WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
saintonge@telus.net writes:
I've seen awful work done by professionals too, so I'm not about to abandon my judgement when I see academic or professional titles attached to somebody's name.>>
I agree that credentials don't necessarily make something a reliable source. Our standard is that the author must have been previously published by a third-party, known for doing fact-checking. Or something close to that paraphrase.
We mostly don't know, and mostly have no way of knowing, whether the publishers of 19th century magazines checked their facts. "Gentleman's Magazine" (published 1731-1907) was highly regarded for the information it provided, but I have no way to measure the amount of fact-checking that it did.
Ec