“Lifting press releases verbatim and publishing them without attribution is a sin against readers. It is a violation of the public trust that media love to talk about. It gives the impression that the paper is not an independent voice. It calls into question every other story in the paper.”
That was the strong admonition outlined by Allan Wolper, who writes the “Ethics Corner” column for the prestigious Editor and Publisher magazine titled “Keepers of the Public Trust.”
Wolper’s comments were part of his column discussing accusations against former Kansas City Star columnist Steve Penn, who was fired by the McClatchy-owned paper in July of last year for publishing press releases verbatim in his column. The newspaper says that Penn, a Metro columnist and reporter at the paper for more than 30 years, had used PR copy at least a dozen times since 2008.
Penn is now suing the newspaper for defamation and claims that copying press releases without attribution was “widely done by various reporters at the Star.” Wolper notes that the Star’s Code of Ethics takes a strong stand against plagiarism and the Star is not likely to work out a settlement of the case.
Wolper, a professor of journalism at Rutgers University and host of the ”Conversations with Allan Wolper” NPR radio show based in New York, says if “Penn’s allegations, if proven, would seriously damage the credibility of the Star.”
Both John Landsberg at Bottom Line Communications and a frequent poster to his site, Rick Nichols, were quoted in the column. Landsberg noted that from a PR standpoint press releases are meant to be copied and that he would never complain about having his copy lifted. As a former journalist, Landsberg writes releases to make it as easy as possible for the new media to use them.
In response to a story on this site, Nichols questioned if Penn had been plagiarizing information for so long, why was he never disciplined by Star management earlier?
Wolper also asks the question, “Who blew the whistle on Penn?” Not all the answers are known about Penn’s actions or the Star’s, but Wolper says if Penn pushes his lawsuit the case will very likely be heading to court.
“Why? Because the Star will not want to settle the case. That would be seen as a tacit admission that Penn was right when he claimed that he wasn’t the only one pilfering public relations copy.”
SEVERAL FACTORS TO CONSIDER
Not being a Jackson County, Mo., resident, I obviously won’t be serving as a member of the jury in this civil case, Penn vs. McClatchy, and even if I were, I can safely say I wouldn’t be selected for the panel. So is Mr. Penn guilty of repeated acts of plagiarism and thus deserving of dismissal by The Star on the basis of the company’s policy regarding plagiarism? Well, that will be up to the jury to decide based upon the evidence that is presented to it.
During my own experience in the field I routinely edited the material that showed up on my desk. The material that was hand-delivered to the office almost always needed to be rewritten to one degree or another, and the material that came in via U.S. mail (there was no Internet back then and the dinosaurs had just left the area) needed my attention more often than not. I never had a column at my second stop, but if I had, I can’t imagine ever using someone’s news release for any part of it.
One’s column should pretty much be one’s own thoughts, and if someone else’s thoughts or comments are to be used, they should be acknowledged as such. For the record, I was not a reader of Mr. Penn’s column in The Star. I was a reader of Mike Hendricks’ column and to a lesser extent Mary Sanchez’s column.
I did have a “column” at my first stop, and it consisted exclusively of my own thoughts and observations, some of which, on rare occasion, didn’t go over too well with some of the locals. I’m quite sure my father, while with The Star, never let anything go past his eyes without making sure it was properly fit to be printed, accuracy, fairness and clarity very much being the “name of the game” with him as I strongly suggested in my poetic tribute to him, “Ode to the Iron Duke.”
Is consent to use a news release “as is” implied by the mere act of making it available to a newspaper? Perhaps. But should a reporter/copy editor or columnist simply go with the material as written and leave it at that? I wouldn’t. Now I have voiced some concern over the amount of time that apparently passed between Mr. Penn’s first alleged act of plagiarism and his dismissal. Suffice it to say that there are several factors that have to be considered here, one of which is the mechanism by which possible ethics infractions are identified.
In short, are there enough resources on-site to adequately monitor the work of The Star’s reporters and columnists? Because someone has to have enough time to go around comparing the input with the output in order to determine whether or not something’s amiss. Easier said than done in this day of reduced staffing on the editorial/news side.
A CNN employee was just flagged for borrowing material from another source and passing it off as his own, and obviously some time elapsed between the infraction and the discovery of it, but was it an excessive amount of time all things considered? I don’t know. I wish all reporters and columnists had the integrity of that honest golfer you’ve undoubtedly heard about who penalized himself a stroke for committing a rules infraction out of the view of others, but in a fallen world that’s probably asking too much.
At any rate, much is at stake here – on the one hand a man’s reputation and thus his prospects for future employment within the field of journalism, and on the other the image of a proverbial Kansas City institution with a rich history to bank on as it strives to remain “a paper for the people.”
RACIAL ISSUES
You’d think someone being paid to be a columnist at a major newspaper could write his/her own thoughts without copying a press release.
In Penn’s case, it appears the Star may have used the plagiarism charge to avoid a racial discrimination lawsuit. Who else could the Star dump without facing legal action? Shelly, Duigiud, and Sanchez won’t go down without a fight and the McClatchy folks know it
KC STAR CREDIBILITY
I recall the story in The Star about notes written by President Truman that were thought by some to be anti-Semitic. What struck me were quotes from interviews previously published in the Washington Post, but made to appear in The Star story as if Star staff had done the interviews.
When I brought this to the attention of a friend at The Star I was told that it was a legitimate practice to take stuff out of other wire copy and paste it into ones own work. If memory serves, the story did indicate that material from The Post had been used, but the phrasing of the interviews was specifically designed to give the impression that Star staff had personally done the interviews.
As for the Star’s credibility, particularly among its columnists, I’m afraid, for many of us, that’s a battle that’s long since been lost.