More generally, journalists are rarely capable of handling scientific topics because very few have any kind of scientific background. In all likelihood during their school days they were the ones who did very well in classes where they could showcase their "creative" writing skills, and who did very poorly in science if they couldn't get out of such classes altogether.
This may be the most asinine, sweeping generalization I've ever heard on this list. You're making a general assertion about the school habits of all journalists that is completely verifiable, besides being utterly untrue. When you comment on the personal histories of journalists, don't you think it's a little funny that you criticize them as having no knowledge or frame of reference on a subject, and yet you have no intimate knowledge or frame of reference on journalists and their histories? What nonsense.
On 7/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/07/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
It isn't so much that he's wrong, but how much can you learn about
WIKIPEDIA by interviewing Larry Sanders and the management of Britannica? David Gerard had to show him the edit button...
I must say he got it very quickly though. And by "it" I mean what's addictive about Wikipedia. I could see it in his eyes!
Although only a few minutes of talking to me made it in out of an hour or two's recording, I did point out that you'll meet idiots on Wikipedia, just like anywhere on the internet. So I tried not to whitewash the joys of Wikipedia.
The piece reflects more on the reliability and integrity of the BBC
than on that of Wikipedia. It was amateurish.
It was a magazine-style article rather than investigative journalism. Though [[Clive Anderson]] is no idiot, and his fans know this. I thought it was an entirely reasonable approach for him and his producer to have taken to the show.
(Arkady was away that day and her jaw dropped when I told her. "Clive Anderson was in our house?!" "And sitting in your chair!")
(Free pic of him up on his article next week. It's currently on the Linux share of my work laptop, which is living in Windows for the week while I'm on a training course.)
However a nice note at the end encouraging people to edit, "It's your
encyclopedia".
I was enormously pleased with how positive the resulting piece was. I'm only worried it was too positive.
I was somewhat annoyed my usual description of "neutral point of view" didn't make it in - "it's the overview from 20,000 feet. And none of us are 20,000 feet above, we're all down here, but we try to work out what the view would look like from there with others." This answers Britannica's frequent furphy about the truth not being up for a vote.
- d.
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