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| Plagiarismchecker.com, a free online tool that checks plagiarism instances in the web |
Late last week, the University of the Philippines Law School accused a god of Padre Faura of plagiarism. It's not the first time justices are accused of such. In fact, the Judicial Bar Council even picked a justice with accounts of plagiarism as a candidate for the plum SC justice post.(Read: SC clears own member of plagiarism) Everyone plagiarized in one point in their careers. Even CEO Manny Pangilinan was lambasted for delivering plagiarized speeches since the late 1990s. (Read: MVP admits mistake in speech, offers to retire from Ateneo)
This morning, Karen Davila asked her staff about the alleged plagiarizing from charicamania.com. The article was entitled "Charice to pose sexy?" and was written by Shiela, one of our new writers. The ANC desk editors quickly washed hands and said the article was from "dotcom," not with ANC. TJ emailed us that The Professional Heckler tweeted that the said Charice article was copied without proper attribution. (See comparison of articles from Heckler)
We are sensitive to plagiarism because we try to avoid doing that. Its not good practice. Reyma, our Entertainment writer, panicked and immediately looked for the piece. Indeed, four paragraphs were lifted from the article! How did this happen?
Based on our initial investigations (Me and Reyma), the article was rewritten from an ANC script that copy-pasted the news clipping without proper sourcing. For background, most of our stories come from TV and radio. There was a time when we make our own stories, mostly investigative. But when the partnership was called off, most of abs-cbnNEWS.com's stories come from ABS-CBN, ANC, and DZMM. It's a fact.
So, it is normal for writers like me and Shiela to "clean" TV scripts and post them in the site. (We have slowly become copywriters, not writers. Grammar Nazis, not journalists.) When we checked the article again, the unnamed TV writer already deleted the copied post. (Talk about washing hands.)
Surprised, disappointed
This piece of news surprised the shit out of me. Sorry for the pedestrian and vulgar expression, but it really did. Why? Since I started in abs-cbnNEWS.com 2 years ago, we never plagiarized any article--it was always the other way around.
News sites have always plagiarized our works.
My first account of plagiarism was in 2008, when Purple published an article for Newsbreak on the voting pattern of the Supreme Court justices. The article was published in both abs-cbnNEWS.com and Newsbreak as they are media partners.
A few days after, an article on GMAnews.tv came out by one of its researchers and it plagiarized Purple's story. It was the second time this researcher committed the act but it was the first time Purple spoke out because there were 3 more paragraphs that were directly lifted from her article. The researcher implied in the article that it came from a non-government organization Newsbreak has partnered with for some time. Its a pathetic excuse if you ask me.
The point is clear: Purple wrote the article for Newsbreak and abs-cbnNEWS.com, not for that organization. The researcher should have clarified that--and she should have not copied the same sentences.
The second account happened to Thea's Cory Aquino Timeline, which was later on copied and not sourced by The Philippine Graphic with a byline attributed to a certain writer. Apparently, the researcher did not properly source the article and only copy-pasted the material, which was barely edited by the writer. Inday Varona, then EIC for The Philippine Graphic and now head of ABS-CBN's BMPM team, greatly apologized for the mistake after Ms Gemma pointed it out.
In both plagiarism instances, Ms Gemma has always been very protective of our works and if there are cases like these, she would very calmly call the attention of the editors in charge.
Another plagiarism incident happened in the business section for one of Jum's business stories. I can't remember the exact story but a violent and vulgar reader of our site emailed and lambasted us for plagiarizing from Inquirer.net because the same paragraphs were the same.
For the record, we did not plagiarize.
As it turned out, the article came from a press release. Both the writer from Inquirer.net and abs-cbnnEWS.com did not re-hash the piece. It is a known fact that newspapers just publish press releases. I've seen a couple of sites that publish PR as is. We don't.
