We're seeing a sort of Wal-Martisation of this world - Pundit on BBC Radio 4
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Irish student fools journos with Wikipedia
IT WAS LESS ‘Waking Ned Devine’ and more ‘raising hell online’ for an Irish student, who has finally come clean about a fake quote he plugged into Wikipedia that was picked up by the obituary sections of major newspapers worldwide.
Shane Fitzgerald, a 22 year old sociology and economics student at University College Dublin, thought it would be a bit of a craic to bung a fake quote attributed to recently deceased French composer Maurice Jarre into his wackypedia entry and see what happened.
What happened, according to the Irish Times, was that the quote was picked up and reprinted by major British, Indian and Australian newspapers, both online and off.
Fitzgerald had invented a Jarre quote which read, "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life.” It continued, "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear."
The cheeky paddy said he had edited the Wikipedia entry with the invented quote soon after news of the composer’s passing, as an experiment on globalisation. Sounds like a load of blarney to us. The meat and potatoes of the plot was apparently to fool lazy hacks who looked to the online user-editable encyclopedia for easy to find facts - something serious INQ hacks would never think to do, of course [do we have any of those? Ed.].
"I didn't expect it to go that far,” said Fitzgerald, expressing surprise at the grave mistake made by so many publications in reprinting the quote. “I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers?”
Fitzgerald admitted the notion of using Jarre’s death as a social experiment had left him feeling a bit green, but said he had done his best to ensure that his made up quote didn’t do anything to distort or taint Jarre's life.
He also said his shenanigans had gone unnoticed until he himself had e-mailed the newspapers in question to tell them they were dead wrong.
Still, what better way to honour a man like Jarre than with a stiff drink over Wakepedia? µ
L'Inq
Irish Times
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Real brains are being replaced by fake penises.
"but on mainstream quality papers?"
Wiki or not, lists of quotations are always suspect. Citation is usually poor or non-existant and misattribution/fabrication is common.
The underlying problem is that you can't do real research for every obituary. You're talking about current events with a very long history behind them. How many hours would it take to find a Jarre quotation worthy of inclusion without using Wikiquote or other unprofessional sources? This is why CNN researches and writes obituaries for public figures while they're still alive.
@Ted: Yes, Wikipedia has some flaws but on the whole it is actually a good quick reference for information. Anything that doesn't have a source is listed as so, also anyone can go click on the sources listed for a given page.
I invite anyone to try this. Go look up something you know a good deal about and see how accurate the information looks. Usually it is spot on.
If it was in Wikipedia, it must be true...
This just goes to show how many quality journalists there are out there in the mainstream media. Can't these guys/gals do their own research or at least verify their "facts" instead of having to rely on an unreliable Wikipedia?
This is the exact reason I do not use such garbage as that. One never knows if they are reading fact or fiction. If I have to verify everything I read from there, I may as well spend the time researching my own (real) facts from more proven reliable resources.