Ethics at a tender age
Everybody know who this guy is?
Jayson Blair
Problem is… some of my students didn’t. I spoke his name in class and the 18- and 19-year-olds stared at me blankly.
This. Is. Bad.
It got worse when I found three instances of blatant copy-and-paste plagiarism in papers handed in by some of my upperclassmen.
These are the cardinal sins of our industry, folks. And students are matriculating to become young professionals, not knowing what Jayson Blair did. A study published earlier this year in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator found that an alarmingly high percentage of college journalism majors are OK with some types of plagiarism. Linda Shipley of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln surveyed more than 200 students, and all but 4% of them said they had never turned in a classmate for cheating (a wider category that includes plagiarism) — but 66% of the students said they had witnessed cheating of some sort.
So how do we create a culture of ethics? How do we make sure that in addition to knowing Woodward and Bernstein and the value of shoeleather reporting, students know the sins of Blair and how his actions stained media credibilty, the currency of our craft?
Is there a generation gap here that we need to address? Would mentoring help? As our focus shifts to getting jobs in a tough time for journalists, are we losing valuable ground on ethics issues?
Tags: ethics, generation j, jayson blair, journalism, plagiarism, spj
October 14th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Troubling. Very troubling indeed. Aside from an introductory class named “Journalism 101 – Don’t be Jayson Blair,” it seems the lack of awareness is somewhat unavoidable. That’s an unfortunate circumstance of young college students.
So, of course, as you note – the educator’s job is to bridge the gap. How? (Keep in mind I’m an armchair quarterback…not an educator).
1) Giant posters of Blair in every j-school with the words “Don’t be this guy.” (that’s a partial joke)
2) Absolute no tolerance policies on cheating and plagiarism and similar ethical violations in college journalism (both in the classroom and in student media). If they’re expected to live by strict standards in the “real world,” give them the message early on: Violating ethical standards, especially plagiarizing, will get you severely punished!
3) Make ethics a more central and stressed part of the curriculum. Sure, every j-school grad will have at least one course. But is that enough? How rigorous is the course? Why not one course per semester and culminates in a major graduation requirement? If trust and ethical standards are the pillars upon which fair journalism is based (and necessary for the public to trust us) then why isn’t ethics one of the primary focuses in all accredited journalism curricula?
October 14th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Those students were 12 or 13 when Jayson Blair became infamous. Why would we expect them to know who he was? Now, if they graduate with a journalism degree and don’t know who he was, then we have problems …
And yes, we should assume college students need to be taught that plagiarism is wrong because they live in a culture where cutting and pasting passes for research. Two handouts from workshops I developed dealing with attribution may be helpful:
http://www.notrain-nogain.org/Train/Res/Ethics/Eattrib.asp
http://www.notrain-nogain.org/Train/Res/Ethics/Echeat.asp
October 14th, 2009 at 11:46 am
I would agree that college journalism places too little emphasis on ethics. For the upper division journalism courses (editing, features…etc), a quarter of the course should deal with ethical violations, education and how to prevent them.
October 15th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Steve,
Thanks for the links to the training documents. They are easily modified to suit students.
Perhaps we should encourage more young journalists to take part in such discussions. This adds emphasis to the importance of ethics.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
I’m the managing editor for a college newspaper and I definitely think there’s not enough focus on ethics or plagiarism. While every journalism major at my university has to take a specialized journalism ethics course in order to graduate (and my university has an honor code), it’s appalling how many of my classmates still don’t understand the concepts of cheating/cutting corners. Sometimes it seems like none of them realize how cheating will come back to bite them not just in school but when they venture into the “real world.” For instance, I recently caught two of my staff writers plagiarizing and/or refusing to fact check their information. I fired one and put the other on probation without pay. I’m convinced that neither one fully understood the severity of their actions – they blew it off like it was no big deal and still have high hopes of making it as professional writers someday.
October 29th, 2009 at 7:01 am
“…they blew it off like it was no big deal and still have high hopes of making it as professional writers someday.”
Because, frankly, Aubra, if your students are any good, they probably will. As much as we say plagiarism is a “cardinal sin” in our business (and it is), the fact of the matter is there are enough big names out there who made gigantic mistakes and still make a living as journalists or writers. Nina Totenberg? Yes. Rick Bragg? Yes. Molly Ivins? Wrote pretty much until the day she died. For each of the ones who got away with it, you have a few who are publicly vilified for it (Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke, Patricia Smith) and probably hundreds who are simply fired without their transgressions ever seeing the light of day.
I think the internet is helping keep people in check. Why would you plagiarize when your exact words and phrases can be searched with Google? And you’d better believe that there are people out there who’d love to catch a journalist in a lie. That doesn’t do much for the credibility of our industry as a whole, but it does help bust those who need to be called on the carpet.