Filed under: Interlineal | Tags: academe, creative writing, dialogue, ethics, integrity, journalism, literature, morality, office life, pedagory, plagiarism, reportage, stress, work
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
—T. S. Eliot, “Philip Massinger”
While we may be growing old, straining under the constant pressure of deadlines, and feeling overworked—and who, in truth, does not?—we may not be as jaded as we think we are: when blogger Jaemark Tordecilla of Fire Quinito exposed the fact that multi-awarded writer Alfred “Krip” Yuson had plagiarized entire paragraphs from an article by GMA News Online sports reporter Rey Joble for a piece that was published in the current issue of Rogue Magazine, we must admit to feeling no small degree of disappointment and outrage.
We find that we can only agree with Tordecilla when he concludes his post with, “Fuck that. We deserve so much better.” That such a sentiment has to be articulated in the first place is almost as dismaying as the wrongdoing itself, of course, because Yuson is no callow wordsmith, and therefore should be no stranger to the concept of intellectual honesty. Insofar as the realm of Philippine letters can be conceived of as a game, Yuson is one of its most prominent professional players, which even the most cursory survey of his curriculum vitae would show: he is the author and/or editor of several books in different genres, has won both local and international recognition for his work, evaluates the output of other, younger writers in competitions and workshops, and is a faculty member of the Department of English at Ateneo de Manila University.
[Read more at Interlineal.]
1 Comment so far
Leave a comment
*Sigh*
This reminds me of my all-too-recent disappointment the other day. A student of mine, who had a very good track record, suddenly decided to use downloaded illustrations on her design portfolio. (While yes, she did pay for those images…haller, they are not her illustrations and she’s a visual artist! It’s almost the same as retagging. I told her, “At least give the real artist credit and don’t misrepresent yourself.”)
She said she did it because her file got corrupted and she needed something to put on her folio really quick.
*Sigh*
Comment by skysenshi 16 April 2011 @ 21:33