ESWN translates an excellent Xinhua commentary by Yuan Bixia (原碧霞), entitled Plagiarism: How News Has Become 'True Lies' (抄袭盛行 新闻怎成"真实的谎言"). Yuan notes the rise of a journalistic culture which thrives on rampant copying from the Internet. While some people (usually the victims of plagiarism) are upset, the journalistic establishment in China seems to shrug it off as business as usual. From the translation:
... Since plagiarism is easy and convenient, and the resulting product is an "in-depth" report, the effort is small and the results are huge. By comparison, those who refuse to plagiarize are the weak ones in media. Today, some of them have begun to "learn" from their colleagues and mutual plagiarism is an open secret in the media.I have to say that # 1 is fairly common in the English-speaking word, especially when product releases are involve. It's lazy and its wrong, but it happens, and editors don't seem to really care. #2 and #3 situations are rare, but they happen seemingly every week, and, if uncovered, usually result in someone losing his or her job.
"These days, there are some young people who just entered the business. They don't know how to gather news and they are too lazy to do it. When I pressed them for the reports, they just get on the Internet to 'dig'. There is no point in criticizing them, because this is hopeless. What are we going to do?" A certain friend who is in charge of strategic planning at a newspaper told his reporter.
Within the media industry, the "popular" types of plagiarism are classified as follows:
1. The most fair and open plagiarism: Copy the "press releases." When you attend various types of press conferences, you receive press releases. You do not dig for the news at the conference. You just sign your name and release the article.
2. The most notorious plagiarism: Copy from your peers. When you see a news item published for another place, you change the time and place to turn it into your local news.
3. The most undetectable plagiarism: Copy from a book. This type of situation appears in certain service-related news. Some reporters buy books about health and medicine and then change the contents of those books into news stories gathered by them.
4. The most realistic plagiarism: Copy from reportage and investigative reports. Someone else might have spent years to write an investigative report, but the reporter extracts one portion and presents it as original work.
5. The most "subtle" plagiarism: Hire someone to gather the news and sign your own name. Presently, in some places, the assigned reporters may hire temporary workers to gather the news and then sign their own names for publication.
# 4 is rare, probably because of the increased risk of getting caught, but it should be noted that it's quite common for high-profile investigative pieces to spawn follow-up or additional investigation by other media outlets, at least in the United States.
As for #5, five years ago I would have said "impossible" -- mainly because the idea of a reporter actually having full-time help was unlikely -- but have since found that "stringer abuse" does happen, as evidenced by the 2003 case involving Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times correspondent Rick Bragg.
The professional shame associated with plagiarism here, not to mention potential legal repurcussions, makes it a less common problem in the United States. But, like China, the ease of copying from the Internet makes it a tempting target for journalists who don't care, or have other motives.
Unfortunately, bad habits, once learned, are hard to abandon. As long as the Internet makes massive amounts of news available in an easy-to-copy format, plagiarism will continue to plague the profession in China and, to a lesser degree, in the United States.
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