Oh, you told the truth…up to a point. But a lie of omission is still a lie.
Picard to Wesley, Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The First Duty”
There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton
When I was an instructor, I held all of my students accountable for properly giving credit to others for their words and ideas. In the language of academia, we called it citing your sources. The theft of another’s work is wrong and must be avoided at all costs. Discussing another’s ideas is encouraged, even required, but one must give credit to the person you learned from. The crime of plagiarism is treated seriously by the university and carries severe consequences. I have seen students fail a course and in one instance, experience a delay in graduation, because they failed to properly credit the work of others.
My children heard many growls of frustration as I discovered plagiarism while I was grading papers. They endured stories of me hunting down the evidence to prove my case, often aided by the students themselves in their poorly executed efforts to disguise the theft. When my children had to use images from the internet for school projects, the house rule was that they had to include the URL where they found the image. Kindergartners may not understand plagiarism, but they understand it is wrong to steal. Including a URL was our way of showing the teachers we were being honest about using pictures someone else had made and shared.
I have spent some time lately updating my LinkedIn profile and refreshing all of the elements, including my banner photograph. I started searching for some images shared under the Creative Commons license and landed on a page called Unsplash which had a photograph that really caught my eye. A small bundle of flowers lay on a handwritten letter alongside a fountain pen. Purple is my favorite color and I adore fountain pens, though they have not cured my poor penmanship. The photograph was perfect for my needs and I immediately uploaded it to my profile. I was stymied, however, in my attempts to give the photographer, Debby Hudson, credit for her work. It seems that LinkedIn does not provide users with a way to do that. When I write an article, I can put the attribution for the images in the caption. I see no such option for the banner image and I find that both disappointing and frustrating.
My search for a solution made me think a bit more about our culture of worship for those in the spotlight. The celebrities are the ones front and center, showered with glory and accolades. The sports star, the movie star, the politician, the CEO are the names we know and pay attention to. The teams that make their successful are often nameless to anyone outside that workplace. Why are we so adverse to giving them credit? Why does our society worship the star and ignore the team?
I don’t have answers, but I do have an antidote: give credit as often as you can. When you are in the spotlight, hold up a mirror. Accept praise for your contribution and immediately redirect it to include the others who made the work possible. By sharing the light, we make the world brighter.
