PressEthic

Steve Buttry offered his take on the line between good coverage and plagiarism in an article for the American Press Institute. The first few paragraphs address the question of whether it's plagiarism to use someone else's story idea.

Buttry concludes that "we would have few reporters or editors left in the business if we started purging those who use the basic ideas for stories from other media. " If the New York Times scoops the Washington Post on a leaked Whitehouse scandal, the Post is definitely going to write the story up ASAP. But what about two competing dailies squabbling over news that's less exciting?

If two papers in the same community print stories about the same subject--and let's just assume it's not breaking news like an enormous fire or the mayor's embezzlement shocker--is there something wrong? If it isn't plagiarism, might it just be something we should try to avoid as producers of a marketable item?

In that vein, is there any ethical imperative to write a story that another paper in the same community has already published if it's deemed important enough? What if it's just semi important, a medium-spicy piece of news, instead of a red hot one? How would we see an editor who killed a similar story in his or her own paper just to preserve the paper's image? Would that ever happen?

Just wondering.