Confronting the Culture

"The culprit behind the recurring clusters of plagiarism and fabrication scandals isn’t just irresponsible youth or a few bad apples or the temptations of the Internet," writes Lori Robertson, managing editor of the American Journalism Review. "It may be the newsroom culture itself. ... Many news organizations are demanding more bang for fewer bucks, as budgets are trimmed, training and mentoring are nixed, time for long, heady talks on attribution is nonexistent." And journalism has become "a profession that is viewed more and more like a business and not—as it so lovingly was post-Watergate—as a vital part of a functioning democracy."