How much can the media really be trusted ???



http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Irish-student-hoaxes-worlds-apf-15201451.html?.v=1



Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote


Irish student hoaxes world's media with florid

but phony quote from dead French composer


Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer
On Monday May 11, 2009, 12:07 pm EDT

On Monday May 11, 2009, 12:07 pm EDT
-- When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major's obituary-friendly quote -- which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 -- flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they'd swallowed his baloney whole.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version -- or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources -- none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.

When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.

He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences. He noted that the Wikipedia listing on Jarre did not have any other strong quotes.

If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source -- and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.

He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal who was solely to blame for their cut-and-paste content.

"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.

"It's worrying that the misinformation only came to light because the perpetrator of the deception emailed publishers to let them know what he'd done, and it's regrettable that he took nearly a month to do so," she wrote.

Fitzgerald said he had waited in part to test whether news organizations or the public would smoke out the quote's lack of provenance. He said he was troubled that none did.

And he warned that a truly malicious hoaxer could have evaded Wikipedia's own informal policing by getting a newspaper to pick up a false piece of information -- as happened when his quote made its first of three appearances -- and then use those newspaper reports as a credible footnote for the bogus quote.

"I didn't want to be devious," he said. "I just wanted to show how the 24-hour, minute-by-minute media were now taking material straight from Wikipedia because of the deadline pressure they're under."







i don't put too much credibility in all that I read...



My Soldier Friends who know what is going on


tell me to not listen to the news...



for it is only what the media wants you to hear

There isnt enough internet police!!!

no, there isn't

well wikipedia caught it twice. its the journalists who used it even though it had been flagged uncited and removed.

thats just trippy.

people don't ever get a second source anymore ya know?

Journalists are just lazy anymore. Simple internet search for a catchy phrase, typed up on the computer through Word...hell, they don't even need editors.

They need to get their asses out and do some real journalism, cross-check references, and use a typewriter!

Yes, My Friend ...I do know what you mean ...///


it is really crazy & very unprofessional ...

EXACTLY

Exactly You see it the way it should be !!!


My Awesome Brother Fear And Loathing

thank you for seeing it the way it really is



I try to be positive ,


but so much is being lost


at such a rapid pace ...


the principles we as a Country


have prided ourselves in & have held dear for soo long


are rapidly diminishing


& we who want to keep those principles


need to hang onto them with everything we've got ...

Yeah, just what we need - more policing. As though the offline world isn't Orwellian enough, especially the mainstream media. More police! More Democratic Socialism, hell let's just sink back into Marxism and have done with it. Let's shut down the internet altogether because, as everyone knows wikipedia is just that important!

Freedom of Speech and thought, now there's a novel concept.

So an Irish guy dupes poor wikipedia, big deal. I don't rely on wikipedia as a source for anything, too biased. Whenever I search on there, I also search for verification from another source.

Ya and lets add some more internet police to grab those child molestors or is that too much for you??

Did you read the OP? it wasnt about wiki being wrong they were the only ones who cought it! It was about how the media takes something and doesnt do the footwork to authenticate what they wright.

Believe half of what you see, and none of what you read.

We Irish have a great sense of humor. it's from drinking all that Guiness be seeing you

Gypsy...right on Sister ..there are too many child molestors
that slip through the cracks in the system on and offline as it is...

We do need more responsible internet police patroling the Internet
& more Righteous Police patroling the streets
to help keep our Children & our own selves
& our Neighborhoods safe once again

Thank you ...You are very observant

It's about correct information not freedom of speech.

the point wasn't about wikipedia being duped. the point was about lazy sloppy journalists lifting from wikipedia (plagiarism) rather than actually doing legitimate research

thought anyone could post to wikipedia and edit it - as to the trueness of the postings all depends on poster's intentions.

go straight to the source if you want credibility - problem solved

that is true

but then anyone else can edit your post

it goes back and forth a bit and controversys are settled by wiki

so some articles are highly political and some are just informative. wiki is always a good place to start, to get on overview summary something