Irish Student Hoaxes Worldwide Media.
A student in Dublin, Shane Fitzgerald, as part of a university course did a llittle field tiral regarding authenticity in reporting.
We are told as students not to plagarize. it is drilled into us how wrong it is. There is also quite a lot made of professional journalism and journalistic integrity. Well, so much for that! The reporting agencies of the world have flunked!
Shane edited a Wikipedia page on composer Maurice Jarre. He input a false quote; just a little somethign that he made up. He did this to see if anyone woudl actually challenge the validity, bother to authenticate it, or if any professional journalists from newspapers would actually report using it wihout doing any fact checking.
He found that not only did they use it and not verify it, there were cases of copy and past of whole pieces of Wikipedia text and using it as their 'reporting."
Now, for those who think that if a reporter writes it and it gets published it must be true - think again. perhaps truth in journalism is a notion from the past. You will be glad ot know that Wikipedia was on top of it though. A bit backwards. Wikipedia gets a bad wrap for not beign professoinal and content beign unverified - that was proved wrong. The media gets a shiny rep for truth in journalism, verifying sources and fact checking - wrong again.
Datamaiden
Tuesday, may 11, 2009
And yes, I wrote this article myself!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30699302/wid/11915829?GT1=40006
