[WikiEN-l] Interesting debate over reliable sources

[Karl A. Krueger]

On Sun, Jul 09, 2006 at 07:19:04PM -0400, poore5 at adelphia.net wrote:
> Almost without exception Media sources outside the Internet have well
> established codes of ethics and other standards that the individuals
> and institutions must follow. 

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.)


> For example: when a media outlet publishes or broadcasts some new
> piece of information about a person or an agency, it is expected per
> ethical and industry standards that some one will make contact and get
> a response before publication/broadcast. 

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.