Even schoolchildren know that copying someone else’s work is wrong. But for professional journalists, what constitutes “copying” can apparently get a bit murky.

News commentator Fareed Zakaria drew some unwanted attention recently due to two incidents involving other writers. Zakaria was suspended by Time magazine, for which he is editor-at-large, and CNN, for which he is a commentator, after media reporters pointed out that several paragraphs in his recent Time column closely resembled the work of the history professor from New York. Harvard University, Jill Lepore, published in the New Yorker this April. The Washington Post, for which Zakaria writes a separate column, has decided not to publish it this month.

Time and CNN reinstated Zakaria yesterday. In a statement published last night by The New York Times, a Time spokeswoman said Zakaria’s offensive column was “an unintentional error and an isolated incident.” (1)

While Zakaria has apologized for pulling out of Lepore, calling it “a terrible mistake,” (1) he himself was the victim of sloppy journalism by the same newspaper that just put him on a month’s hiatus. The Post reported earlier this week that in a 2008 book, “The Post-American World,” Zakaria used a quote from Intel founder Andy Grove that another author, Clyde V. Prestowitz, gathered while doing research for his book. 2006, “Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Power East.” The Post said that Zakaria “finally acknowledged” (2) Prestowitz in an updated and expanded version of “The Post-American World” published last year.

But Zakaria’s publisher, WW Norton, noted that the original edition of Zakaria’s book gave Prestowitz credit for the Grove quote in a footnote. Zakaria himself may have forgotten that he did this, because he initially advocated not attributing citation as “standard practice” (2) for the type of book in question.

On Wednesday The Post issued an editor’s note correcting its story. “The Post should have examined copies of the books and should not have published the article,” the correction read. “We are sorry for the mistake and apologize to Fareed Zakaria.” (2)

Plagiarism is not, in and of itself, a crime, although it may be an element of another crime, such as fraud or copyright infringement. Legally, almost all plagiarism cases are civil matters in which someone who believes her work has been plagiarized seeks compensation. This is not to say that plagiarism by itself does not have, or should not, have serious consequences; plagiarism is treated with special harshness in the academic world. Today, information moves so widely and so fast that the lines between academic standards, journalistic ethics, civil law, and criminal law are blurring. But that doesn’t mean the lines aren’t there.

Plagiarism.org offers a definition of plagiarism as presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own. That is a broad definition. Presenting someone else’s work as if you were the creator of it fits anyone’s definition of plagiarism. However, more than one person can share an idea, belief, or opinion. It is the unique individual expression of that idea that is copyrighted.

Plagiarism.org is a site operated by iParadigms, Inc., a company that commercially provides anti-plagiarism services to schools and others. Not surprisingly, he takes a broad view of what constitutes plagiarism. He also, ironically, takes a broad view of what constitutes “fair use” when he compiles his own large database of student work, which he uses to find evidence of student plagiarism.

Helen Gurley Brown died this week. I have not seen her death certificate, nor have I spoken to her doctors or relatives. I know this because she has been widely reported in the press. I do not believe that she is committing an act of plagiarism by reporting this statement, or the fact that she was an influential author and magazine editor. Of course, if I generously quote her obituary from the New York Times without attribution to her, I’ll be plagiarizing, and if I simply republish that obituary, I’ll certainly have committed copyright infringement.

If President Obama gives a speech, and I read a news article about that speech and then comment on what the president said, will I be plagiarizing if I quote the speech? No. The President’s speech is freely available to all of us, including the newspaper and myself, to quote and quote.

Zakaria acknowledged that he was overstepping the mark when he quoted a passage from Lepore’s article almost verbatim. But if she had worded her own passage differently, without having personally read the book Lepore was describing, would it have been plagiarism? She wasn’t writing a book review. Would the context have mattered?

On the other hand, Prestowitz interviewed Grove and later quoted him in a book. If Zakaria had used the quote in his own work without mentioning Prestowitz or Prestowitz’s book, it would have been unfair to the readers and to Prestowitz. The original work of the first author deserves recognition, and readers, who might not otherwise know that Zakaria himself did not conduct the Grove interview, deserve to know and evaluate his sources.

In the hustle and bustle of daily life, when writers are racing to meet deadlines and synthesize stories and commentary from a multitude of sources, it’s easy to inadvertently abuse someone else’s work. It can happen in this column from time to time, though never in a way that hurts another writer financially. If we use a direct quote, we try to always include a hyperlink to the source, for example, but it is possible to forget it or insert a link that then stops working.

Plagiarism is a very strong word. It should not be ruled out due to hypertechnical failures at the appointment, nor should it be applied with too broad a brush.

But it is still an important concept. Time, CNN, The Washington Post and other outlets are right to publicly repudiate it. Left unchecked, soon we would have no way of knowing where the information came from or which news sources to trust.

Sources:

1) The New York Times: Media Decoder, “Time, CNN Reinstate Journalist After Review”

2) The Washington Post, “More Questions Raised About Fareed Zakaria’s Work”