On 04/10/2007, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
3.
This isn't funny, it's a bloody disgrace. We have once respected news
sources forgetting Item 1 on Page 1 of Journalism 101 - use reliable
sources. It's not that the obituarists put in something incorrect,
it's that they have, en masse, been caught using a single unreliable
source without corroborating their facts from a reliable one.
My teenage son's teachers keep stressing to the pupils that
researching a subject involves more than looking up a Wikipedia
article. For educated adults, qualified in a career based on reporting
correct facts, to promulgate a falsehood from a Wikipedia article
should be a sacking offence.
Circular referencing incidents are particularly likely given that
obituaries are often the best reference material available for a
decent living bio. So this sort of thing is particularly, um,
problematic for us.
- d.