Real World Example of Plagiarism

I occasionally mark posts on here with the tag “practice what you preach” because we must lead by example – as adults, as role models, as professionals. Unfortunately, not everyone follows that simple, time-tested mantra.

Here is a review for the inspirational movie “The Blind Side” published by Erica Yunghans for Dunkirk NY’s daily paper, the Observer on November 28th, 2009.

And here is another review for the same movie published about two weeks earlier by Associated Press writer Glenn Whipp.

Notice any similarities?

There are two things about this that shock me. First, that a professional writer (I’m assuming Yunghans has a degree in journalism) would have the audacity to plagiarize in the first place, and secondly that the Observer has not yet reprimanded one of their editors for committing such a blatant crime. As a professional daily publication, I would hope the Observer is conscience of its credibility and reputation.

I wanted to share these two links so that they can be passed on to your students. Use this as a real world example of plagiarism. Let the lesson be that while it’s very, very easy to steal another’s work from the Internet, it’s even easier to get caught doing so.

If you’d like to contact Erica Yunghans, she can be reached at eyunghans@observertoday.com.

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