You often hear about plagiarism within academic circles. Students, professors and researchers are all subject to plagiarism rules and checks. Plagiarism is a form of cheating. Universities commonly subject work to online plagiarism checkers to ensure authenticity. Changing a few words in order to pass a plagiarism checker is not permissible. In contrast, paraphrasing is acceptable and indeed essential within academia. Authors will reword others' ideas, which they then expand on when writing a paper. This is fine as long as others' theories or ideas are properly cited.
Plagiarism in journalism is unethical and can severely damage the reputation of the publication concerned. In 2003, "New York Times" journalist Jayson Blair was found to have plagiarized stories and made up quotations. He and an editor resigned over the scandal that made headlines worldwide. Journalists often will paraphrase other journalists' work. This is acceptable when the information is common knowledge, i.e available from numerous sources. But when a particular piece of information that is not common knowledge and did not originate from the same news outlet, is added to a story, for example in a breaking news situation, it is ethical practice to cite the competing outlet within the text.
Endless sources of information are now only a mouse click away. In this sense, the Internet has made the act of plagiarism easier than ever before. It has also made finding information to paraphrase for research purposes easier. Some websites now employ methods to try and discourage plagiarism, for example banning right mouse clicks on their content, so you can't simply copy and paste large chunks of material.
In the academic world, plagiarism is a serious matter that brings academic censure to those caught. At a high school level, an offender may merely fail the assignment, but at college level, authorities could decide to expel the student from the course or even the university itself. For a professional academic or professor, an allegation of plagiarism, even if not proved, can be career-ending. Plagiarism can attract civil suits, such as in the case of plagiarized music or literature. According to website plagiarism.org, plagiarism can also be considered a felony under certain state and federal laws. For example, if a plagiarist copies and earns more than $2,500 from copyrighted material, she may face up to $250,000 in fines and up to 10 years in jail.
It is worth noting that plagiarism or uncited paraphrasing of someone else's ideas may be an unintentional act of which the writer is unaware. Writers of all types including columnists, journalists, authors and students should thus take extra care with research methods to ensure someone else's words don't end up in their copy. The Columbia Journalism Review's "Counter-Plagiarism Handbook" advises writers to keep research separate from writing, not to copy-and-paste other people's words into a draft until ready to quote from it and to use a different font/ color for research files, so others' words or ideas are instantly recognizable and can be paraphrased and cited or quoted as required.