An important aspect of life is originality. Without originality, many famous singers such as Billy Joel and Taylor Swift wouldn’t be where they are today because there would be nothing to distinguish themselves from the crowd. Their songs and lyrics are protected under copyrights ensuring that they in fact stay original, and that no one claims them as their own. Just like with famous singers, journalists are protected under copyright laws both in schools and in the workforce there are precedents in place to ensure the originality of work.

The notion of originality of work is a value deeply ingrained into human nature, but the law that set it into stone was enacted in the United States in 1790, years after the Revolutionary War. The copyright law applies to all type of works that people create ranging from poems to novels, and artwork to images.

In schools, originality is important because of the fact that learning is largely assessed on what students themselves can do, not what the can take from others and claim as their own. Journalism classes in schools teach copyright laws to students to promote fair and legal writing.

Journalism teacher Laurie Hansen said, “Copyright laws are usually taught during the law unit, which focuses on the 9 unprotected forms of speech, with plagiarism being one of them. It teaches students what the precedents are and what is expected of them.”

The main focuses of copyright concerns in schools regard important papers assessing student’s learning. With the use of laptops and the internet on a regular basis is classrooms, it has become increasingly easier to plagiarize works, all it takes is to find a source and ‘copy-paste’, then claim it as original.

Regarding when copyright laws come into play throughout the school year Hansen said, ”It happens the most at the end of the school year, and usually occurs because a student is under stress or in panic to turn something in, but for the most part I have trust in my students that they will write to the best of their ability.” To distinguish, problems only arise because a student has claimed someone else’s work to be their own, but if the work is cited somewhere in the paper it can be accepted. Also, when using a source for information paraphrasing text is stressed, to make the work more original.

Although Hansen puts a significant amount of trust in her students not to plagiarize, there are still occurrences where work is taken from the internet or another student and claimed as original, and there are measures put in place in class to identify plagiarized work.

Some of the measures put into place described by Hansen, “We use Turnitin.com to identify when a student tries to plagiarize work, and it works by looking at various sites on the internet to check if any of the phrases or paragraphs used by the student match exactly with writings on the internet.” Having measures like this put into place does a great deal to ensure the originality of work, and lowers the amount of people who try to plagiarize significantly.

Copyright laws play an essential role in journalism and newspaper, to ensure quality and original work. Copyright protects reporters writing for news, by protecting their work- but not protecting the rights to a story, because multiple news networks can write the same story, but from different angles. In teaching journalism especially to ensure that students are learning properly, and not plagiarizing the work of others. English Teacher Kim Thompson sums it up well, “it is essential to get the kids to understand the scope of plagiarism.”