News writing and columns are vulnerable to plagiarism risks if you are not careful

Kuala Lumpur, March 7 2007: News writing can be fraught with hazards, especially when sourcing information, quotes or opinions from published sources.

Veteran Boston Globe sports reporter Ron Borges can attest to that. According to a Reuters report dated March 6 2007 on Yahoo, Borges has been suspended by his paper for two months without pay because he allegedly plagiarized parts of a football column from another publication
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Apparently, Borges “football notes” column on March 4 2007 about a Seattle Seahawks player contained material from a February 25 story by Mike Sando of The News Tribune of Tacoma, Washington, Reuters said.

The report says that Borges subscribes to an online exchange that NFL writers use to share information, as background, for their respective columns. Borges seemingly used language posted to the exchange without crediting Sando.

Borges, a four-time Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year and 24-year veteran, apparently didn’t know Sando had used the material in his column. Despite Borges including a rider in his column that reads “material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report”, it was not enough to stop him from getting into trouble.

News writing is 90 per cent what other people do or say, so journalists are leaving themselves open to libel and plagiarism risks with almost every sentence they write.

When learning how to like a journalist, this should be one of the first things that is hammered into the heads of rookie writers. Always attribute. Changing words around is not enough. If you are using someone else’s idea, you simply must tell your readers whose idea it is. 

This is especially true when you are writing a column, in which readers are expecting to read about your opinions and concerns.

One cannot say what was going through Borges’ mind. Notes exchanges are helpful for journalists and the Internet has helped make their jobs a lot easier. I truly feel for Borges. It was probably an innocent mistake with no malice intended. More than losing two months pay, his reputation has taken a battering, all for just a few lines of background information.

I hope he bounces back. More than that, I hope journalists, whether they are rookies or experienced pros, do not pass judgment on Borges. Instead, they should learn from this incident, look at their own writing and make sure they stay alert at all times when sourcing from published material. Plagiarism can mask itself very well indeed.