"P-word" consequences

Plagiarism. It's bad. It's unethical. We are reminded of it daily in the classroom. We are constantly reminded to cite our sources correctly.

We know this happens in schools everywhere; somebody you know has probably been caught plagiarizing a work, whether it was accidental or not.

This act is not contained within a campus, there are several incidents of plagiarism within media. Those reporters who are caught in the act are quickly dealt with, commonly immediately terminated, their reputations irreconcilably tainted.

Roy Peter Clark, an expert on plagiarism, believes that the punishment for an act of plagiarism should depend on the severity of the crime and that the "p-word" should be used less frequently to define pure laziness or sloppiness:

"Because the p-word is the scarlet letter of the literary world, because it is
associated with a rogues gallery of writers and reporters, it should be
reserved, in my opinion, for the most serious cases of malpractice.To use the
term to cover too many sins may be a kind of ethical problem unto itself.
You can be called a lazy or sloppy reporter and recover. To be called a
plagiarist, and fired for it, has a deeper meaning and darker consequences."

Take for example, Clark says, Professor Emeritus John C. Merrill. An article he had written contained work from a student reporter, which was placed within quotations, he merely failed to attribute it correctly.

"...We may have a case here where even a famous journalism professor and a
fine newspaper editor are confused about what constitutes plagiarism. Join the
club, boys, I'm right there with ya.
I've studied Merrill's column and the student story from which he appropriated quotes. There are two things I do not like about his column:

He should have dropped a quick attribution into the column ("as
reported in The Maneater"). I'm not suggesting that not doing so was an
ethical lapse, only that doing so would have shown respect to the student and
the publication.

The column itself was a dinosaur cliché, the easiest kind of attack by
a cranky old prof against the political correctness of gender studies. But
that's not unethical either."

Merrill was labeled a plagiarist and fired. However, Clark disagrees. The editor of the Missourian "has no more right to call Merrill's actions plagiarism, than a prosecutor has the right to refer to reckless endangerment as murder in the first degree." He continues:

"It is a far greater ethical transgression, I believe, to create a
consequence -- excommunication and humiliation -- out of all
proportion to the violation. If it were up to me, I would have printed a
clarification, attributing the quotes to the student reporter. I would
have called Merrill and informed him that using quotes that way, even in an
opinion column, violates the standards of the Missourian, and that if he did not
want to adhere to such standards, he should pitch his column somewhere
else.

What we are left with instead is a stain on a scholar whose work over
decades has been judged original, and a good editor who looks more than a little
like those Puritans who pinned a scarlet 'A' on ladies suspected of adultery."

From this case, it is clear the definition of plagiarism is fuzzy; no one is sure of what to do with Merrill's mistake, honest or not. So they do what every other media outlet would do - terminate the reporter.

Ethical? I'm not sure. Give me a clear cut definition of the "p-word" and this argument would be a lot easier.