Moral Issue in Journalism

Plagarism is a big deal when it comes to journalism or any kind of writing in general. Plagarism is illegal where people find it to be wrong and others do it hoping nobody will find out about it. Personally I feel it is wrong to steal other people's work and try to make it seem like it is yours. Colleges are highly watchful when it comes to plagarism, they want to make sure you are doing your own work and that you won't get into trouble with the law. When it comes to journalism, plagarizing work will get you nowhere. I do not see the point in plagarism because technology these days are incredible, and there is a very slim chance of anybody getting away with stealing another person's work and getting away with it.
At the school I attend The University of Maine, there have been a couple of classes I took where we have to turn our work into this specific website that checks the number of words that we used and it checks the whole paper no matter how many words you used for plagarism. I think that is amazing, I say that because if you look back 10 years ago the Internet was pretty underrated and it was looked over, but now it is used in everyday life for various reasons. You can find literally anything from powered searches like google, yahoo, msn, etc., just to name a few. My point is having a website that checks for plagarism instead of having someone read over it and search it is something special. As time goes on things will progress and technology will get better, who knows what will be invented next? I think that students, journalists, writers, whoever is writing to the public or just handing in work should be more aware of what they are doing because plagarism is a bigger issue than people actually think it is. If students plagarize they can get kicked out of school and a journalist can lose his job from plagarizing.
Some people say plagarizing and copyrighting are the same thing. I don't think it is the sane thing but it is the same idea, if you steal someones idea and try to use it or if you take someone's work and claim it was yours it is illegal and you will get penalized for it. It would be a terrible learning experience to realize how bad plagarizing work is, but people have been caught and in trouble for doing it. Overall, I would say be very careful when using articles or peoples work, make sure you do cite it so you won't get in trouble.


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