Via Today's Papers, an article of the same title by Robin Shulman in The Washington Post reports on this ironically funny/sad situation:

It was an ethics exam in a journalism class, and someone may have cheated.

Ironic? Yes. Unfortunate? Certainly. But what made the incident particularly notable was where and when it took place: at Columbia University, one of the premier journalism schools in the country, at a time when media ethics are much in question.

On Friday, Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism convened a meeting to discuss misconduct in the final exam for the required ethics course "Critical Issues in Journalism."

But the school was so wary of making specific accusations that, afterward, it was not even clear what misconduct had taken place.