Wednesday, May 6, 2009

This is Interesting


An Irish student was studying globalization last semester and wanted to prove that journalists use the internet as a primary source of research (who doesn't)? Well, they do, and apparently don't double-check sometimes, even when the data comes from Wikipedia. Anybody can contribute "facts" to Wiki, which is kind of bizarre when you think about it. Article here.


"A WIKIPEDIA hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world.

The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died at the end of March.

It was posted on the online encyclopedia shortly after his death and later appeared in obituaries published in the Guardian, the London Independent, on the BBC Music Magazine website and in Indian and Australian newspapers."



Those journalists screwed up obviously. If an American paper had done this, I'm pretty sure a Congressinal hearing on how the interweb is rigged would be forthcoming. Is it good or bad that there's no global higher power when it comes to Wiki, or web-as-a-factual-medium? I'm not so sure. I mean, who would you want to be in chage?


****


Finally a day without rain.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not unlike the scores of people at my high school 20 year reunion who were suprised to read on the school website that my friend Dave was living with his partner Steve in Noe Valley and operated a flower shop. And had 3 cats and made a delicious flan.