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Sotto’s scot-free (and why it’s our fault)
Yes plagiarism might seem small and petty, it can seem like an academic thing, but it certainly isn’t moot, and I don’t know that making fun of Tito Sotto, in whatever way, will mean people taking this seriously. If at all, it reveals how we have inadvertently clouded the conversation on plagiarism with the fact of social class, i.e., pang-edukado naman ang issue na ‘yan, pang-kayo-kayo lang. Because really, who has spent time and effort talking about Sotto in light of this mistake? Who has started laughing at him, thinking jokes as weapons, too? Tayo-tayo nga. We say it has nothing to do with what Sotto was saying, with the fact that he is anti-RH, it’s the fact that he stole what he said. But that isn’t true. We were listening to Sotto the way we were because he is anti-RH, we googled his speech because we are on the other side of the RH Bill fence. I hate him as much as the next person, but hitting him premised on what he was saying is like a teacher judging a student based on what he believes, and not on how he is defending this belief. What Sotto says is despicable, the lengths he goes to defend his anti-RH stand hurts and offends me as woman. His plagiarism, as far as I’m concerned, is proof of how he has twisted the truth in many ways, including the appeal to emotion, including about when the pill was first introduced to the public ((Stuart-Santiago, “sotto self-destructs #RH bill”). Plagiarizing is his most obvious in-your-face deception, thus far. But we are keeping this form of stealing, this kind of lying, from weighing as heavily as it should. We are failing at making this a lesson in plagiarism, as it has ended up becoming an us versus them: us who believe in intellectual honesty in whatever space, them who will vote for Sotto because we are laughing at him and he is one them. You know the current discussion has failed because it has allowed for some of those who work in the Philippine Senate, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago included, to say that it’s ok, it’s done all the time, especially when bills need to be re-filed and take from the previous versions of it (Yamsuan, “Plagiarism common practice, OK in Senate, says Sotto’s aide”). But bills are different from speeches like Sotto’s, delivered to convince the rest of the Senate, and the public, to see things his way. Sotto’s speech was a personal opinion. And in pushing for his opinion, Sotto was taking someone’s words and making it his. The thing is, he doesn’t deny that they took from someone else. Before it was revealed that the speech was copied from various sources, Sotto had said "Yung sinasabi nila plinagiarize na blogger daw pareho kami ng pinagkunan. Yun ngang libro ni Natasha Campbell ang kino-quote namin, binanggit ko pa yun, kung blinog nila yun, oh so? Anong masama dun?" Then his chief of staff Hector Villacorta admitted that they didn’t use the book itself: Villacorta said Sotto’s researchers initially tried searching for the website of US author Natasha Campbell-McBride but could not open it. The researchers resorted instead to Sarah Pope’s blog, believing her quotes of Campbell-McBride’s work was verbatim. “We cannot draw up a speech that says ‘according to this blogger who quoted this author.’ It’s simply too awkward. Besides, what would the Senate President say?” Villacorta said. “A whole gamut of ‘according to’ would also not make the speech credible. This is the Senate we are talking about,” he added. (Yamsuan) This hits on two questions beyond plagiarism, and about doing credible research. One, Sotto’s office did not look at the primary source, which was the book of Natasha Campbell-McBride’s; two, they took from a secondary source, the blog of Sarah Pope, believing her paraphrasing of the original text correct. The former is unacceptable, because if Sotto’s speechwriters were students in any university they would be told to find that book before quoting Campbell-McBride to have said anything. The latter is borne of a lack of understanding about what the difference is between quoting verbatim and a paraphrase. Pope introduces that paragraph that Sotto plagiarized by mentioning her source (Pope, Sarah “How ‘the Pill’ Can Harm Your Future Child’s Health), and then doesn’t put quotation marks on anything and doesn’t indent a section at any point. The quotes and indention would’ve indicated that it was a direct quote, and without it we presume that it is a paraphrase, i.e., Pope putting what she read in her own words. What are the chances that we will all paraphrase the same primary source in the same way? I go back to the commenter kbc, in a stuartsantiago blog entry circa August 2009. Here kbc quotes James Falkofske: @kbc [my note: of course, this is for the English language, the stats may be different for Filipino, but you get the point] Is It Plagiarism? Brief analysis