Ways to detect ‘churnalism’

These websites can detect text picked up verbatim from press releases

Churnalism is the name given to the practice of journalists plagiarising from press releases verbatim. Even in my relatively short time as a journalist I’ve come across several instances of online blogs, and even published material resorting to highly unethical journalistic practices.

Recently, developers at the Sunlight foundation have put together a massive repository of press releases and news articles that can allow readers to pinpoint whether an article is original an or a copy-paste of pre-existing work. Check out the website at: http://churnalism.sunlightfoundation.com/

Journalism isn’t the only field plagued with rampant plagiarism. The problem is particularly ripe in academia in India, where many college students, and even professors, copy material from past works rather than creating some- thing new. Luckily, the problem of plagiarism is not an insurmountable one, for any educator working to curb cheating, the Internet provides resources; http://plagiarism-detect.com/ is one that can be used to catch cases of plagiarism and discourage copying.

Both the websites allow you to enter a snippet of text or text file, then analyse it and compare it against a vast body of online material using tools such as Google to recognise captured text. Another popular tool is TinEye, which works in a manner similar to the other tools mentioned- but is designed to track copied images rather than text.