After reading about the three different cases of recent plagiarism in the professional world, it became quickly evident that not all forms of plagiarism are committed in the same fashion, and not all carry the same weight. There are countless stories where a high school or college student will copy off a friends paper, buy a paper online, or even take information straight off a source and claim it as their own. What makes you raise an eyebrow is when these acts seep into the professional world and effect some well respected journalists.

In the Zakariah case, the CNN journalist used a passage in his journal almost identical to that of another article previously published. His mistake is obviously that he didn’t give the previous journalist, Jill Leopore credit for the work. Zakariah promptly apologized immediately after this story broke and took full responsibility. The quick apology and admittance to guilt in this case does have an effect on the story to me. It lightens the act and assures the reader that this is something that won’t happen again.

In the Anderson case, we have an author that didn’t properly cite himself while copying Wikipedia material in his book. I find this case to be a little more troublesome because Anderson claims to not have known how to properly cite Wikipedia and therefore didn’t feel the need to do so. Also, according to the article, it appeared as the quotes used in the book were more close paraphrasing verging on verbatim copying. I find this case to be a little more alarming than the Zakariah case in great part because of the attempted cover up.

The last case was an instance where an author, Jonah Lehrer, fabricated Bob Marley quotes in his book, then fabricated a string of lies in attempt to cover his ass. I find this case to be the most first and foremost alarming because Lehner did not only post information he didn’t rightfully cite, he completely made up a quote of his subject. Legally, that seems more serious than the other two plagiarism cases alone. To make matters worse, Leher started a string of lies once confronted about the incident and it wasn’t until he dug himself into a meteoric sized hole until he apologized and took responsibility. To me this is by a long shot the most serious of the three incidents and it would completely shock me if this guy was ever given a chance again to publish a book.