Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote

[JohnWxy]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Irish-student-hoaxes-worlds-apf-15201451.html?.v=1

DUBLIN (AP) -- When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major's obituary-friendly quote -- which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 -- flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they'd swallowed his baloney whole.
~~

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

(more)

[ZombieHorde]

1. Oh so awesome. K&R&nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Interesting - and it's happened before (but not as a test), with obituaries:

Composer Ronnie Hazlehurst is fondly remembered mainly for his work on classic TV theme tunes for shows such as Are You Being Served? and Last of the Summer Wine.
...
In October 2007, several obituaries for Mr Hazlehurst wrongly claimed he had written the SClub7 song "Reach (for the Stars)".

The source of the error was an anonymous (and now corrected) entry on Wikipedia. BBC News, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Times, amongst others, were caught out by the unsophisticated hoax.
...
By contrast, none of the online obituaries contain the errant reference and none mention any correction - apart from that of the Guardian which has both.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7761153.stm

The Register article on the Hazlehurst obituaries and the Jarre one

It looks like it's British sites that are prone to this; and only The Guardian is honest enough to print, and put on the web, corrections. The media certainly used to have obituaries prepared for people they knew they would publish one for (if they were of an age where a death isn't unexpected, as for these 2 composers); I wonder if they've given that up, or if someone gets told "pull up the prepared obit, and check online if there's anything we can add".

[DCKit]

3. Somebody, quick, freeze Dick and W's Wiki pages..... n/t

[mackerel]

4. If the lad ever needs a job I hear Fox News is hiring.

[juno jones]

5. This has happened to humans forever. At least since the press.

Think of how different Shakespeare's first folio might be from the fourth...or an edition printed in 1700. Much of our inheireted 'canon' might not be exactly pure.

The internet is our own printing press. As much as it pains the sensible, I think we'd better let it have it's way with us (while always calling bullshit) for a bit. Merely swallowing a specious quote from an obscure figure is not suffiencient reason to hobble it.