On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 6:20 AM, televisiongirl <[email protected]>wrote:
> > > On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 8:14 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > >> As I understand it Zakaria has admitted the offense and apologized for >> it, and accepted the punishment. Based on what we know I think the >> punishment is about right. I assume CNN and Time will complete a hard >> target search of all of his published and broadcast writings over the last >> X years to check for any additional instances. If this is part of a >> consistent pattern, then he probably should not be allowed to come back. >> > > > I totally disagree. Both places should fire him. This is one action in > journalism that can't be defended. Ever. He basically cut and paste > something and passed it off as his own. That gets you thrown out of > college, why wouldn't it get you thrown out of Time Magazine/CNN? This is > an insult to the journalist who put together the original story, it is an > insult to the organization paying his salary and it is an insult to the > readers who I guess he thinks are too stupid to have read the New Yorker > article. > > And the folks who are defending him on the logical that maybe an intern > wrote the column for him and did the cutting and pasting - well, Time isn't > paying that intern to write columns, they're paying him. Again, that > fraud, like his journalistic fraud, should be a firing offense. > > Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic made a plagiarism charge back in 2009: > > > http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/05/the-new-newsweek-now-with-less-reporting/18260/# > > In his commencement speech to Harvard (he gave the same one at Duke - self > plagiarism), Zakaria said "you don't need an ethics course to know what you > shouldn't do." Maybe Zakaria needs an ethics course instead. > I am not defending him - we are just having a disagreement over how serious the penalty should be for one infraction. As I noted, if this is a pattern, he should be fired. I do know for a fact that plagiarising one paragraph does not get you thrown out of college at the vast majority of colleges and universities in this country. Perhaps those with very strict Honors Codes. Typical is the process at Columbia (I just happen to be familiar with this one, I should note that fortunately my daughter never had this particular problem while in school there): http://www.college.columbia.edu/academics/integrity/disciplinaryprocess). I spend a significant fraction of my time trying to prevent plagiarism in students, trying to detect it, and then dealing with students who have engaged in it. I know of cases of course, both at my school and many others, where students have been suspended or expelled for it, but I also know of many, many cases where they have received lighter penalties. Typically I find myself on the side of people arguing for harsher penalties, so I generally am not seen as soft on this particular academic crime. Now, I am not arguing that the same standard should be applied to senior, national journalists as are used against college freshmen. Indeed, I think we should apply more stringent criteria against people in Zakaria's position. But it just is not true that plagiraism as a rule gets people thrown out of college. A lot depends on the specific circumstances. For several reasons plagiarism has become something of an epidemic (not least because it has become so easy). All the more reason for us to set and enforce stricter standards. I know some pretty hard asses when it comes to this issue, but only a very few would really argue that plagiarizing one paragraph out of (in this case, no doubt hundreds and thousands) is grounds for immediate termination. On the other hand, I have found that it is often (though not always) the case that one documented incident of plagiarism will lead to others if you keep looking. As I noted initially, I suspect Zakaria's supervisors are going through his past writings with a careful electronic comb looks for just that. If they find more cases, I suspect he will be terminated. However, given what we currently know, a one month suspension seems about right; and is a much harsher penalty than most undergraduate students would receive for including one plagiarized paragraph in a term paper. Indeed, I know a lot of college professors who would be relieved to find *only* one plagiarized paragraph in a random student paper. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
