Why readers feel cheated when newspapers republish old stories

When it comes to journalism and value for money, self-plagiarism — an otherwise difficult concept to accept — is easy to understand. A reader who pays Sh60 — more than enough for a loaf of fresh white bread weighing 400 grammes — for a newspaper feels cheated when he finds stories that he has already read republished.

Self-plagiarism is re-using previous content without letting the reader know the material, or parts of it, have been published before. It’s cheating the reader that the material is original, new and fresh.

Here we’re not talking about background information that has been published but re-used to give context to a new and fresh article. We’re talking about re-using as new an entire article, perhaps only with a change of a headline, or parts of it that have been used before.

LEGAL IMPLICATIONS

The American Psychological Association explains how plagiarism differs from self-plagiarism: “Whereas plagiarism refers to the practice of claiming credit for the words, ideas and concepts of others, self-plagiarism refers to the practice of presenting one’s own previously published work as though it were new.”

Self-plagiarism is about misleading readers. Dishonesty is its hallmark. And readers don’t like it. Going by the complaints I get, self-plagiarism occurs more often than we would suspect.

A recent example was the re-publication, with only a change of the headline, of a Fifth Columnist opinion piece. The column is normally published on page 15 of the Sunday Nation.

Self-plagiarism is just as unethical as traditional plagiarism (the use of material by someone else without acknowledgement). Just like traditional plagiarism, self-plagiarism could also have legal implications when the writer uses material he had published in another publication.

SCHOLARLY MISCONDUCT

Why do writers and newspapers self-plagiarise? Because they think what is theirs is theirs to use over and over again as they please. That’s why self-plagiarism is difficult to accept as unethical because writers claim they have the right to re-use their work either in full or in parts as often as they wish.

So they hold that they cannot commit any plagiarism sin because they are not taking any words or ideas from someone else. But they miss the point: The reader gets cheated.

As in journalism, self-plagiarism is also a serious matter in academia. When an academic publishes a paper in a journal or presents it in a seminar as original work without letting his audience know that it has been published before, he is cheating. That is considered as scholarly misconduct.

VERY TEMPTING

For self-plagiarism to occur, it need not be a reproduction in full. If a great deal of the original work is reproduced without acknowledgement that it was contained in an earlier published article it is still self-plagiarism.

In journalism, in particular, self-plagiarism is counted in terms of the number of the exact words and phrasing re-used. In academia, it’s more to do with the re-use of the same ideas or research.

Of course, there are grey areas when some self-plagiarism may seem acceptable, especially when it’s not explicit. In journalism, however, you cross the line when you present as new something that has been published before.

There are understandable reasons why self-plagiarism occurs in journalism. The pressure to produce information in a hurry leads journalists to copy published information held in their archives.

But there are also deliberate attempts at cheating — such when an editor is facing a publication deadline and does not have new material to fill an empty space. Then it becomes very tempting to re-use some old material in the hope that the reader will not find out.

SHEER LAZINESS

Then there is the case of journalists who are paid on the basis of the number of articles they publish. The temptation for them is to recycle old stuff because it is easier to produce rather than come up with something new.

Other reasons could be sheer laziness. Journalists want to avoid the hard work of digging up new information. So they keep milking the old material.

The good news is that readers always detect self-plagiarism; so, self-plagiarists beware, you cannot hide.

Send your complaints to [email protected]. Call or text 0721 989 264