EYE ON ETHICS

PJR Reports consulted three journalism educators on whether the Times and Tribune reporters were guilty of plagiarism. They were shown copies of all the involved stories with the reporters’ bylines removed.All three said Quito and Olaes had indeed plagiarized.

In the Times case, there was even an attempt to hide the plagiarism, said Danilo Arao, an assistant journalism professor at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. The Times cited another person instead of the PCIJ source, but used the same quote. There should have been an effort to credit PCIJ every time the report used information in its story, and not just in one portion, he said. As a result, the impression readers got was that the information in the Times report had been gathered by the reporter.

“There was a conscious effort to deceive,” Arao said. Or at the very least, to get away with plagiarism.

Meanwhile, Olaes had clearly lifted paragraphs from Malaya. “It’s a clear case of plagiarism,” Arao said. Both Lito Zulueta and John Paul Galang agreed that both Quito and Olaes plagiarized. The Times report clearly contained “passages, ideas, quotations, and paraphrases that came from an article put online two years ago,” said Zulueta, who teaches journalism and literature at the University of Santo Tomas (UST). He is also lifestyle sub-editor for the Inquirer and is the adviser of The Varsitarian, the UST student paper.

Journalists are not prevented from using information, ideas, and quotes under fair use, Zulueta said, but they should not be excused from citing sources.

Galang, a former Manila Bulletin reporter who currently teaches journalism ethics at Far Eastern University, explained why he believes the Tribune had clearly copied Malaya’s report. “It’s highly unlikely that two persons had come up with similar words,” Galang said, unless the report is a wire report, or the two rival papers had agreed to do a collaborative report.