How Spurious Wikipedia Edits Can Attach a Name To a Scandal, 35 Years On 165
Andreas Kolbe (2591067) writes For more than six years, Wikipedia named an innocent man as a key culprit in the 1978/79 Boston College point shaving scandal. The name Joe Streater was inserted into Wikipedia by an anonymous user in August 2008. The unsourced insertion was never challenged or deleted, and over time, Streater became widely associated with the scandal through newspaper and TV reports as well as countless blogs and fan sites, all of which directly or indirectly copied this spurious fact from Wikipedia. Yet research shows that Streater, whose present whereabouts are unknown, did not even play in the 1978/79 season. Before August 2008, his name was never mentioned in connection with the scandal. As journalists have less and less time for in-depth research, more and more of them seem to be relying on Wikipedia instead, and the online encyclopedia is increasingly becoming a vector for the spread of spurious information.
Research (Score:5, Insightful)
As journalists have less and less inclination and ability for in-depth research
FTFY
Oh good... (Score:2)
I thought that the world is about to end (again) and that we were all running out of time.
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Also inaccurate, unless you have a suggestion to how to get reliable background information on 5-7 stories a day, every single day. Any reporter who does the amount of background work you seem to expect is going to last a few days at most.
Get used to modern reporting. The less people are willing to pay for news, the more news a reporter has to produce each day to cover their salary.
There is no free lunch.
Re:Research (Score:4, Insightful)
Get used to modern reporting. The less people are willing to pay for news, the more news a reporter has to produce each day to cover their salary.
There is no free lunch.
Get used to the positive feedback loop where people are less likely to pay for the news reporters generate because it's low grade crap. There is no free lunch.
P.S. apologists for these journalists should advocate the journalists going full blown tabloid. Satan's face seen in oil fire, etc.
Re:Research (Score:4, Insightful)
Also inaccurate, (snip) The less people are willing to pay for news, the more news a reporter has to produce each day to cover their salary.
There is no free lunch.
also inaccurate. how many stories has a reporter to produce to cover the salary of an executive in the media industry?
fire the executive, hire 50-70 reporters. voilà: professional journalism in every story.
Re:Research (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the popular narrative: It's somebody else's fault: greedy executives! greedy politicians! greedy everybody else but me!
But I find that that I can trace many ills back to where they probably belong: me and my ilk.
I want my news for free, and am unwilling to pay what it costs for pure hard news coverage. It was all nice when classified ads happened to pay for much of for my news fix, and paper subscribers the rest, but since they stopped subsidising my mooching, I don't feel I have the right to expect other people to work for free, just because I'm too cheap and would rather spend my money elsewhere.
I'm not going to tell other people they need to take a pay cut for my benefit when I'm not willing to fork over the $30 or $40 a month that is what's needed from millions of people for proper coverage.
No one is eating my lunch. It just isn't free.
Re:Research (Score:4, Insightful)
For years, I had a paid subscription to the dead-tree LA Times. As the years progressed, the reporting became worse and worse, until the "reporting" was useless. (yes, the quotes missing on the first instance are deliberate).
I contributed my money to pay their salaries. Guess what? When it devolved into repeating press releases or cloning Wikipedia? I stopped paying.
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Indeed, it's the tragedy of the commons. Enough of us have to be willing to pay for decent reporting or none of us get any.
So, no, sadly, you can't make this social change on your own while people like me aren't willing to pay.
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What they were talking about had nothing to do with paying for decent reporting and everything to do with PR=B$ agencies taking over mass media and via advertising dollars corrupting the reporting ie paying for reporting in reality ends up paying for lies rather than paying for the truth. So it is hardly surprising that those same corrupt PR=B$ (lies for profit) agencies are also hard at work corrupting wikipedia just as they do any other communications media they interact with. Real focus needs to be take
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I know the popular narrative: It's somebody else's fault: greedy executives! greedy politicians! greedy everybody else but me!
you are not listening.
