On Sun, 16 May 2010, Nathan wrote:
Obviously it would be an impossible task to study all
potential
sources and make a proactive determination of reliability. We hope to
some extent that folks citing academic sources have vetted them in
some way as to their credibility, but with mainstream news sources
even that expectation is set aside. So instead, perhaps we could have
a reactive policy of reassessing the assumption of reliability for
specific sources based on a history of errors. When Fox News articles
are shown to be riddled with errors of basic fact, indicating that no
effort was made to verify claims, we should stop granting it the same
deference we extend to other institutions with more integrity.
If "riddled with errors" means "has more (frequent) errors than other
sources", then this makes some sense.
If "riddled with errors" means "has errors that we have recently had our
attention called to" or "has errors that happen to be about some subject we
are personally pissed off about", then it's a very bad idea.