he was doing was wrong, and I can’t help but feel sympathy for him, as he felt like he had to leave that working environment for betterment of himself, and for his former colleagues as well.

Carl Carmen worked for Fox News and fabricated quotes about important political figures, such as George W. Bush. Fabricating proves further why it is the worst thing a journalist can do, as it will cause the most harm due to the spread of misinformation and a lack of trust in journalism in general. When people discover a person they consider credible fabricates stories, they don’t know who to trust, not only heavily impacting the writer, or even the company he’s writing for, but journalism itself. This illustrates how bad decisions have an effect on everyone, even though certain people aren't directly involved.

There was also the case of Shaun King, who was accused of plagiarism because of his New York Times editor deleting the citations of King giving credit. It was said that he had deleted parts of his work on at least three occasions, making it look as if Shaun King had stolen work from others without giving proper credit. As a result, the editor would be fired, but he was not the one to initially receive all of the hate or blame. All of the initial blame was fully directed towards Shaun King, whose full intention was to give credit by using quotation marks and citations. This was another example of how one person committing journalistic fraud could have a big impact on their coworkers, as King’s reputation took a hit because of his editor's actions. We also read about a german reporter by the name of Claas Relotius, who was forced to resign for exaggerating his coverage and fabricating events for years. His explanation for this was that he had a fear of failure, which is what I believe is the common cause for a good journalist to go bad. They have immense pressure on them to write excellent articles. Not only for themselves, but also their employer, their colleagues, and their audience as well. Although it doesn't make what he did okay,

After reading about all of these different cases throughout the semester, I believe i have a much better understanding of why journalists commit some of the deadly sins rather than them just being lazy. There is a substantial amount of pressure put on them, to push out new and exciting articles by certain deadlines, and if they’re not capable of doing so, their job could be on the line. I feel some of this pressure myself at times as a student, stressing out to beat deadlines, plagiarism has most definitely crossed my mind. Although I don’t use it, I understand how the temptation might just be too much for some to handle. Although journalists should make reporting facts their number one priority, I can see how some may slip up, whether that be accidentally taking someone’s work, or just being ignorant on what you should and shouldn’t do as a journalist. So what are some steps the industry can take to make sure this doesn’t continue to occur? Remove the gray area. I think there should be a clear nationwide policy as to what constitutes plagiarism, fabrication, etc, and I believe there should be a clear punishment as to what will happen if you risk plagiarizing. I think people should have the opportunity to grow from their journalistic mistakes, just like Ahmad Shafi, who was an NPR intern who was caught plagiarizing a story about witnessing a Taliban execution, lifting parts of his story from writer Jason Burke. NPR handled this situation perfectly, as he wasn't fired immediately after, but the young journalist was given a chance to grow from his mistakes. Although I believe journalists should be given a little breathing room, I also believe that they should be much more careful as a result. In the article we read titled "The Cost of Credibility", they described a system that would put a reporter's article into a system to see if they had taken any of their information for somewhere else. I feel that this is a great method to check for both writers and editors, as writers can make sure they don’t release a mistakenly plagiarized piece of work, and an editor can be more secure in their position, being able to fact check their writers work so they can’t be held responsible for something completely out of their control. To avoid Fabrication, I believe that writers should have to provide the facts to their editors. In situations like Janet Cookes, where she described that she had promised anonymity, I still feel it is necessary to prove everything in your story to your editor, or else the editor should not publish something they cannot confirm for themselves.

While plagiarism is a horrible action and should be taken seriously, I think it’s extremely important we separate the action from the person, and try to be understanding of why good writers turned evil. Thinking about solutions on how we can limit this from happening is how genuine change occurs for the betterment of journalism.