On 10/07/06, poore5(a)adelphia.net &lt;poore5(a)adelphia.net&gt; wrote: The problem is that here we have an interdiction against using a medium for a primary source ("...as is demonstrated by the fact Smith made a post to Usenet in June [1] stating he still held that black was white...") which *also* prevents us using anything published through that medium as a tertiary source ("...as has been shown by Smith's extensive research into monography<ref>"Summary of recent work". Smith. Post to sci.research.black-white</ref>"). This guideline is foolishly thought-out at best, and actively problematic at worst. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On Sun, Jul 09, 2006 at 07:19:04PM -0400, poore5(a)adelphia.net wrote: I propose that these "codes of ethics and other standards" are largely marketing foofaraw. The sellers of news have an obvious interest in the public *perceiving* them as ethical, neutral, unbiased, and so on. That is quite different from those sellers of news actually *being* these things. We can draw our own conclusions about the reliability or ethics of various media sources, or indeed of specific writers working for said sellers of news. We should not take it for granted. Consider: There is almost certainly some field in which you consider yourself well-trained, if not an expert. I have no idea what that field is. However, I ask you to think about the way your field is reported and discussed in the mainstream news publications. It is my experience that the more a person knows about a field, the less satisfied they are with the competence of mainstream reporting about that field. (And if you think that competence and ethics are separable, well, I hope you will think again. It is, I suggest, unethical to report on a subject on which one is not competent to do so -- to pretend to deliver well-judged facts on a topic where one is not capable of judging the facts due to lack of care, study, or background knowledge.) It would be comforting to think so. However, consider the number of articles you read which claim that a concerned party "could not be reached before press time." That frequently means that the reporter *may* have tried to phone the party once ... or may not have done so at all. It is simply an error to believe so highly that The God Of Professional Ethics will protect you from malfeasance or nonfeasance on the part of so-called professional journalists. A Wikipedia featured article is held to far higher standards of quality of sources and reliability than is a front-page article in any major newspaper.