Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

Source: AP

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.


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

[YOY]

1. Wasn't Jarre an absurdist?

If I'm right there is some humor in this...

[LisaM]

2. Good for him.

One of my friend's nieces is writing a term paper for an English class, and the professor actually had to caution the students to use real books instead of Wikipedia! I find that shocking.

[w4rma]

3. You have to know how to use Wikipedia. It's a great source (note the error was caught on Wikipedia).

The problem is that the newspapers didn't use Wikipedia properly and follow up the quote to it's original source.

[LisaM]

4. Well of course. I recently used Wikipedia to win a trivia contest.

But the larger point that you have to tell college English students to go look at real books still stands - that shouldn't be a novel concept to them.

[Hatalles]

9. But the article also notes...

"And he warned that a truly malicious hoaxer could have evaded Wikipedia's own informal policing by getting a newspaper to pick up a false piece of information -- as happened when his quote made its first of three appearances -- and then use those newspaper reports as a credible footnote for the bogus quote."

[w4rma]

10. Yup. Newspapers and books can be wrong, too. Always research your sources. (nt)

[Posteritatis]

5. A few times when I was TAing...

Students' bibliographies had nothing but "en.wikipedia.org" in their source list. Not even specific articles: just "Works cited - en.wikipedia.org" on an otherwise empty page.

Those papers were probably not their greatest triumphs.

[Chulanowa]

6. Now that's sad...

Given that Wikipedia pages usually cite sources themselves. It's not that hard...

[LisaM]

7. I'll never forget in my sixth grade French class

we were each assigned an Impressionist painter to write on. One of the students was reading his paper on Monet, and the entire class realized he had copied it line for line from the Encyclopedia Britannica! We ratted him out, though the teacher probably already realized it. I guess the Britannica was the Wiki of its day.

Too bad for him, because it was a good assignment and instilled me with a lifelong love of French Impressionism, especially my own topic, Cezanne. I know it sounds banal, but your students were only cheating themselves!

[depakid]

8. Let that be a lesson to those who insist that wiki is a credible source

[EFerrari]

11. I don't have to check behind wiki any more or less than I check anyone else.

[Jim Lane]

13. Wikipedia caught the error. Some MSM outlets didn't.

Howzabout that for the lesson?

[Wednesdays]

12. K&R

:kick:

[truedelphi]

14. It is a quote worthy quote:

"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."

Too bad it ain't truly Jarre's.