[WikiEN-l] False quote regarding Maurice Jarre

[Sam Korn]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 2:09 PM, William King <williamcarlking at gmail.com> wrote:
> Fox News picks up Reuters story regarding the late French composer Maurice Jarre:
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,519283,00.html
>
> Reuters interviewed Shane Fitzgerald, the Irish student who made up the false quote on Jarre's Wikipedia biography.

"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid
Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if
it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the
Guardian's readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth.

That's about as good a piece of advice as you'll get on using facts
from Wikipedia in a journalistic or academic context.

Biographies of people who have recently died need particularly close attention

Sam

-- 
Sam
PGP public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Korn/public_key