More on Plagiarism and Fabrication

Plagiarism is the act of stealing work whether it is writing, reporting, photography, graphics or editorial cartoons and passing it off as one’s own. Attribution is crucial. Proper credit is necessary and mandatory, but does not necessarily mean that you have not violated someone’s copyright in the material.

Plagiarism is prohibited. It is a punishable offense that could result in expulsion. In the Google age it takes just seconds to catch you stealing other people’s work. Your work is subject to verification using plagiarism-detection software. This policy also forbids lifting verbatim material from any online or printed source without crediting that original source. Even material previously published by your school/course should be attributed to the original source.

You have plagiarized if you:

• Copied text from the Web and pasted it into your story without quotation marks or citation

• Presented facts without stating where you found them

• Repeated or paraphrased words or phrases without acknowledgement

• Took someone’s unique or particularly apt phrase without acknowledgment

To avoid plagiarism:

• List the sources and contact numbers used in your reporting and use the list to double check the material in your story

• While taking notes, keep separate your own ideas, summaries of others’ ideas or exact wording from other people’s work

• Identify the sources of all exact wording, paraphrases, ideas, arguments, images and facts that you use

• Ask your instructor if you are uncertain about your use of sources

• Be prepared to describe how you got the story