Open Door: The Problems of Plagiarism

Some long-established practices in journalism run contrary to the idea of openness and accountability that the Guardian is trying to pursue. One of these is taking material from other publi-cations and running it or incorporating it, often little altered, with no attribution.

The practice is something which it is perhaps fanciful to think of eradicating completely from the fiercely competitive British press. One of my old papers, the Northampton Mercury - founded 1720 - once had a reputation across the north of England for its compre hensive news coverage. A horse rider carried copies of the London newspapers to Northampton ahead of the main delivery coach. The plums were picked and transferred to the waiting columns of the Mercury and the paper was printed in time to catch the coach for distribution, with the other already rifled papers, further north.

A degree of this still goes on, usually in the hours of night when newsdesks have seen the early editions of their rivals. I was reminded of this a few days ago when I went to the person whose byline appeared on a report to put a query raised by a reader about some figures quoted in it. "I can't help you there. Those figures were not in the piece I filed. They were written in by the desk." In fact, they had been taken from the early edition of another newspaper but mistranscribed, making the correction, for the few who knew, perhaps a bit more embarrassing than usual.

Another journalist told me he had recently quoted a senior military figure, attributing his remarks to a published source, but this was struck out on the grounds of space and unwarranted puffery for the general's organisation. This left the impression that the journalist had spoken directly to the general, which he had not. This cannot be right, can it?

Not all that long ago, in a story requiring great sensitivity, we carried long quotations from another person to whom the journalist had not spoken directly. The presentation, withholding from readers the source of the substantial quotations - again another newspaper - left the clear impression that the person had spoken to the Guardian.

I'll quote again from a column of mine about plagiarism (July 1, 2000) in which I referred to a useful American publication, Media Law by Ralph L Holsinger (second edition, McGraw-Hill), where he says: "Every reporter borrows from the work of other reporters. Reporters working on newspapers in areas served by more than one paper are asked by their editors to follow up stories clipped from competing publications... It's part of the game, and as long as a reporter doesn't take too much, too often, all is well."

Some discretion is allowed but it is often exercised against the interests of the reader, whose right to know where the stuff is coming from we are supposed to recognise. The substantial unattributed quotations in the last example clearly should have been attributed to their source. The failure to do that brought the following sharp memo from the editor of the Guardian:

"It transpired that the quotes had been lifted from a local newspaper and repeated with no indication that the person concerned had not been speaking to the Guardian.

"This is completely unacceptable. At the very minimum it raises questions of plagiarism. Much more concerning is the issue of trust. If a reader reads something in direct quotation marks in the Guardian he or she is entitled to believe that the reporter can vouch for the accuracy of the quote.

"Copying quotes out of other newspapers without any form of attribution is simply bad journalism, never mind legally risky. If... you are going to repeat quotes then always say where they came from. It won't be much help in a legal action, but at least the reader can evaluate the reliability of the source."

The editor was repeating, in other words, what is said in the Guardian's editorial code under the heading of Plagiarism: "Staff must not reproduce other people's material without attribution. The source of published material obtained from another organisation should be acknowledged including quotes taken from other newspaper sources..."

These editorial guidelines, although quite young, were published - on our website too - before any of the examples I have cited occurred. As I said at the beginning we are, in a way, fighting the habits of more than a lifetime. The editorial code is meant to exert pressure in favour of the reader. The decisions that are taken in the circumstances I have described are easier and more likely to be right when the relationship with the reader is kept in mind.

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