fair use and plagiarism: redfined?

A good piece from salon.com by Emma Mustich on the ethics of fair use -- and the ways in which the internet -- and our own brains -- have muddied the waters. The post features the opinions of several professions in fields -- from music to fashion to journalism -- where copying the words or ideas of others is often an issueBottom line: when in doubt, don't.

Here's a taste:

Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University

The core of what plagiarism is remains undented by the digital publishing environment. Copying out the words of others and passing them off as your own is still what it always was; wholesale plagiarism is a sacking offense in most newsrooms. It is of course much easier to detect now, thanks to Google text search, but beyond the clear example of screeds of lifted text or images passed off as your own, the issue of who is a plagiarist is also a little more porous at the edges than it was.

In digital journalism, one of the most valuable functions you can perform is to aggregate and link to the content produced by others. We do however also see the problems of “over aggregation,” where credit and sourcing is not clear enough, links are missing, attribution is fuzzy and where the idea of “fair use” is enormously stretched. Is this plagiarism or enthusiastic aggregation?

The increased ease of detection of plagiarism is offset against the temptation to “over aggregate.” As for the broader context of taking ideas and presenting them as new, well, that happens all the time, sometimes knowingly and sometimes accidentally. It is an area where journalism is still thrashing out standards and best practice; there is a sort of arms race of transparency going on in digital news filtering at the moment – who did what first and when. I can’t help feeling that the idea of a plagiarism algorithm is not too far away.

the sun comes up: not news...

The sun doesn't come up? news.

Here's the question that came up in class yesterday:
Why don't journalists ever write about the good news?

The student went on to talk about friends who avoid the news as if it were swine flu because, you know, it's all just too depressing. It's not just college kids. I have heard similar sentiments from friends my age who should know better.

So why do we cover stuff that's perceived as bad news? Do we have an obligation to appease squeamish readers? And what constitutes "good news" when it comes to news?

Just asking. bk

we've been dissed

Badly. Really, people don't like us. At least that's the message from the latest Pew Research Center for People and the Press. Read the full reporte here.

Among the rock-bottom lows: the public's view of press accuracy has hit a two-decade low; well over half the respondents consider the news biased; and not even a quarter of the respondents consider the news to be independent of powerful influences. From the report:

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.

Is this something a little bit of media literacy can cure? I have a feeling a lot of folks have a hard time distinguishing between commentary and reporting. And if they spend their news dime listening to those right-wing hooligans who bloviate on radio and TV, well, no wonder they consider the news to be biased. And in fact, among those who had the worst impression of the press itself, the majority were Fox News watchers.

Not surprising. Ever since Fox news went on the air pitching itself as "fair and balanced", a lot of people (smart enough to know that the slogan was just a clever name) assumed that every other news source tilted right or left as well, and went looking for it. And as political talk radio has proliferated, I can't help wondering if a good portion of the news audience only listens to he who preaches to the choir. Which also tends to taint your view of journalism. If, in fact, you consider that journalism.

Interestingly, runner-ups who saw bias in the news were those who got their news predominantly from the internet. Again, is it because they can't distinguish real reporting that has been vetted, that is based on objective news-gathering methods, from blogs and opinion essays? Hard to say. My definition of objective journalism is this: No horse in the race. And it has to do with methods, not whatever appears in the finished story. For a reporter -- overworked, underpaid and, see above, clearly unloved -- to purposely tank a story to fit an agenda is like some overpaid tall guy in the NBA purposely missing a layup.

All of which points to another reason why maybe media literacy should be a requisite in college, if not high school. You need to know how much work, and integrity (there, I said it) goes into producing a news story. bk

the ballad of the investigative reporter

Once you get past the fact that Ben Affleck is apparently a smart guy -- and that Rachel Maddow appears to be flirting with him -- you'll find some some great chat on the meaning of journalism in this interview from Maddow's show on MSNBC last night. Pay special attention to her fierce intro: hooray!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

josh wolf: real journalist

Josh Wolf, the anarchist-slash- blogger-slash-videographer who did some time in the local pokey for contempt of court for refusing to turn over his videotapes of a G-8 protest in San Francisco's Mission district, has resurfaced. He is now doing time as a reporter for a small daily newspaper in Palo Alto, Calif. What's most interesting to me is not Wolf's reinvention as a mainstream reporter, but the question his case brings up about the evolving definition of journalism -- and what falls under 1st amendment protections -- especially wrt the ever-expanding blog world.

Is there a defining line? Tell me where.... bk

a touch of grey

To steal a line from an op-ed on journalism ethics I wrote for the CSM a few years back: "when it comes to reporting, there are some things journalists should always do, some things they should never do, but most of the day-to-day decisions reside in a vast landscape of gray."

Here's a good example of that thorny terrain: In a letter to his readers today, Sioux City Journal editor Mitch Pugh discusses the decision to run a photo of a grieving mother, caught in a moment of raw emotion by the paper's videographer, on page one of last tuesday's paper. I'm not sure I agree with his decision, but I like his analysis of the process.

You also have to wonder if the ability to add video to news sites adds a whole new layer of complexity to the ethical decision-making process. Just because you can, should you?

On a lighter note, if a certain song is on mental replay right now due to the title of this post, go here. Tie-dye optional. bk

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