Plagiarism

In 2003 Jayson Blair who at the time was one of only two African-American editors in the history of the Diamondback newspaper and worked as a full time reporter for new york times at the age of only 27, was accused of
plagiarising at least 36 stories from another newspaper.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/05/10/ny.times.reporter/


However the fact that he 
has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder could be used to help understand his actions.
Some symptoms that could have had a effect on his actions are:
Poor judgment : so he would be not fully aware or have thought deeply about what he was doing,
Very high self-esteem : might have caused him to think that it was okay to do what he was doing because he could do it and get away with it.
However i dont believe that it can be used to justify what he did as there are treatments available that could have decrease the number of times that a problem was found on his reporters.


http://bipolar.about.com/cs/crime/a/jaysonblair.htm