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
the reporters' salary is but an anecdotical tiny fraction of any news suscription you pay. this renders your entire argument pointless because your measures are meaningless.
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I like my Piketty just fine, but boy that's out of context.
Newspapers are struggling to stay alive, not returning vast amounts on the capital rather than the labor...
Tell any news organization (start with your community paper!) that in depth reporting is an inconsequential part of their budget. But I'd advise doing it over the phone. You can hang up more quickly when the tirade starts :-).
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i'd say newspapers are struggling to maintain an outdated business model, as customers are not wlling to pay to support the overweight accumulated on it for decades, just for gossip which can be found for free elsewhere. if newspapers actually did invest in delivering investigation journalism instead of printing gossip this could change. maybe! there's a risk. i would gladly pay for it, but i don't know if there really exists a big enough market for that. but for sure it also would require strong work ethic
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Am I correct in paraphrasing your position as "You get what you pay for" ?
It's binary, either it's accurately-reported or it's not; there are no shades of grey, no matter how little *you* want to pay.
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I'd strongly disagree. You can never be certain something is accurately reported. However, you can spend more and more money to lessen the chance that it's inaccurately reported.
The more I pay (along with several million others - I alone won't cut it), the more fact checking the papers can afford, and the higher their level of accuracy, as long as readers value accuracy.
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Except that in this analogy, low-quality food is free. Restaurants tried to compete by being more "efficient", in other words, lowering quality to make the same money with less customers. But of course all that accomplishes is driving away the remaining diners, since they no longer get a benefit for forking over the cash.
It's no one's fault, really, it's just that newspapers are obsolete.
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It's no one's fault, really, it's just that newspapers are obsolete.
I'd in general agree.
Unfortunately, low reportage is correlated with a mass of social ills (increase corruption for one), so I suspect this development is not welfare-improving in the long run.
On the other hand, we do save a few bucks each month.
Re:Research (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that newspapers, having long since been consolidated into massive cartels, don't have any interest in reporting social ills, since the owners of those cartels benefit from the status quo. Why would I pay Murdoch for his propaganda?
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Low quality food is practically free. It's cheaper to eat at McD's a lot of the time, and it's actually a potentially ser
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Professional journalism - that's what you get in science magazines and other magazines that aren't working with the daily news. The daily news articles runs stories that sell.
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The quick way to fame and fortune as a journalist is sensationalism and bias
ok, but this is just our cultural karma. say, any musician that seeks fame and fortune must go for canned commercial tunes and videoclips in the fashion of the moment. there's still a lot of musicians that won't get fame or fortune, but produce honest, original and good quality music.
the issue here was cost as in "time is money and if you have to produce 5-6 stories a day, it's just impossible to do them professionaly". a reporter might be sensationalist and even a bit biased and still take the time to do s
Re:Research (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Just like software developers get all the time in the world from their employers to make secure and bug free products, but they simple don't have any inclination and ability to do so.
Re:Research (Score:5, Interesting)
I would go a layer deeper to see what drives lowering journalist integrity... to find that the audience prefers misinfotainment over news. They demand entertainment over learning. Illusion over reality.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps someone should make a few Wikipedia edits to implant the recently-discovered fact that 'journalists are generally lazy'. How long would it be before these implants are referenced?
Re:Research (Score:5, Insightful)
I am old enough to remember a day when the news was actually just that... News.... No opinion mixed in. Just the facts. When opinion was offered, usually after the real news, it was labeled as such.
Then media consolidation happened, the fairness doctrine was tossed and newsrooms nationwide were expected to turn a profit. It is that, not the audience, that caused the decline of in-depth reporting. It is expensive to actually check all the facts in a story. It takes time, money and more importantly sources willing to put the story out. In trying to compete with the Internet, broadcast TV and newspapers nationwide have a tough time beating the net to "the scoop". Lastly, corporations (read "advertisers") are the real ones dictating what the audience sees. You will never see a story about an advertiser because that would be biting the hand that feeds them.
