Plagiarism is horrible.

At first I was having trouble deciding what to write about for this week’s blog entry. So I decided to instead work on my speech for Communication 321 class – Persuasive Speaking. For our first round of speeches we’re giving statement of fact speeches. I chose to do the topic of obesity in America, specifically to children. So I spent almost two hours doing research and finding good articles to support this statement. Then I started to plan out my speech. But I wasn’t entirely sure what my teacher wanted the outline to look like, so to make sure I went to his website and checked his sample for the first round of speeches. And what do you know, but the sample was on childhood obesity. And the research that I had found was almost identical to what his sample was. So after all that work I did, I had to start over because I did not want my teacher to think I had cheated and copied his example.

So this experience I had reminded me of last week’s lecture topic on plagiarism. And it made me think that I have no idea how those men could plagiarize their stories. Just knowing that I had the same topic as my teacher’s sample made me freak out that I would get in trouble. So, I just do not understand how these men could live with themselves knowing what they did and on purpose.

I then decided to do a Google search on “journalism and plagiarism” and I found an interesting article by the Poynter Institute.

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=70511

I especially thought that his advice was good about what an editor is supposed to do to make sure that people do not plagiarize. I thought number 9 – 12 were great. They all say to pray. And although this may seem a little ridiculous, I think it is true. Because an editor can only do so much to catch and try to prevent plagiarism and then the rest is up to the reporters to do the right thing.

I just wish that people were more honest and didn’t steal other people’s work. Because it’s just a lie and I don’t see how people who do take others work can live with themselves and continuously do it over and over.

This also made me think about the issue of which is worse fakes or plagiarizing something. And I still am not sure because I think both are horrible. However, I think if I have to make a decision then I would say that plagiarism is worse. I think because it is truly stealing and that is first of all legally wrong. While faking something, is just creating new ideas and is not necessarily against the law. I also think that plagiarizing is morally wrong and people should just not take other people's ideas, use them for their own, and then benefit from those stolen ideas.

In addition, I also think it is ridiculous how people like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass are making a lot of money based on their stories which have been turned into movies. However, I think it is good that what they did has been revealed and they are being made examples for what not to do: plagiarize. People really should learn from their mistakes and not repeat them by making things up and pretending to report on them.