Our apologies to ITWeb

This week, ItnewsAfrica.com staff experienced something new to us, though not to the rest of the world: plagiarism. The journalist who wrote our top story on Tuesday, “Telkom refutes shady dealing claims,” grabbed the entire story from ITWeb and claimed it as her own.

Unfortunately, we’re now in some prestigious company. In 2004, New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned after it was discovered that he fabricated or plagiarized all or part of at least 36 articles. The New York Times apologized profusely. Now we are in the same position.

Part of the problem is that many people don’t know what plagiarism is. Sometimes journalists are unaware, or only half-aware, that to quote from published sources without attribution is a form of cheating — just as bad as copying from another student’s exam.

Many journalists now don’t consider it plagiarism to cut and paste text from different websites. What people forget is that such use of the Internet is very easy to trace.

Fortunately, the writer (Agency) of the ITWeb story didn’t get away with it. And I’ve taken steps to ensure no one else will, either.

The contract with the Centre For African Journalist has been suspended indefinitely, and I’ve established new rules that will help us prevent plagiarism in the future.

I fully agree that plagiarism is indeed an acute problem. The said story was prepared by a contracted news agency but I should have been more careful. I regret the omission on my part and offer my sincere apologies. Furthermore, I assure all of you that I will be more careful in future so as not to repeat the incident.
Please accept our heart felt and sincere apologies for this misconduct. We give you our word of honor that such an act will never be repeated from our side.
We’ve notified and apologized to ITWeb.

If you have any questions about this incident or what I intend to do about it, feel free to email me at samuel@itnewsafrica.com

Samuel Mungadze
Online Editor
ITNewsAfrica.com