单选题
Plagiarize
Last fall Susan Youngwood, a journalism instructor at St. Michael' College, phoned the offices of Columbia Journalism Review ( CJR) to pose a question. For an exercise in covering speeches, she had asked her students to listen to John F. Kennedy's inaugural address and write a story about it. The sixteen students, mostly sophomores, complied with the assignment. However, two students, acting independently, took a short cut, plagiarized New York Times' account of Kennedy's speech, and submitted the Times's words as their own.
The students received an F for the course, the maximum penalty the journalism department demands. But Youngwood wanted more. She wanted examples that told her students why plagiarism was bad, and looked to C JR for guidance. "I was curious about what happens on a professional level," she said. "If I am caught plagiarizing, what happens?"
Her question was interesting. But the answers, like so many, are not a crisp black or white. Their tones of gray mirror the inconsistency with which society treats dozens of other offenses. To be sure, most writers and editors still regard plagiarism as a journalistic evil—the profession's cardinal sin. "This is something you never, never do", says James Fallows, Washington editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Every line of work needs clear rules. If you are a soldier, you don't desert. If you are a writer, you don't steal anyone's prose. It should be the one automatic firing.
But it is not. Punishment is uneven, ranging from severe to virtually nothing even for major offenses. Some editors will keep a plagiarist on staff or will knowingly hire one if talent outweighs the wrong doing.
If convinced Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy can become a talk show host with a hand of admiring followers and Richard Nixon can go to his grave a respected elder statesman, it's hardly surprising the journalists who commit plagiarism can continue their careers at the same publication or move on to some loftier endeavor.