4: Plagiarism

This week's article from Poynter about plagiarism and attribution (http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/20374/great-journalists-credit-others/) didn't resonate with me until I read this article a few hours later: http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/01/tom-petty-awarded-songwriting-royalties-for-sam-smiths-stay-with-me/

Essentially, Sam Smith is going to pay 12.5% royalties and provide songwriter credit to Tom Petty because the chorus in Smith's "Stay With Me" is almost identical to "I Won't Back Down" by Petty.

On a side note, my good friend Ben wrote a song called "Folk Singer" that we have recorded and played a number of times.  After a year or so, Ben realized that he had unintentionally lifted a portion of the melody from an indie song he'd heard before.  He called me after hearing that song again, and said that we couldn't play the song again until he fixed the melody.  It was an unconscious mistake, and he refused to even practice the song until he came up with a solution.

Obviously, intentional plagiarism is a different matter.  Another article we read discussed how several companies wrongfully tweeted about Joe Paterno's death before he actually died.  One of the major companies tweeted the news without verifying it or providing attribution to the organization that broke the story.

Does journalism fall into the same category as music?  Does unintentional/unconscious copying occur, and how do we fix it?  Does it matter that people will not notice these similarities on most occasions?