Coping with Copyright Violations and Plagiarism in JEA Media Contests
The JEA Board passed this motion in San Francisco, based on its recommendations of how organizations handle copyright and plagiarism in their contests. The guidelines and rules will be implemented forWrite Offs in Nashville and other JEA competitions following San Francisco.

Background:
Judges at recent Write-Offs report questionable entries in terms of copyright and plagiarism materials in several competitions. In order to bring JEA guidelines in line with the ones designed jointly with AEJMC’s Scholastic Journalism Division, the Scholastic Press Rights Commission proposes the following:
Specific JEA policies/guidelines:

• Copyright
Photos, art and other such visuals plus various forms of music — on the Internet and elsewhere — are copyrighted, even if they don’t include the copyright character and the owner’s name. Getting the owner’s permission to use such materials is important unless the material qualifies as Fair Use or is in the public domain.

Simply attributing work to its creator is not the same as receiving and indicating consent to publish or broadcast. Photos, graphics and art republished with permission should be credited with “Photo used with permission of….” or a similar statement. Using “photo courtesy of” does not tell readers or judges whether you have permission. Do not use “Used with permission” unless you have permission. Audio or visuals as part of a broadcast entered for competition should include a statement certifying it is original student work, used with written permission or is believed to qualify as a fair use in copyright law.

General recommendations:
• In all JEA sanctioned activities (including but not limited to contest submissions,
on-site contests, and materials submitted for critique) participating schools will indicate
all audio and visual material they submit is fully the creation of the student/school submitting the work, or that they have secured written permission from the copyright holder to use the material in this instance, or is believed to fall under the “fair-use” portion of copyright law or is in the public domain. Such a form would also contain information about ways to avoid copyright infringement.*

Copyright action recommendation:
• All materials submitted must be accompanied by a statement from the
teacher/adviser certifying copyright compliance and avoidance of plagiarism (normally on the entry form).
• Use of apparently copyrighted materials without permission or a fair use argument as explained on the entry (e.g. photos from CNN.com or google.com or an artist’s soundtrack) will result in Disqualification from that contest.

• Plagiarism
This is not a legal issue but refers to the ethical situation of passing off someone else’s work as your own. Plagiarism might be as unintentional as failing to attribute a quote to its source or as deliberate as submitting to a student publication a movie review downloaded from the Web.
Because codes of ethics for professional and scholastic press associations alike emphasize the need for journalists to be fair and honest in their reporting, we have no room for any hints of plagiarism in media.

Plagiarism action recommendation:
• In individual category competition/critique, if a judge finds evidence of plagiarism in an entry, he or she may disqualify it if the copied material is extensive or may reduce the rating/ranking with an explanation noted if the material represents such problems as failure to attribute information. In an overall publication critique, if the staff does not find or report plagiarism but the judge finds evidence of it, the judge needs to disqualify it if the copied material is extensive. Or, the judge may reduce the rating/ranking with an explanation if the material represents such problems as failure to attribute information. Judges should be clear in this description but non-offensive with comments. Generally the discovery of plagiarism is embarrassing to both staff and adviser, and it is enough to identify it. It’s not necessary to preach. Remember, however, high quality student work with a range of expert sources does not necessarily point to plagiarism.

*** Adapted from STN statement
** Adapted from Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s “Just for Judges Handbook,” 1983 and revised periodically by Edmund Sullivan, executive director. Back