This has been updated to add a response from NPR at the end.
Jay Rosen does an excellent job of parsing NPR’s comical gymnastics to avoid using the P-word in its reporting on Melania Trump’s plagiarism last week.
I won’t go into the detail that Jay did, but I recommend reading Jay’s post. I’ll concentrate on one point: whether plagiarism must be intentional, as NPR reporter Sarah McCammon argued:
@Shoq@jayrosen_nyu Plagiarism has technical meaning that includes intent. I trust my audience to make up minds based on facts I lay out.
— Sarah McCammon NPR (@sarahmccammon) July 20, 2016
McCammon also argued that professional journalism standards are somehow different from academic standards:
@Shoq@jayrosen_nyu 2) everything.. I take most of my cues from journalists who have years of experience covering politics, not academics.
— Sarah McCammon NPR (@sarahmccammon) July 20, 2016
I don’t know where McCammon learned ethics, but she couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve spent decades longer in journalism than in academia, and I never recall a newsroom where intent mattered one whit. If you stole someone else’s material, that was plagiarism, period. (more…)
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