Wikipedia hoax points to limits of journalists' research (ArsTechnica)

**Drew Wilson** · May 10th, 2009, 07:54 PM

Wikipedia may be a fantastic resource, but any savvy Internet user is aware of its limits. Edit wars, entries made and modified for PR purposes, hoaxes, and basic inaccuracies all creep into (and back out of) the system, meaning that any use of the information there for purposes that might be considered significant should require some serious fact-checking. And, accordingly, many academics don't accept references to Wikipedia, and its entries have been rejected as evidence by US courts. So, it's a bit of a surprise to find out that one Wikipedia hoax, perpetrated by a sociology student, managed to appear in a variety of news reports, and has stayed there even after the hoax was revealed.

According to the AFP, the hoax traces back to Shane Fitzgerald, a student at Ireland's University College Dublin. Upon learning of the death of the Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre, the student modified his Wikipedia entry, adding a completely fictitious post that was nicely designed to fit perfectly into any obituary. "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear," the added material read in part.

Fitzgerald was apparently curious how far his hoax would spread, and expected it to appear on a variety of blogs and similar sites. Instead, to his surprise, a search picked it up in articles that appeared at a variety of newspapers. Fitzgerald eventually removed his own fabricated quote and notified a variety of news outlets that they had been tricked, but not all of them have apparently seen fit to publish corrections or to ensure that their original stories were accurate, even though fixing a webpage shouldn't be a challenging thing.

Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise that journalists use Wikipedia as part of their research—especially in this case, as Jarre's entry comes out on top of the heap in a Google search for his name. However, the discovery that so many of the writers apparently failed to find an additional source on that quote comes at a rather awkward time for journalists in traditional media, who are facing a struggle to stay above water as the newspaper industry is sinking and the line between traditional journalism and casual reporting gets ever blurrier.

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Things I (try to) do as a journalist to avoid these situations:

-Point to the sources for the information
-Look at Wikipedia only for basic facts (ala "so-n-so died in 1988") rather than specifics
-Make sure the source is referencing other sources
-Edit out inaccuracies if it turns out one fact was incorrect ASAP
-If the story winds up failing any verification tests I throw at it, either edit or delete the story entirely

Of course, when you're racing against other sites (bigger or smaller), it's far more difficult to do all of the above (if not, impossible in a timely manner) though the last two points tends to prevent virtually every piece of false information from lasting very long - something apparently big news entities don't even bother doing themselves at times. :hitwithrock:

**mountain_rage** · May 10th, 2009, 08:30 PM

Whenever I use Wikipedia for school, I look at the source at the bottom of the page for the journal articles or news paper article. It does not take long, and ensures that you are not being duped by some joker.