It May Not Be Plagiarism, but It’s a Rip-Off : Television: John Corcoran’s breezy Channel 9 piece on drive-in theaters was actually broadcast first on CNN.

TV news fibs in so many ways.

If it’s not the playacting of ratings sweeps series, it’s the false promise, made to hold viewers through a commercial, that titillating stories are “coming up next.” If it’s not on-camera reporters taking bows for the work of off-camera field producers, it’s newscasts blending electronic press kits in with staff-gathered news.

These are relatively small deceptions.

As the following episode shows, however, the more you perpetuate the small lie, the easier it is to step up to the big one.

It was last Thursday and featured on KCAL Channel 9’s “Prime 9 News” at 10 p.m. was a breezy story lamenting the decline of that great American institution, the drive-in movie. The tape package was introduced live from the studio and given a voice-over narration by KCAL’s hammy entertainment reporter, John Corcoran.

Afterward, anchors Larry Carroll and Kate Sullivan seemed pleased with Corcoran’s story.

One problem. A small one, really. . . .

It wasn’t Corcoran’s story. It was Gloria Hillard’s story.

“I was angry,” said Hillard, a CNN reporter covering entertainment from the network’s Los Angeles bureau. “One of the most sacred tenets of journalism is that you don’t take someone else’s words and pass them on as your own.”

Not sacred to everyone, obviously.

Hillard’s story aired July 4 on CNN, a witty, charming enterprise piece that was shaped in such a personal way that it bore her signature as a reporter. “I guess Corcoran saw my piece, liked it and decided to make it his own,” Hillard said.

The story is small, but the principle big, with the terrible P-word looming. “I would be highly offended to be called a plagiarist,” Corcoran said later.

Like slapping your own dust jacket on someone else’s book, Corcoran gave the drive-in story a brief live intro and close from the anchor desk. Otherwise, the story presented as his on KCAL was virtually a twin of Hillard’s--but about a minute shorter.

Gone were a few fleeting sound bites, including Hillard’s stand-up in the parking lot of a Culver City drive-in--couldn’t have that if it was Corcoran’s piece. Gone also was Hillard’s voice. But her written words remained with only slight changes, spoken instead by Corcoran as if they were his.

How is it that Hillard’s two-minute 40-second story--not only her footage and interviews but also her 226-word script--were at Corcoran’s disposal?

Along with KTLA Channel 5 and KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles and many other independent stations throughout the nation, KCAL has a reciprocal agreement with CNN for mutual use of stories. Wire services such as the Associated Press have similar agreements with their clients.

In another way that deceit is built into the system, stations don’t even have to credit CNN, who thus becomes a party to the deception.

“They are free to use our material in any way they want,” said CNN’s Los Angeles bureau chief, David Farmer. He said that he’d heard of nothing akin to the Hillard-Corcoran matter previously happening in Los Angeles. “But I feel it must happen quite a bit around the country,” he added. “We facilitate it by sending out scripts.”

There surely are newspapers, too, that attach their own reporters’ bylines to wire stories--but no newspapers with integrity.

Hillard said she knew CNN had agreements with stations for exchanging footage, but didn’t know that these agreements provided for verbatim use of scripts without attribution.

Legal it may be.

Ethical it isn’t.

Corcoran sounded almost shocked that anyone would think that his usurping Hillard’s words without giving credit was either misleading or unethical. “I don’t have any problem with it ethics-wise,” Corcoran said. “Ninety-nine percent of my stuff I write. I didn’t rewrite that one, and part of the reason is that I’m moving my family into a new house.” Well, as long as there’s a valid reason.

Corcoran noted that using words written by others without attribution “is standard procedure throughout television. When anchors read copy written for them by others,” he added, “they don’t say, ‘written by so-and-so.’ ”

Because CNN allows its scripts to be used “word-for-word,” Corcoran insisted, his voice-over with Hillard’s words was not plagiarism. Besides, he added, “I put my own inflections on a story.”

Words by Hillard, inflections by Corcoran.

“I’m not the kind of guy who’s gonna go out and steal anybody’s work,” Corcoran said. “Trust me.”

Yet the narrations on the CNN and KCAL stories track almost identically, as the following excerpts show.

Hillard: Rising out of a landscape of franchise fast-food and mini-malls is the Studio Drive-In . . . built in 1948 and, in its prime, home to big cars and movies that came from beneath somewhere (on the screen was a trailer for ‘The Blob’) and patrons that came out of the trunk. Well, on this night, ‘Dick Tracy’ and memories of the good old days are packing them in once again. And that snack bar beckons still.

Corcoran: Rising out of a landscape of franchise fast-food and mini-malls is the Studio Drive-In . . . built in 1948 and, in its prime, home to big cars and movies that came from beneath somewhere and patrons that sometimes came out of the trunk. Well, on this day, ‘Dick Tracy’ and memories of the good old days are packing them in once again. And the snack bar beckons still.

Hillard: And remember that pizza? It’s still here, and of course kids even work up a real good appetite at the drive-in’s playground. And the drive-ins are a pretty good bargain at $4.50 for adults, and kids under 12 are free.

Corcoran: And remember that pizza? It’s still here, and of course kids even work up a real good appetite at the drive-in’s playground. And the drive-ins, of course, are pretty good bargains. That’s $4.50 for adults. Kids under 12 are free.

Hillard: And how about a kid’s point of view on drive-ins over walk-ins?

Corcoran: What about drive-ins over walk-ins?

Hillard: But they’re disappearing. The Studio Drive-In is one of only a couple dozen left in Southern California. And it’s scheduled for the bulldozer. The high cost of land outbid the box office, and soon the condos will be here.

Corcoran: But drive-ins are disappearing. The Studio Drive-In is one of only a couple of dozen left here. And it’s scheduled for the bulldozer. The high cost of land outbid the box office, and soon the condos will be here.

And so on and so on the two stories went.

How many more Mickey Mouse games is Disney-owned KCAL planning to play? Already the station seemed to be exploiting those horrendous fires in Santa Barbara to seek a competitive news position there, and only after being prodded by a story in The Times did it yank an old “Dick Tracy” cartoon series featuring obnoxious ethnic stereotypes. But not before it apparently violated Federal Communications Commission rules by running ads for “Dick Tracy” toys during the “Dick Tracy” show. And now this.

KCAL news director Bob Henry saw nothing improper in what Corcoran did and, incredibly, refused to discount the possibility that the same thing could happen again with his blessing.

He called this “a non-issue.” Making Hillard’s work sound almost too trivial to matter, he said that “a feature on drive-ins is sort of a discretionary story.”

Yet it was significant enough for KCAL to use in an evening newscast and then repeat the next day in its noon newscast. KCAL, Henry snapped, can “use news from CNN any way we want.”

While ethics, like drive-in movies, fade into the sunset.