Plagiarism playing by the rules: in the academic world, in music and even in church, what constitutes plagiarism is under new scrutiny after journalism's wake-up call

Black Issues Book Review, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Sam Fulwood, III

Anyone who thinks that a young black reporter wrote the book on plagiarism does not know much history. Other writers, performers and artists--even well-known preachers--who blend of the arts of writing, storytelling and dramatic performance, have faced accusations of plagiarism.

In essence, plagiarism is borrowing someone else's words and passing them off as one's own, whether in print, speech or performance. Journalists, scholars and other professional writers understand the rules, written and unwritten. Any original work should be just that. A writer can't change a few words and phrases in another's work or rearrange their order and use them without giving credit or citing the original works, ideas or facts as a source.

On nearly every college campus, professors include warnings to students about the use of computer generated term papers and online libraries to complete writing assignments and research papers.

For example, a study conducted by the Center for Academic Integrity found that almost 80 percent of college students admit to cheating at least once. Another survey, this one a national study published in Education Week, found that 54 percent of students admitted to plagiarizing from the Internet; 74 percent admitted that at least once during the past school year they had engaged in "serious" cheating; and 47 percent believe their teachers sometimes choose to ignore students who are cheating.

In the wake of the recent scandals at newspapers and other publications, some academics are taking a look at whether students understand what constitutes academic plagiarism, especially in journalism and mass communication classes. Dean David M. Rubin of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University says he has altered the curriculum to include material on the most recent incidents, including the New York Times multipage explanation of how Jayson Blair, a young reporter, came to plagiarize or fabricate numerous stories.

"Our hope is to let the students learn about it and learn from it as a way of warning them what not to do," he says.

Harry Amana, who teaches journalism at North Carolina A&T State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says his course syllabus includes repeated references to plagiarism so that students can't plead ignorance about what is and what is not acceptable. At both of those universities, he says, there are written guidelines in the student handbooks and on campus Web sites. In the example at the University of North Carolina, "plagiarism is a serious violation of the Honor Code. Because it is a form of academic cheating, students found guilty of plagiarism usually receive the normal sanction of suspension for one semester and a grade of 'F' in the course."

What constitutes plagiarism, or lifting other's writing, may be confused in some students' minds today because of the ease of copying and pasting from the Internet, especially in a generation used to "sampling" or downloading music that belongs to others under copyright.

Christina Morgan, who recently graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio, says she was aware of classmates who cheated in school and got away with it.

"It wasn't a big deal to them," she says. "They knew how to do it in such a way as to not draw attention to themselves. Often, the professors don't have a clue because they don't really understand what's out there (on the Web)."

Alarmed by such brazen behavior, some professors and colleges are trying to fight back. Their need for stronger detection tools is spawning a new industry of cheat catchers, as educators pay private, proprietary firms for help. Ironically, an Internet search on Google, where many of the academic plagiarists begin their searches, discovered Turnitin.com, an online service that assists high-school teachers and college-level instructors learn how to detect and prevent students who use the Internet to falsify written assignments.

Accusations of plagiarism in academic writing, fiction and sermons have plagued prominent African American figures. Consider, for example, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alex Haley, whose 1976 novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, captured the imagination of Americans--black and white--unlike any other slavery story before it. This fictionalized account traced the author's heritage back to a specific village in Africa. Roots was hailed upon its publication, coinciding with the nation's yearlong bicentennial celebration, as an historical document.

Owing to the tremendous and enduring popularity of Roots, many people mistakenly still refer to Haley as an academic or historian. He was neither. In fact, Haley was accused of lifting some descriptions and scenes in Roots from other published works, including Margaret Walker's novel Jubilee and Harold Courlander's novel The African. A lawsuit by Walker against Haley alleging plagiarism was dismissed in court, but Haley confessed that "various materials from The African found their way into Roots" and later agreed to pay Courlander a $650,000 settlement.