In Defense of Copying
Columnist and professional opinionator Fareed Zakaria has been suspended from Time magazine and CNN for plagiarizing Jill Lepore's New Yorker article on guns. But I have to wonder if this isn't just an excuse. Zakaria is not accused of copying it word-for-word. He read her article and then recited some of the contents, but with the wording slightly changed. The thing of it is that the particular section I saw was in itself a recitation of facts from someone else's work. (Specifically Adam Winkler's “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America".)
So is this really that bad? Ms. Lepore obviously does not own the rights to the facts in her article. Nor can she claim that her words have been used -- just her paragraph structure. Yes, Zakaria is being paid to produce original work, but he is also required to stick to the facts. And there are only so many ways that facts can be recited.
This hits close to home because I am writing a Civil War blog. And since I wasn't there, I have no choice but to depend on source material, in other words, works written by other people. And obviously I can't make the Battle of Gettysburg turn out differently than it actually did. Where is the line between plagiarizing and building on the works of others?
So is this really that bad? Ms. Lepore obviously does not own the rights to the facts in her article. Nor can she claim that her words have been used -- just her paragraph structure. Yes, Zakaria is being paid to produce original work, but he is also required to stick to the facts. And there are only so many ways that facts can be recited.
This hits close to home because I am writing a Civil War blog. And since I wasn't there, I have no choice but to depend on source material, in other words, works written by other people. And obviously I can't make the Battle of Gettysburg turn out differently than it actually did. Where is the line between plagiarizing and building on the works of others?