of probability. According to the site WordOrigins.Org (http://www.wordorigins.org/number.htm), there are about 20,000 English words that are used by educated persons. Accidentally Matching 5 Words is “Hitting the Lottery” Twice and then a Hole-In-One. In creating an original sentence, and assuming that the writer is free to choose any of the 20,000 words and use these words in any order, a series of 5 words that exactly match another source would have the “random chance” probability of (1/20000) x (1/20000) x (1/20000) x (1/20000) x (1/20000) or 1 chance in 3,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one chance in 3.2 sexillion). (stuartsantiago.com, August 13 2009, comments thread. Original source via Falkofske, “Is it plagiarism? Brief Analysis of Probability”) One chance in 3.2 sexillion. Now that Villacorta has admitted to copying Pope’s words, because they didn’t have access to the original book (which by the way, they can easily buy over at Amazon, for $25 dollars plus delivery, kayang-kaya ng pork barrel), they defend this sin by looking down on blogging and bloggers, in the process revealing they don’t know the first thing about online sources and copyright. According to Villacorta, “You have a blog, it is meant to be shared, it’s in the public domain, so it’s not plagiarism” (Chua, “Sotto aide takes blame but denies plagiarism, says blogs meant to be shared”). Of course he is wrong, as all of this is just so wrong, really. But just so it’s clear. The public domain is not a place. A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner. (U.S. Copyright Office) At the bottom of Pope’s page is ©Austus Foods LCC. Beneath the title of this article is my name, at the bottom of this page is ©GMA Network Inc. This could as well appear in my blog, where copyright would be mine, as I do share copyright of this piece with GMA. These things tell you who owns these words, even as it is a gathering of many other people’s words. It is the only way we can claim the words we write, the opinions that we have, even as others might think the same way. Easy access to information via blogs and the internet doesn’t mean a free for all. It means read my blog, use my words, tell the world those are mine. And as with sharing food, without asking for permission or reverting back to the original owners, all you are doing is stealing. And this is what plagiarism is: it is stealing. Pagnanakaw. To now admit that you stole words because you thought they were verbatim, is to reveal that your writers do not know what they are doing, that they aren’t assessing sources properly. Yes, that is a lesson contingent to the documention of sources: you need to know that you’re quoting from someone who’s supporting your argument, yes? Because otherwise you’re not just stealing their words, you’re also misusing those same words. Sarah’s apology to the women of the Philippines (Pope, “On Plagiarism, The Pill and Presumptuousness”) tells you that plagiarizing her is not just your sin here. It is that you misused her as a source, too. That is where your deception goes on overdrive, dear Senator Sotto. And it would be funny, I would just laugh at you and your chief of staff Villacorta’s obvious cluelessness here, were it not so grave a sin. Were you not digging yourself a deeper grave, and taking your fans with you in the process, as you look down on writing and research in general, bloggers and online writers, in particular. It bares repeating that plagiarism is a form of stealing, and stealing is what you admit to in this case. It needs to be said that I wish you would teach your fans a lesson in admitting to one’s faults, and take command responsibility for this instance of plagiarism instead of pointing a finger at the sources you took such liberties at misusing. Instead, you are teaching your followers to view writing in a certain way, and to look down on bloggers. The consequences are scary. Which is why I’m not laughing at you, sir. And I agree that these netizens who have decided to take a stand against you through #hashtags and laughter, do not matter in the long run – you will win elections again and again, yes? So will your brother if you make him run. I know that no matter how we imagine that there are plenty of us on Twitter and Facebook, that in the greater scheme of things, you will use all of us to point out that you are being cyberbullied by this social class that is noisy about you online. After all, you will be talking to that fan base of yours that will not care much for us either, because they’d rather be watching you or Willie Revillame. You must be thinking: hashtag niyo ang lelang niyong panot. Note: hyperlinking has been avoided in this piece to highlight how easy it is to actually document one’s sources. All the sources here are online. Works Cited U.S. Copyright Office. “Definitions: What is the public domain?” No date. U.S. Copyright Office. Web. 24 August 2012.
