What’s Your Excuse?

Zakaria is a highly respected journalist who has managed to do what few journalists can muster but deeply aspire to – build a brand. He is on Twitter and facebook, and gives speeches and

writes books in addition to his journalistic duties. He may be affiliated with _Time, Newsweek, CNN_. Yet he stands apart – an expert in his own right. He plagiarised a historian

inadvertently, it appears. After a thorough review of his work, _Time, CNN_ and others reinstated Zakaria when they could not find more than that single episode of plagiarism. Jonah Lehrer,

who resigned from _The New Yorker_, legendary for its fact-checking process, was successfully building a brand. I am not familiar with his work, but many describe him as that rare breed of

journalist who can write and speak about science simply. Funnily enough, aside from copying his own works and handing it out to numerous editors for publication in various avenues, Lehrer

simply made up quotes from Bob Dylan. The two scandals have prompted endless analysis, and because the timing of the scandalsare so close together, many have conflated the violations of

Zakaria and Lehrer. In my mind the two are separate. Zakaria claims that he confused his notes and in doing so failed to correctly attribute the work of another. Lehrer, on the other hand,

had a pattern of self-plagiarism, topped by pure fabrication. _New York Times_’ David Carr wrote an astute analysis of Lehrer’s failure, attributing both his crime and being caught to the

insatiable quality of the Web. In a column entitled ‘Journalists Dancing on the Edge of Truth’, Carr writes: _The self-cleaning tendencies of the Web got credit for unearthing the misconduct

in the first place. Then again, the Web’s ferocious appetite for content – you are only as visible as your last post, as Clay Shirky recently said to me – probably had something to do with

why Mr. Lehrer tried to feed the beast with retreads and half-baked work._ Read this part again – “You are only as visible as your last post”.That has special meaning to reporters/bloggers

like me. In my current job, I am required to have a minimum of 12 posts per week. And for many bloggers, that is actually a low number.So, in trying to feed the beast, our processes become

sloppy. And maybe the brain stops functioning the way it should. Now, I don’t fear that I will turn into Lehrer, Jayson Blair or even Stephen Glass (for those who haven’t seen the movie

_Shattered Glass_, I highly recommend it).But an error, similar though not exactly like the one Zakaria has claimed to have succumbed to, has recently plagued me. In June 2011, I had the

unhappy task of writing a profile about someone who declined an interview. The subject was Omar Ishrak, who at the time was named as the new CEO of Medtronic, a huge, Fortune 500 company

that makes pacemakers and other medical devices.I began combing the Web and ended up writing an aggregated post. One of the descriptions that I referred to was drawn from a book that Jack

Welch, famed CEO of General Electric wrote called,_Jack: Straight from the Gut_. Ishrak was hired by Welch to run GE’s non-descript ultrasound equipment business and ended up making it

obscenely profitable and a market leader. Welch described Ishrak as someone who had “ultrasound running through his veins.” And that is exactly how I wrote the story. Except that a few

months later I completely forgot about Welch. I was in advanced pregnancy when Ishrak granted me an exclusive interview. I wrote four stories following the interview and one portrayed my

impressions of the high-profile CEO. In closing I joked about how ultrasound runs in his veins, because as I was leaving Ishrak asked me about the baby and whether I had done all the

ultrasounds and taken the pictures. I wrote that phrase – ultrasound runs in his veins – without a single quotation mark, without any reference to Mr. Jack Welch.My brain must have liked the

phrase so much when I first encountered it that it blocked out any reference to an outside source. A month or so ago, I discovered this myself while doing some research on stories I had

written. Of course, I went into our publishing tool and added the attribution. The peril of inadvertent plagiarism is real. And all the more likely in today’s world, given the constant need

to refer to the plethora of information being generated on the Web, combined with the volume requirements.Plagiarism is a human reality that has endured through the centuries. It affects the

mighty – Zakaria – and the petty – yours truly. The only defence is eternal vigilance.