On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 2:09 PM, William King williamcarlking@gmail.com wrote:
Fox News picks up Reuters story regarding the late French composer Maurice Jarre:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,519283,00.html
Reuters interviewed Shane Fitzgerald, the Irish student who made up the false quote on Jarre's Wikipedia biography.
"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the Guardian's readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth.
That's about as good a piece of advice as you'll get on using facts from Wikipedia in a journalistic or academic context.
Biographies of people who have recently died need particularly close attention
Sam