In one of my coverages for Canon Philippines, Ira told me that she appreciate that I re-write my materials and even exert effort in providing a different angle to a story. I told her we don't publish PR materials point-blank. We do not do things that way. Ms Marites and Ms Gemma have always reminded us to properly source and re-write.
While starting with abs-cbnNEWS.com, Purple always tells me that in writing articles, journalists should NEVER follow the lede of the press releases. "We always have to find a different angle," I remember her telling me. "The PR lede is what the PR wants you to write about. It's not the story."
The fact is that online journalists are susceptible to being plagiarized and to plagiarism.
My experience
My articles did not get spared.
Earlier this year, a number of abs-cbnNEWS.com articles, particularly in the OFW, Lifestyle, and Sports sections, were plagiarized (I will post the site name once I remember it). Just how major is this? We found more than 20 of our articles in a website that caters to overseas audience--without proper attribution and minutes after we posted them!
The ABS-CBN legal team called these into the website's attention and so far, they have stopped copying from the site.
Sometimes, I see my articles being copy-pasted in forums and blogs and travel sites. Danton Remoto once copied my article but with proper attributions. One of my articles even landed in Good News Pilipinas but as I said, they properly sourced it from me.
The key is sourcing.
Online news sites are lenient. As long as entries are properly cited, we won't bring in the knife. This is the essence of the Creative Commons license: You're free to copy but properly source me.
As a writer, its fulfilling when I see my articles--and my byline--in forums of overseas Filipino workers and regional sites. These make me realize that in my own little way, I have connected people--and its enough compensation for a day of laboring it out in the field.
But I never escaped the hell of plagiarism. I'm not soot-free. While still working for Mabuhay magazine, I have unconsciously "plagiarized" the essence of a food article for our Christmas issue. I placed a source but the lay-out artist deleted the line. Hence, if the veteran food writer read my article then, she has right to claim that I copied her work.
I remember those nights after the magazine came out. The thought tormented me for months. I was trembling when I approached Cris, then my Managing Editor, of the mistake. She was very calm and told me to not panic. She doesn't find anything wrong with the piece to be honest. We waited for a letter from the writer. It never came.
Theoretically, I am plagiarism-free. But I learned a very valuable lesson: Always properly source--even if its from competition. The incident never happened to me in abs-cbnNEWS.com. In doing my Timelines, I always put the names of my sources, even if those are from competition. (They don't do the same to us, though.) My editors never questioned or asked me to change my materials because we value their work in the same way that we value ours.
We respect other writer's ideas because we are journalists with ethics.
Fierce competition, ethics
The competition has always been fiercer and sometimes nastier online. And major accounts of plagiarism appears in the online news because it is a developing medium of news reporting. It is young and has not been explored to its maximum. It is not as fixed as TV and radio and newspaper. It has no fixed rules yet; it has not been conquered.
I found a good quote from Wikipedia (yes, not the best source but a good one to boot. For one, Wiki has editors and a series of back and forth fact-checking. The hodgepodge information always differ every time you visit with additional data from primary and secondary sources.)
"The ease with which electronic text can be reproduced from online sources has lured a number of reporters into acts of plagiarism: Journalists have been caught "copying-and-pasting" articles and text from a number of
websites."
There are no definite and infinite rules in the world of online. For one, the Philippines has no law that limits the online world. Old school editors are employing the same rules they have used in print. And good lawyers have always made it around decade-old Constitutional laws and applied the rules "in context."
But despite the easy-access allure of online reporting, writers and journalists should never forget their ethics. I remember my Journalism Ethics class in college and I am led to believe then that what separates Journalism graduates from writers who did not pursue such degree is the knowledge of these rules. After all, this topic was lectured for a semester, more than 3 months, 3 hours a week.
My college professor told me once that in the field, media ethics separate Mass Communication graduates from the others. That in the marketplace of information, sugar-coated or not, ethics defines good journalism.
There's a lesson to be learned here, especially for new writers, whether in the field of journalism or not, whether Journalism graduates or not.
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