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.
There are various WP articles that are in parts more explicit than
WP:RS. And have the advantage of talking about broadly accepted
approaches to "reliability", rather than representing the status quo on
an endlessly-edited wiki page. [[Historical method]] may be the most
interesting; [[source criticism]] and [[source evaluation]] also have
something to say.
Charles