For many journalists, plagiarizing/fabrication are possibly the worst thing anyone can do. It damages reputation, credibility and you end up jobless. It doesn’t make sense why Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair would do such a thing, especially since they came out of college, being highly touted as the next young up and coming journalists. For both of them, it’s all mental. I believe that Glass got caught up in the high of being looked at as such a great writer that he just wanted to please everyone and be liked by everyone. For Blair, he seemed to be quite lazy and that he noticed that he could get away with a few lies in his story. He probably started to notice how easy it was at first and just kept lying more and more until he was ultimately caught. Same with Glass, except he went further by creating websites and false documents to back himself up. From all that work that Glass put in, he seems more of a pathological liar than Blair. Blair just came off as lazy.
I thought to my self, ‘what can news organizations do to weed out plagiarizers before they even get hired?’ and I thought about mental evaluations prior to being hired. Yet, I feel that may be somewhat unethical because there are journalists that have issues like depression or some type of chemical imbalance but that doesn’t drive them to plagiarize; it has to be deeper than that. There has to more to a person in order to cause them to pull off such a gutsy move, especially working for a news organization that is very well known. Possibly a lie detector test could help, and questions about plagiarizing/fabrication can be asked to see how they react but those tests aren’t cheap either.
Discussing in class, the idea came up that if they are so good at making up such great stories, then why wouldn’t they just go into fictional writing and make a fortune that way? Glass could have still be highly touted but as a storyteller, not an up and coming plagiarist. I just don’t get how a journalist can feel ok with fabrication of a story or from just stealing word for word from someone else. My conscious would eat me alive. Also, it’s so easy not to plagiarize. You can avoid it by having another journalist read your work and make sure it’s original, you can take some piece of information and instead of copying word for word, just read the document and write what info you got from the top of your head. That way, it would be guaranteed to be your words, not somebody else’s.
Overall plagiarism is a problem but it can be so easily avoided, just don’t worry about being liked and don’t be lazy as Glass and Blair were. It just worries me because I wonder if its more prevalent problem than we know, since plagiarist lie, they could easily be covering it up from people who don’t know how to catch stolen words or a fabricated story.
I thought to my self, ‘what can news organizations do to weed out plagiarizers before they even get hired?’ and I thought about mental evaluations prior to being hired. Yet, I feel that may be somewhat unethical because there are journalists that have issues like depression or some type of chemical imbalance but that doesn’t drive them to plagiarize; it has to be deeper than that. There has to more to a person in order to cause them to pull off such a gutsy move, especially working for a news organization that is very well known. Possibly a lie detector test could help, and questions about plagiarizing/fabrication can be asked to see how they react but those tests aren’t cheap either.
Discussing in class, the idea came up that if they are so good at making up such great stories, then why wouldn’t they just go into fictional writing and make a fortune that way? Glass could have still be highly touted but as a storyteller, not an up and coming plagiarist. I just don’t get how a journalist can feel ok with fabrication of a story or from just stealing word for word from someone else. My conscious would eat me alive. Also, it’s so easy not to plagiarize. You can avoid it by having another journalist read your work and make sure it’s original, you can take some piece of information and instead of copying word for word, just read the document and write what info you got from the top of your head. That way, it would be guaranteed to be your words, not somebody else’s.
Overall plagiarism is a problem but it can be so easily avoided, just don’t worry about being liked and don’t be lazy as Glass and Blair were. It just worries me because I wonder if its more prevalent problem than we know, since plagiarist lie, they could easily be covering it up from people who don’t know how to catch stolen words or a fabricated story.
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