Jack Shafer at Reuters has some thoughts on how plagiarism hurts the reader:

The plagiarist defrauds readers by leading them to believe that he has come by the facts of his story first-hand–that he vouches for the accuracy of the facts and interpretations under his byline. But this is not the case. Generally, the plagiarist doesn’t know whether the copy he’s lifted has gotten the story right because he hasn’t really investigated the topic. (If he had, he could write the story himself.) In such cases he must attribute the material he borrows so that at the very least the reader can hold somebody accountable for the facts in a story.

Or to put it another way, a journalist who does original work essentially claims, this is true, according to me. The conscientious journalist who cites the work of others essentially makes the claim that this is true, according to somebody else. The plagiarist makes no such claims in his work. By having no sources of his own and failing to point to the source he stole from, he breaks the “chain of evidence” that allows readers to contest or verify facts. By doing so, he produces worthless copy that wastes the time of his readers. And that’s the crime.

I guess the underlying assumption here is that if the reader wants to contest the facts of the article, he/she would be inclined to act upon his beliefs: contacting the author, the editor of the publication, etc. It’s certainly something to think about.

And what of aggregators, like the Huffington Post? Jack Shafer, again:

Instead, I would remind the established media that the Huffington Post is trying to teach it a lesson: That a huge, previously ignored readership out there wants its news hot, quick, and tight. At any point in HuffPo’s astonishing rise, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or any dozen other media companies could have strangled it in its crib by producing an equally entertaining and edifying pop-news Web site that drew on the Associated Press wire, licensed photo banks, its own stories, and, yes, rewrites of other sites’ content.

So, if aggregators stick to fair use and cite their sources, it’s a fair game.

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(hat tip: Felix Salmon)