News media uses fake wikipedia quote

[Meg 368]

An Irish student posted a fake quote on Wikipedia, just to see if the news media would pick it up and use it.  They did.  

The quote itself was harmless; just some flowery words supposed uttered by a recently deceased French composer.

But it's rather worrisome that the mainstream media is using information from Wikipedia without verifying it.

Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote

 

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK

Associated Press Writer

DUBLIN -- When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said 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 made-up 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 quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

"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."

So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version - or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources - none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.

When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.

He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences.

If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source - and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.

Wikipedia spokesman Jay Walsh said he appreciated the Dublin student's point, and said he agreed it was "distressing so see how quickly journalists would descend on that information without double-checking it."

"We always tell people: If you see that quote on Wikipedia, find it somewhere else too. He's identified a flaw," Walsh said in a telephone interview from Wikipedia's San Francisco base.

But Walsh said there were more responsible ways to measure journalists' use of Wikipedia than through well-timed sabotage of one of the site's 12 million listings. "Our network of volunteer editors do thankless work trying to provide the highest-quality information. They will be rightly perturbed and irritated about this," he said.

Fitzgerald stressed that Wikipedia's system requiring about 1,500 volunteer "administrators" and the wider public to spot bogus additions did its job, removing the quote three times within minutes or hours. It was journalists eager for a quick, pithy quote that was the problem.

He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal.

"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 readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.

Walsh said this was the first time to his knowledge that an academic researcher had placed false information on a Wikipedia listing specifically to test how the media would handle it. quote>

Shane Fitzgerald, at home in Dublin, Ireland, Monday, May, 11, 2009. Shane posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media would uphold standards of 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. quote>

[Aontan 0]

Is anyone really surprised?

Just goes to show how lazy even the most respected media outlets can be.  

edit: If anyone's interested, here's a recent article he wrote for The Irish Times.

[earwax_man 18]

Wow... Just wow...

The media really do no research do they? Like anything from Wikipedia could be false. The amount of vandalism on it as well...

[Patricius Maximus 236]

How foolish. They could use a lesson from Wikipedia itself: verifiability of information. If you're going to use Wikipedia for journalism, they should check the citations they use (you know, the little superscript numbers in the articles).

[sedimenjerry 1]

That's why Gwinnett County public schools blocked wikipedia on all computers.

And Kudos to Shane. I don't think he'll have to work to hard to find a job when he puts that accomplishment on his resume.

[hamsterTK 93]

As someone who likes Wikipedia, I wonder if this guy 1. broke the law and 2. should get his ass fined or sued. He can't see how this doesn't violate the site's terms and conditions.

I mean with some effort I bet you could also fool your local newspaper or something like CNN.com's iReport, and if the intention was to discredit these media outlets and they find out, you can bet you won't be getting a pat on the back for it.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[Patricius Maximus 236]

Originally posted by: hamsterTK

As someone who likes Wikipedia, I wonder if this guy 1. broke the law and 2. should get his ass fined or sued. He can't see how this doesn't violate the site's terms and conditions.

quote>

The only "law" he broke was Wikipedia's guidelines against vandalism and for verifiability. He shouldn't be sued or fined more than any other vandal, although he had a more interesting purpose than most Wikipedia vandals.

That's why Gwinnett County public schools blocked wikipedia on all computers.quote>

Because not all information on Wikipedia may be correct? That's no reason to block a web site. Using that rationale, why have internet access at schools at all?

[J. Doe 0]

Originally posted by: sedimenjerry

That's why Gwinnett County public schools blocked wikipedia on all computers.quote>

How dumb. Wikipedia is not perfect but great as a starting point for research and getting an overview. And there are lots of Wikipedia mirrors.

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus

The only "law" he broke was Wikipedia's guidelines against vandalism and for verifiability. He shouldn't be sued or fined more than any other vandal, although he had a more interesting purpose than most Wikipedia vandals.quote>

Had he said something malicious, odds are good the media outlets would not have copied and odds are good that he would be charged.  But that was not his intention. 

Quoting the article in Aontan's link:

I did not wish to taint or distort anyone’s reputation, so I purposely made the decision to put in a general, random quote that would not affect Jarre’s stature.quote>

The quote itself is:

“One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack,” I wrote into the Wikipedia entry. “Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head and that only I can hear.” quote>

 

Suppose he had attributed that quote to Jarre while he was still alive?   Would there be a legal case against him?  If so, for what?  

The laws vary considerably and I have no idea what the standard is over there but it's difficult to see how Jarre could have claimed that he was harmed by that quote, which is one of the standards in some jurisidications over here.

[Jezus53 18]

I read this a few days ago and I started laughing. Doesn't everyone know that you need to take everything you get from Wikipedia with a grain of salt? I give kudos (not the candy bar ) to this man for trying this out. It just strengthens my stance to rarely believe the media since I never get sources and they tend to be biased.

[hym 358]

I had a college professor that was talking about Wikipedia as a source. Surprisingly, she took the stance that Wiki was a perfectly acceptable research tool. According to her, there is a growing sentiment in the academic world that Wiki can be perfectly fine if you know how to use it properly. The key word being "properly." The news media didn't use Wiki properly and got bitten for it.

[Jumpthefence 74]

Oh, yeah, I'm sure every American conservative is surprised. I'm not sure how accurate European and other foreign medias are, well, at least until now, but we have some pretty low standards. But at least now I can feel better that media lies (even if it wasn't on purpose) alot in other countries, too. What do you Europeans really think of your media? Do you think it has too much influence, without enough accuracy? I think US media is out of control, but I'd like to hear what you have to say.

[fukuda 351]

Oh come on, they are the same guys that plagiarized their homework back in their youth, what else could you expect from them?

[sneakeypete 16]

Originally posted by: Jumpthefence

What do you Europeans really think of your media? .quote>

I'm pretty sure Australian shows invented the whole "chase down the subject with a camera crew while they go about their daily life asking them stupid questions (aka "Mr blah blah, why did you rip off all of these battlers?").

[Duke87 1,070]

I never thought it possible, but someone has won the internet by vandalizing wikipedia.

Just goes to show you, there's always a bigger awesome.

[hamsterTK 93]

You misunderstood what I said.

Wikipedia itself had it's reputation harmed when someone used the site for the unethical purpose of fraud, thus I'd think they'd have reason to go after the guy

[sedimenjerry 1]

Originally posted by: J. Doe

Originally posted by: sedimenjerry

That's why Gwinnett County public schools blocked wikipedia on all computers.quote>

How dumb. Wikipedia is not perfect but great as a starting point for research and getting an overview. And there are lots of Wikipedia mirrors.

quote>

That's the argument that many teachers have. It is a fine place for a starting point but for many student s doing projects, they don't care if the info is correct or not, they just want to finish the project and pass, even if that means using incorrect information.

No, not all information is incorrect but why take a chance when you have hundreds of reputable online sources that are fully legitimate that only certain people can edit.

Supposedly, the purpose was to just steer students away from Wikipedia since obviously there's nothing blocking them for getting on there at home.

[Aontan 0]

Originally posted by: hamsterTK

Wikipedia itself had it's reputation harmed when someone used the site for the unethical purpose of fraud, thus I'd think they'd have reason to go after the guyquote>

I think Wikipedia's reputation would be more harmed by the press coverage of them suing a student who just proved a point.