Teachers now have to fight the Internet
Teachers now have to fight the Internet
By: Bill Mead
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Posted by editor Mon Aug 28, 2006 16:17:48 PDT
Viewed 600 times
1 response 0 comments Steal from one source, it's plagiarism; steal from ten sources, it's research.
—Journalists' inside joke
As if schoolteachers didn't have enough problems with students copying other students' work, now teachers have to keep an eye on the Internet to nab classroom copycats red-handed.
When computers first became available to youngsters, a phenomenon soon arose. Kids who normally couldn't write a complete sentence or spell their last names correctly were handing in assignments that seemed to have been written by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. That's because they were written by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and had been lifted word-for-word from some website.
Then some nerdy genius was able to write software that teachers can use to pinpoint wisdom that their students have stolen from cyberspace. I'm told it is used mostly by college instructors. Don't ask me how it works.
I just hope they don't use this same software to convict newspaper writers like me. The Internet has replaced the public library as a primary source of information for today's reporters, including me. There is so much good information on the 'Net these days that it's way too tempting to snatch it whole and put it under my own byline.
This is a new ethical challenge for the journalistic profession as a whole. Fortunately, I don't have any ethics but I could still get in trouble when I “borrow” stuff that other people have written. What if my editor gets her hands on the teachers' software and learns what a phony I am? She might even go on to uncover the outright lies and made-up stuff that pepper my stories.
This opens up an interesting moral issue. Which is worse, swiping well-written factual material or concocting yarns out of whole cloth? Don't kid yourself. These are options chosen by some big-time reporters, as you know from what has gone on recently at the New York Times and other prestigious media. Check with Dan Rather for more details.
If you think I'm pulling your leg about all this, let me give you a for-instance. A few weeks ago my editor got into a bind and had to call on me to write some material for a supplement about wind energy. What I know about wind energy wouldn't wet the bottom of a thimble. As usual I cranked up my computer and went to the Internet where there is tons of information about wind energy, information so good that it would be a worse crime to re-write it than to just grab it and run.
So I pulled an old newsman's trick. Instead of my name in the byline, I put “Staff Report” at the top of the stuff I had stolen. That way, I can look innocent and deny everything if the guy who wrote it in the first place tries to make a fuss.
If my boss calls me on the carpet for blowing the whistle in this way I'll swear I was drunk when I wrote this column. It's the only honorable thing an upstanding journalist can do.
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