Valley PR Blog

Dealing with plagiarism in a YouTubed world

By Angelo Fernando on February 19th, 2008 In Hype!

The Obama issue of plagiarism, in which he is accused of “borrowing” words from Massachusetts governor, brings up two interesting questions:

1. How much of what we use in communication should we attribute?
2. How fast should we come back and apologize?

The first, of course, is an academic issue. The second is a PR 101 thing.

Obama called it “too big of a deal,” and it definitely does look nit picky. But as history has shown us, plagiarism has always been quite a deal, whether you are culpable or not. From Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code) to Kaavya Viswanathan (How Opal Mehtha got kissed…) to journalists who inadvertently use material without attribution.

“Certainly plagiarism can have degrees,” notes Steve Buttry. (Attribution: it’s a quote from the American Press Institutes’s web site, in an article “When does sloppy attribution become plagiarism.”) He goes on to say, “For the most part, sloppy attribution is to plagiarism as manslaughter is to murder. It’s a serious offense but not as grave.”

That the accusation comes from the Clinton campaign, makes sense. She is running out of brand differentiation, and will turn to the department of dirty tricks –even though she has lifted lines from Obama such as “Yes we will!” that echoes his “Yes we can!”

The ‘academic’ rebuttal -explaining the circumstances of the borrowed words– is never good enough. Considering how anything you say in an election campaign can and will be mashed up, Youtubed and turned into a Swiftboat attack, this could be grave stuff. Howard Wolfson, the Communications chief for the Clinton campaign observed last year that “what may seem like a small story one day could snowball the next day. Left unchecked, false stories can take on a life of their own.”

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