On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 16:35:19 -0700, "Matt Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote:
- A man who posted nude pictures of himself on websites whose domains
he registered advertising himself as a $200-an-hour gay prostitute can not be identified as a prostitute.
Seemingly absurd, but actually fixable as long as reliable secondary sources call him that.
I'd suspect the problem is that the original primary source no longer exists?
Not a problem if reliable secondary sources repeat the claim; otherwise it's original research (given that it required synthesis from primary data, the name not, as I recall, being given in full on the contact ads).
- The Columbia Journalism Review is a reliable source. A blog run by
the Columbia Journalism Review on the website of the Columbia Journalism Review is not.
Seems fair.
Hmm? Some blogs are trustworthy, some are not, despite what some people want WP:RS to read (generally, they want an 'All blogs are untrustworthy' stance, despite the evidence). I'd say an official blog of an organisation is trustworthy. Blogs where we can be sure of the author and that their opinions are notable are also reliable, at least for that individual's thoughts and opinions.
Yebbut all blogs are essentially opinion rather than reporting. So they might be reliable in terms of documenting the blogger's opinion on a given topic, but in this case they are analogous to the newspaper's leaders or opinion pieces, which are typically not used as sources for factual data.
- The New Republic, among other reputable, long-standing publications,
cannot be used as a source because they are "too partisan".
Reliable in respect of one party's view of something and if balanced from the other perspective, I'd say.
Many (most?) sources are partisan one way or another; it's our job to strive for NPOV, regardless. (And NPOV does not mean 'balanced' in a journalism sense; we don't have to give equal airtime to unequal opinions).
Which is why, without more detail, it's hard to form a view. It might be a case of someone pushing the Aryan Nation website as a "balancing" view on the holocaust, or it might be wanting to cite the majority view that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are Complete Bollocks (i.e. a majority view in an article which mainly discusses the minority view), or more likely it's somewhere between the two.
Guy (JzG)