Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote

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

There's a lot more on the site. And this shows that wikipedia fails.
 
Well, that's why you should never use Wikipedia for quotes. I use it for research all the time, like for basic background info on a topic, and that's never been an issue. But wow, I had no idea that the media would use it for something like that.
 
This was pretty hilarious. The media would believe in anything, just shows how their general IQ has plummeted over the decades.
 
Why does this mean Wikipedia fails? Wikipedia contributors caught the mistake and reverted it. If anything, this shows why Wikipedia is more trustworthy then other forms of media.
 
TheMissingno. said:
Why does this mean Wikipedia fails? Wikipedia contributors caught the mistake and reverted it. If anything, this shows why Wikipedia is more trustworthy then other forms of media.
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If you read the article, it says that no one noticed it. It was there until the kid said he made it up... geez.
 
Haven't these idiots ever heard of cross-referencing?

How do these people even get their jobs?
 
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 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.
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Here is the portion of the article I am referring to. I didn't go to the link, I just went with what you quoted here.
 
Pretty much why you never use Wikipedia for projects and such...I just use it to learn at a random pace, no projects and such in the process...
 
FE 6X said:
Pretty much why you never use Wikipedia for projects and such...I just use it to learn at a random pace, no projects and such in the process...
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Exactly, especially if you're a journalist! Wikipedia is awesome for finding random facts, and if you use it for a project, then use the sources that it references rather then the article itself. Any encyclopedia really shouldn't be used for sources on school projects anyway, you're really supposed to use first hand sources.
 
And besides that, random people can sign in (just as the case here) and edit things in wikipedia, which in my opinion why people should not use the site as a huge source.

And besides I don't trust the media anymore to report anything accuarately anymore. :/
 
It's still a wonder to me on why people don't click on the references on the bottom to double-check.

Wikipedia is great for basic stuff in Math, Science and History...but if you want the nitty-gritty details...go to a more reputable place like the library. ^_^
 
Haha, well it proves that Wikipedia can't be relied on for 100% information. Some schools in US banned wikipedia as a source of information for this reason. But who would actually know if that quote was fake or not, I would not have guessed

I remember about 2 years ago when there was the eclipse in early 2007, I was online posting images I got of it and saw on wikipedia a funny image and information on that eclipse that was shortly removed:

It showed an image of the clangers and said "With this years eclipse, we were able to get close-ups of the moons surface"

Clangers were a kids tv show in 70's or 80's in the UK and they lived on moon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clangers

Clangers image:
clip_clangers_phixr.jpg


Wikipedia is good for some things, but others I double check everything and try to find other sources when I can.
 
yea i agree. wikipedia is great for random common knowledge stuff and quick fact checking, but if you are actually referencing it for a school paper or A JOURNALISTIC article...YOU SUCK!
 
Yeah, the media should learn to fact check before accepting things as truth.
 
Haha, really if you want to use quotes, use Wikiquotes lolXD Wikipedia isn't bad, my teachers encouraged us to use it for background information and to use the external links to sources >.> It's the people who are dumb enough not to check their info that will get laughed at XD
 
Ino-chan said:
If you read the article, it says that no one noticed it. It was there until the kid said he made it up... geez.
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If you read the link below the articles...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/04/journalism-obituaries-shane-fitzgerald

Note :
Wikipedia editors were more sceptical about the unsourced quote. They deleted it twice on 30 March and when Fitzgerald added it the second time it lasted only six minutes on the page. His third attempt was more successful - the quote stayed on the site for around 25 hours before it was spotted and removed again.
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March 30 was the day the (false) quote was added to Wikipedia.

Missingno is right: the Wikipedia system's checks and balances worked perfectly on this. The (inexistent?) checks and balances of the various involved newspapers is what didn't work.
 
Netto Azure said:
It's still a wonder to me on why people don't click on the references on the bottom to double-check.

Wikipedia is great for basic stuff in Math, Science and History...but if you want the nitty-gritty details...go to a more reputable place like the library. ^_^
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If I'm just reading something for fun, I usually don't use the references at the bottom unless it's something that I really find unbelievable.

I've edited Wikipedia a few times, just to correct grammar and whatnot. The only real fact that I've changed was on the Pokemon Red/Blue site, to make it say that Missingno. can't actually corrupt your save data (which is true; it can screw up your game to the point of wanting to start over, but it can't actually destroy your save). The page was reverted in seconds, the reason being that the wording in the source from Nintendo was ambiguous, and could be interpreted as destroying your save data. Or I could be completely wrong, and Missingno. actually can destroy your game.
 
This is like the one time I listed fake dub episode titles over there and they stayed there for like 3-6 weeks T_T;
 
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