[WikiEN-l] Good thing newspapers are reliable sources!

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 1:54 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2008/oct/12/robots-japan

Lets be real: The only reason we accept newspapers in general as
reliable sources is because they are often the only readily available
source of higher quality than "some dude on the internet said so".  In
many of Wikipedia's popular "popular culture" articles newspapers may
often be the only third party sources available at all.

Even people working in the industry agree with statement like:
"newspapers run a lot of stories without checking them just because
other papers have published them, not because they know they're true,"
[http://www.asne.org/kiosk/reports/99reports/1999examiningourcredibility/p7-10_Accuracy.html]

Most of the time newspapers do not perform "fact checking" of the sort
that the general public expects:  Like Wikipedia, the fact checking by
newspapers leans far more towards verifiability than truth. "This may
include confirming with an individual or organisation that they posted
material and that it is accurate."
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/accuracy/factchecking.shtml].
 "I see you claim to be a theology scholar." "Yes I posted that and it
is accurate." "Okay." So long as the paper's staff didn't make up the
lies themselves any blame can be shifted onto the original speakers.

I think the reason we often hear journalists making so much noise
about lofty journalistic ethics is simply because they've been so
historically bad about it. More trustworthy groups don't feel a need
to constantly tell everyone how trustworthy they are. (See the first
link, the public doesn't /think/ journalists are good at presenting
the truth.)

In my own experience many reporters will, when presented with multiple
conflicting versions of the truth, often report only on the most
"interesting" versions. In many cases this reduces the accuracy of the
reporting below that which you'd expect from a straight up random
sample of the public, because the truth is so often rather boring.

I say these things not to judge the popular media as something bad,
but to just point out the reality that we can not afford to forget if
we are to not constantly suffer embarrassment from trusting these
sources.  Along these lines "Reliable sources" on Wikipedia should be
renamed to "acceptable sources" since necessity often results in
Wikipedians depending on sources which are merely the best available
without regard to the sources actually being any good in absolute
terms.