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November 11, 2005
One Last Link on "Plagiarism" Issue
As with everything in the blogosphere, there's actually a website dedicated solely to discussion of the subject of plagiarism.
And that site has done a nice analysis of the whole Sherrod Brown issue and finds nothing unethical in Brown's actions. And has some nice commentary on why journalists had so much trouble with this story:
Journalists, however, are in a profession based upon copyright law and where their writing is literally their livelihood. They can’t grasp why someone else would allow their work to be reused without restriction. Combine that background with the media’s love for scandal and you can see why they pounced on this story before all of the facts were clear.In the end, one of the most remarkable parts of this story is that the Plain Dealer slammed Sherrod Brown's staff for sloppy writing ethics, but the paper couldn't bear to sit one day on the story for me to get back from my mini-honeymoon to get all the facts. Brown's office made a mistake and corrected it quickly, but the Plain Dealer seems incapable of admitting that it's insistence on rushing to print caused them to make mistakes.On that note, I feel that it’s my personal duty to make sure that I have all of the facts before running a story and I talk with everyone that’s available before running with a story. If I’m a few days later than everyone else, that’s fine. I’d rather have my facts straight than be first to the line.
In that way, though journalists consistently slam bloggers for the lack of ethics, saying we need to learn more from how they do business, it’s clear that journalists can learn a few things from bloggers as well.
Posted by Nathan at November 11, 2005 04:02 PM
