Recent scandals at US newspapers, made editors to as themselves: “Do all young colleagues know that facts are not to be fabricated and passages plagiarized?” This is a handout for young “cut and paste” generation of journalists who, sometimes, do not consider copying material from the internet without proper attribution, an issue. 

The director of Project for Excellence in Journalism, organization of US journalists concerned about the state of professional standards, names three simple steps for analyzing the dilemma: “Is it justified to break the law in order to gather information?”