[WikiEN-l] Are newspapers reliable resources?

[Anthony]

To answer the question, I don't think newspapers are particularly
reliable sources.  I've seen them get things wrong way too often.
Most recently the so called "Essjay incident" has brought to light how
easy it is to get completely made up stuff into even a respectable
newspaper.  Before that we've seen time and again when Jimmy has
complained that newspapers have misquoted him or otherwise gotten
their facts wrong, and even before that I remember him commenting when
Wikipedia published information about how much he spent on bandwidth
that the figure was provided by him and wasn't fact checked (so he
could have easily made the number up).

That said, I don't think we could possibly throw out the use of
newspapers altogether.  Maybe a rule that a fact which is
substantiated only by newspapers should be attributed?  Even that
might be too harsh, but I certainly think one should lean toward
attribution when using a newspaper as a source.

And I disagree with Oskar that the number of newspapers makes much of
a difference.  Multiple newspapers often have the exact same
misinformation, due to associated press stories and other borrowings
(legal and illegal).  I remember the police killing of the subway
bombing suspect as one prominent incident where the newspapers were
getting the story blatantly wrong, and Wikipedia adopted much of the
misinformation from them, reporting some of the misinformation as fact
and without attribution.

Along those lines, and agreeing with Rory, that's one reason I
suggested at the time that we should leave the reporting of breaking
news to Wikinews.  Immediately correct anything obviously made
incorrect (Lisa Nowak is a NASA astronaut), but leave the details to
time and/or Wikinews.

But that's all just my opinion.

Anthony

On 3/26/07, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> From the Christian Science Monitor:
>
> _http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Passengers_Safely_Moved_and_Steamer_Titanic_Tak
> en_in_Tow_
> (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Passengers_Safely_Moved_and_Steamer_Titanic_Taken_in_Tow)
>
> Danny
>