Plagiarism is okay, says DNA executive editor in an apology for a column

R. Jagannathan, executive editor of DNA, writing in the newspaper today on the Edit Page, has the temerity to suggest that there is an upside to plagiarism.

First, he feels sorry for Aroon Purie, who copied two paragraphs from an article in Slate and used them in his "Letter from the Editor" column in India Today. Jagannathan writes: "I'm sure Aroon Purie, editor-in-chief of India Today, is embarrassed that his lines on Rajinikanth were 'lifted' from Grady Hendrix's article in Slate.com."

Aroon Purie? Embarrassed? How is Jagannathan "sure" about this? And is embarrassment all Purie should feel as the editor-in-chief of the country's biggest magazine-publishing group who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar?

Second, and this is where I almost lost it, Jagannathan writes: "Grady [the author of the Slate article] protests too much. He is the one true beneficiary in all this, for plagiarism is the ultimate form of flattery. When you quote somebody's work and attribute it, you are merely acknowledging the source. But when you lift a passage out of someone's myriad outpourings and pass it off as your own, you are paying him the ultimate tribute. You find the lines so good that you wished you had written it yourself."

I couldn't believe what I was reading. Was this DNA's idea of a joke? Surely, this is a sarcastic piece, I thought. But no, as I continued reading I realised Jagannathan is serious.

Though he has the good sense to begin the very next paragraph, the third, by asserting that "this is not an invitation to Indians to copy someone else's intellectual output with a clear conscience. We Indians have to learn to respect copyright, as we are too blasé about stealing", he ruins it all by writing in the same paragraph that "plagiarism does have real (positive) spinoffs: it speeds up the spread of knowledge at the cost of slightly retarding innovation".

Huh?

After the paid news and private treaties programmes initiated by the country's largest media company, plagiarism is the biggest danger to the future of journalism, especially in India where, as Jagannathan admits, "we are too blasé about stealing".

So do we want young journalists and would-be journalists to think that plagiarism is okay because it is "the ultimate form of flattery" and it has "real (positive) spinoffs"?

Shame on you, Jagannathan, for trying to suggest that stealing is okay and then making things worse by telling readers that that is how "our pharma and software prowess was established". I am no expert on our pharma or software prowess, but as a journalist with more than 25 years in the profession, I am appalled that a columnist with a national newspaper is hinting that plagiarism is the way to go if we want better journalists and newspapers.

Shame on DNA, too, for publishing this drivel.

• Contrast Jagannathan's article with the one written by Aditya Sinha, the editor-in-chief of The New Indian Express, who was the first media honcho to comment on the Purie scandal. An excerpt:

The buck stops at the top... and it will take time for Purie to live down this stupid-mistake-by-stupider-underlings. But that’s good, in a way, if it occasions some introspection and forces some self-regulation. India Today has been charged with plagiarism too many times lately; just ask Canada-based blogger Niranjana Iyer or Anshuman Rane of the UK digiterati. It’s not a coincidence that these victims were foreign-based and that their work appeared online. It seems Indian journalists think that they are immune given a blogger’s distance from an Indian court and the fact the cyber-universe is so vast that the readership of a particular online article is often limited. No apologies have ever been offered to either of these two, by the way, and the culprits roam free to plagiarise again. Similarly, the Times of India film critic, Nikhat Kazmi, lifted from the legendary Roger Ebert for her review of Shark Tale, yet she remains at work for India’s largest media company.

Read the no-punches-pulled column here: "Plagiarise and be damned".

• DNA readers have also pilloried Jagannathan for this particular column. Here are two comments from the newspaper's website:

padma srihari from Bangalore

Mr.J,
I am appalled by your moral ambivalence. Aroon Purie STOLE. You are supporting him because you do the same. Filthy little cheats!

Posted on: Nov 4, 2010 7:42 IST

Bubloo Mookerjee from Ahmedabad

Hilarious, isn't it? At the end of an article extolling the virtues of copying is a line saying copyright permission mandatory to republish this article!

Posted on: Nov 5, 2010 22:26 IST

• EXTERNAL READING: Outlook editor Krishna Prasad has also published a blog post on Jagannathan's column: ‘Plagiarists speed up the spread of knowledge’.