Plagiarism has been a serious issue in the world of art, literature, music, and media. It can entail social and financial consequences as well as ruin one’s reputation forever. One of the notorious cases of plagiarism is the Jason Blair scandal that happened in 2003. Jayson Blair, a New York Times reporter, has turned the newspaper’s staff and readers’ perception of journalism upside down. He had “plagiarized material from other media, fabricated information, lied about his whereabouts when on assignment, broken promises of confidentiality to sources, and otherwise generally violated some of the basic standards of reporting” (Hindman, 2005, p. 225).
The reporter’s violation of journalism’s ethical standards put New York Times in a situation where they had to either present this incident to their audience as something out of the ordinary or completely rebuild their journalistic paradigm. In his interview with Duke students in 2016, Blair opened up about his plagiarism and claimed that there was not a single concrete reason for what he did. As he stated, “it was just a perfect storm of events” (Kwai, 2016, para. 8).
Blair also recalls that he “was too arrogant”, which it almost blinded him and made him succumb to plagiarism (Kwai, 2016, para. 14). It is also known that Blair suffered from “undiagnosed bipolar disorder” as well as “severe drug and alcohol addiction”, which might have “added fuel to an up-and-down cycle of plagiarizing and fabricating” (Kwai, 2016, para. 10). However, he does not use those issues as an excuse for what he did and still feels sorry and guilty after all these years. Jayson Blair’s story proves that journalism cannot function without honesty, originality, and trust.
Another example of real-world plagiarism is Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016. It was painfully evident that Melania repeated the speech Michelle Obama gave at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 almost word for word. Later, Melania’s speechwriter Meredith McIver took responsibility for the plagiarism. Although McIver meant no harm to Melania or Michelle, this incident caused chaos in the media and received plenty of backlashes.
References
Hindman, E. B. (2005). Jayson Blair, The New York Times, and Paradigm Repair. Journal of Communication, 55(2), 225–241. Web.
Kwai, I. (2016). Why he did it: Jayson Blair opens up about his plagiarism and fabrication at the New York Times. The Reporters’ Lab. Web.