Editorial: Exposing a wrong
Plagiarism in publication offers learning experience
March 20, 2019
With any student-run endeavor, mistakes are bound to happen and student-journalists are not immune to this reality.
Student-journalists at this college receive the Canons of Community College Journalism as well as the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics each semester to use as a guide, but on rare occasions inaccuracies find their way into the newspaper.
Generally, mistakes like transposing letters in a name or providing the wrong classroom for an event warrant a correction in print and an apology to the misrepresented party.
However, there are times in a student-run publication when the mistake is so egregious that a correction seems like too small a gesture to right-the-wrong.
In journalism, honesty and accuracy are paramount, and at The Advocate journalism students pride themselves on being objective observers/reporters of campus events that would otherwise be ignored and forgotten.
This past week, the student-journalists on campus fell short of meeting that goal when a reporter committed the cardinal sin of plagiarizing the intellectual property of other writers when covering the drama department’s play “Dead Man’s Cell Phone.”
In his reporting, the student not only mis-characterized important aspects of the performance, he also lifted work from outside sources to enhance his level of reporting.
There was, in fact, no nudity what-so-ever in CCC’s production, although the initial review stated there had been such a scene.
In doing this, he not only tarnished the performance of the actors in the play, he also damaged the integrity of a platform, The Advocate, that has been comfortable speaking truth to power. The fact that community colleges serve as a revolving door for transitioning students, or this being the writer’s fourth story ever, is no excuse for false or misleading information to make it through the editing and production processes.
To be clear, no nudity was on display in the theater department production.
Journalism is a high pressure, deadline-oriented business, and student newsrooms are no exception.
Although there were major inconsistencies in the writer’s review when contrasted with the actual performance, the freshman writer maintains no malice was intended.
Instead, he said the drive to embellish his work with the ideas of others was not to sabotage the performance or the paper. In his words, he did it “simply to make his assignment more compelling.”
Despite his lack of malicious intent, the act is patently unacceptable. Every student who attends Contra Costa College must adhere to the Student Code of Conduct, which explicitly covers issues of academic fraud and dishonesty, among other things.
In the Code of Conduct Handbook, page 12 under Grounds for Disciplinary Action, a definition of plagiarism is provided.
It reads in part: plagiarism is defined as representing someone else’s words, idea, artistry, or data as one’s own, including copying another person’s work (including published and unpublished material, and material from the internet) without appropriate referencing.
The Advocate apologizes for this mistake and measures have been put in place to ensure this never happens again.
Former Editorial Board Member • Mar 22, 2019 at 3:09 am
Get it together you guys. You have been running this paper into the ground for a while now. Between the left-leaning stories/tweets, pompous attitudes in your personal social media which is then retweeted onto The Advocate’s, lack of depth in articles, uninspired design (banner headlines everywhere), dated illustrations and graphics, photos that have a number of technical errors and are often just boring, shoddy reporting which points fingers before asking questions and horrible headlines that are grammatically and contextually flawed, you’ve turned this paper from a once-thriving publication to something we’re afraid to list on our resumes. And now this…
I hope this incident makes you reflect a little. I hope it helps you to stop stroking your own ego. Winning awards means nothing when your newspaper has glaring flaws in it each week. You guys need to hold yourselves to a professional standard, not the standards of other student newspapers or tabloid journalists. You are not rockstars. This isn’t Vice news; take yourselves out the story and focus on facts. Work on covering the college and the district and covering them well. Do the basics and stop worrying about fame. Stop retweeting your biases. Let sources do the talking. Quoting yourself doesn’t count. You’re here to listen, observe and report, not ignore, slant and distort. Be objective.
If you want to get famous doing this or make a name for yourself, you’re in it for the wrong reason. Quit while you’re ahead and go invent the next Facebook. Journalism is an often a thankless public service, and it’s never about you. Instead it’s about the stories and the people you cover. Stop riding on Marc and David’s coattails. Stop riding on the paper’s legacy when you are actively destroying it.
A packaging-tape laminated press pass isn’t a fashion statement. Stop tweeting about what you’re doing in the newsroom. We don’t need behind-the-scenes footage of you designing another subpar page. You probably shouldn’t show the public anything before it’s published. That was a basic principle last I remember.
I don’t know if Paul isn’t critiquing the hell out of this paper anymore or if you guys simply can’t handle what he says. Put your ego aside and take what he says seriously and it’ll make you better journalists. Make improvements weekly.
I know he doesn’t like to take credit, so I’ll say this: Paul is at least 50% of the reason why the newspaper has the success that it does. The rest comes from a handful of dedicated students who each week listened to what he had to say, made very informed decisions in an objective manner and sacrificed sleep and self care to improve and maintain the newspaper’s legacy, not their own image.
When reading this try to be mature and put your pride aside. Don’t let it hurt your feelings. Or let it and show us that you’re better than this, because The Advocate staff should be.
Good luck.
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