What else is there to say about plagiarism? Everyone in a university environment hears a lot about it, from mentions on syllabi, to the unfortunate editorials that follow incidents of plagiarism in the school newspaper.
Well, here we are again, with nothing new to say. So let’s start with the facts.
On May 10, it came to the Mustang Daily’s attention that movie columnist Alex Petrosian had been passing off other movie reviewers’, namely Roger Ebert’s, work as his own. While it is unclear how much Petrosian took, a glance at his work for the past year-and-a-half will reveal uncanny similarities with Ebert’s in dozens of columns.
After several members of the staff read them, the Mustang Daily gave the columns of question, along with copies of Ebert’s columns for the same movies to three independent sources, in order to determine if plagiarism had transpired. Each reviewer reported it had. The independent input of three different parties leaves no doubt in our minds that plagiarism occurred. While there are some sections of articles that are undeniably lifted from other reviewer’s work, some mirror the same spirit and tone of Ebert’s review.
“I think, probably, the biggest underlying issue here is that your reviewer is reading other people’s work before sitting down to write his/her own,” associate professor Doug Swanson said. “That’s a problem. If I read your work on a particular subject and then sit down to write my own — how can I possibly be independent? Your work is ‘in my head’ and it’s going to affect the written copy I create.”
In discussions with the staff and in his editorial, Petrosian claims any similarities between his and Ebert’s columns were unintentional. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. The burden of triple-checking work and avoiding easy mistakes lies with the writer and secondly, the editors. While editors trust that their writers produce original work, it shouldn’t be assumed. It shouldn’t take a reader to point out a writer’s mistakes. Even with no bad intentions, plagiarism reflects a shortcoming on the part of the writer and the editor.
So this is our apology for our shortcoming.
The Mustang Daily staff is embarrassed and disappointed. We take pride in publishing a nationally-recognized daily collegiate newspaper that holds itself to high ethical standards elicited by the Society of Professional Journalists. We are doing our best to ensure an incident of this nature doesn’t happen again through random plagiarism checks and more vigilant editing.
Petrosian will no longer write for the Mustang Daily nor will his work remain on the website. Instead, this editorial will be posted as an apology to our readers, a reminder that plagiarism happens and that writers and editors should carefully review each story before publishing.
the mustang daily staff should be embarrassed for writing shitty articles, they all literally suck. please write an article addressing this issue.
Hey! What Mr. Petrosian did sounds sort of like what most academics — i.e. our professors — do when they publish “their own” work in scholarly journals, etc. Because academics are forced to whore themselves out and publish as often as possible in order to reap the benefits of various incentives, in turn assuaging what amounts to be a conditioned crippled ego, most scholarly publications amount to little more than a reworded regurgitation of what the author has previously read, with tidbits of original thinking sparsely interlaced within. But hey, that’s how we learn, right? The only difference between Mr. Petrosian’s work and those of professionals is that the professionals provide proper citations. So in the future, Mr. Petrosian, properly cite your work and you will be greeted with much “success.”
It’s genuinely silly that the Mustang Daily’s current editors think that all thats necessary here is marginal improvements in the form of random plagiarism checks and “more vigilant” editing.
What we need are new editors who aren’t going to let their film columnist blatantly rip off the most well read film critic in the world. Exactly how long did Alex Petrosian steal before he was caught (by a reader, no less)? a year and a half? And how many “random plagiarism checks” were there while he was on staff?
If there were several random plagiarism checks, why wasn’t he caught? and why are these random checks going to start working now?
If there were no random plagiarism checks, why do the editors deserve a second chance?
I’m pretty sure “A nationally-recognized daily collegiate newspaper that holds itself to high ethical standards elicited by the Society of Professional Journalists” can do better than this.
Oh, haha, sorry. That was supposed to read “most widely read” and not “most well read,” haha.
I think the Daily ought to apologize for letting the sex columnist publish a column this week suggesting that pulling out and the “rhythm method” even remotely resemble “birth control”.
The fact that it took a year and a half for anyone to catch that Alex was copying one of the most read film critics in the country sort of suggests that his column was not being read much. I never even noticed that there was a regular movie column until this “scandal” pointed it out to me, but maybe I’m just unobservant (like the rest of the editorial staff, apparently).
The Mustang Daily hired him because of how well he wrote, not the contents of his work. They should be embarrassed to steep as low as to slandering a student of their own, all due to the “assumptions” of some kid who didn’t win ASB president and decided to bring everybody else who was succeeding down. As a college student, we are ALL guilty of looking elsewhere, that is why they have these awesome little plagiarism check sites-turnitin.com-the Mustang Daily (being oh so prestigious) should have used one. The Mustang Daily is just scared of getting caught up in another scandal, so without even thinking before speaking (or more like writing) they went on a power trip and decided to ruin other people’s reputations. Get a grip-you should be ashamed, your apology shouldn’t be to the school (who is most likely pissed off that the establishment is not even standing behind a PAYING student), your apology should be to Mr. Petrosian-for accusing him of something that has not been proven. If he did plagiarize, why isn’t anybody suing, I sure as hell would be. We all know how schools work, you pay one person here, promote another there, and you got the entire staff swearing the sky is green when we all know it’s really blue. I read both works-SO THEY DID THE SAME MOVIES-who DIDN’T do a review on Avatar?!?!?!Don’t accuse if you can’t prove it. At the end of the day, I would have just taken the articles down, there was no need for any “apology” like this-and this was more like a bashing article then apology (you would think “sophisticated” writers would know better..)People do think alike-and people do have the same ideas. He volunteered to work for this paper-he wasn’t even getting paid AND he got his name dragged through the mud for nothing. If I were Mr. Petrosian, I would be suing the Mustang Daily.
There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t even know where to begin with you – and I choose not to. All I will say is this simple question: Can you read?