I argue the last in-depth reporting really only happened when the Vietnam war brought the horrors of war to people's living room and the Watergate scandal opened people's eyes to government corruption. Since then, the government learned the lesson and wiped out all trace of regulation of what is supposed to be the watchdog of government itself.
Re:Research (Score:5, Insightful)
What, a time before Crocknight lied every night about the Vietnam War because he wanted us out of it? Before the a CIA agent who wanted Nixon out used a of couple newspaper reporters as tools to accomplish his political agenda? Before 5 steady years of wartime propaganda to keep morale up on the home front? Before the press conspired to hide the fact the president was a Polio victim who couldn't walk? Was there ever actually a golden age when the press wasn't just politics? I doubt it. Oh, the political agenda changes from generation to generation, but that's about it.
The only part of the paper you can believe is the sports section. I doubt it's ever been different.
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Re:Research (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I don't believe it's possible - or at best, unbelievably difficult - for someone to present information without bias. In terms of political coverage especially, I'd wager the chances dwindle down much closer to zero. If you don't notice a bias, then you're either not paying attention, or perhaps are in general agreement with the bias being shown, and as such, it tends to appear "neutral" to you (i.e. 'hey, that's just common sense, right?').
There's bias in choosing how to label things in stories, and there's bias in which stories are reported and which stories are not. For instance, if you typically only report scandals of political opponents but not your own favored party, even if you're only reporting the facts, there's still a bias there. I do think the bias in reporting used to be less overt than today, but I think it's always been there to some extent. Human nature doesn't change so easily.
The fairness doctrine perhaps made sense in a day when our information choices were limited (I'd still argue against it in principle, as I think it stomps all over the first amendment). But we live in the information age, and no one can seriously claim that a person doesn't have access to a wide range of differing political commentary from a vast network of different sources - not just traditional media, but new media as well. Much of it shallow and repeated, true, but we have access to much more of the raw information in more of a peer to peer fashion, and don't have to rely on what the traditional media is reporting.
I'm not quite old enough to remember the Vietnam and Watergate years, but I certainly do remember the pre-internet media days. For all it's faults, I'll take today's information age any day, even if the mass media has fallen quite a bit in stature and relevance. What we've gained, IMO, more than makes up for it.
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There is a big difference between bias and pure opinion. Today opinion is quite often reported as fact. It is the difference between what is reported (bias) and how it is reported (opinion).
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I am having difficulty understanding how giving opposing views on an issue or news item in any way hinders free speech. If anything it enhances it giving the intended audience a broader understanding of an issue. Without it echo chambers such as Fox News and MSNBC exist in a vacuum polarizing even further their respective audience.
It's pretty simple. That law was, in essence, the government mandating how to distribute political speech, and defining what's "fair" or "opposing views". Even if the intentions are good, it's in direct contradiction to the first amendment, at least from my perspective. Why should we give the government control over our media's political content (especially nowadays, with nearly unlimited mass media capabilities)? That seems incredibly dangerous to me. The entire point of the first amendment is to prot
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I am having difficulty understanding how giving opposing views on an issue or news item in any way hinders free speech.
Expressing even the idea that alternatives are possible fundamentally spreads those ideas and may even legitimize them in the minds of some. This is my issue with most of our civil rights laws as well, they should be unconstitutional. In order for Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Association to have any real meaning you also need Freedom from Speech and Freedom from association.
Liberals agree with this principle when its something they support like anti-nationalism, lefties will be happy to show up and de
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Then media consolidation happened, the fairness doctrine was tossed and newsrooms nationwide were expected to turn a profit. It is that, not the audience, that caused the decline of in-depth reporting.
Regardless of the merits of the fairness doctrine, by the mid 80's when it was repealed, it was NOT ensuring a non-biased media.
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I am old enough to remember a day when the news was actually just that... News.... No opinion mixed in. Just the facts. When opinion was offered, usually after the real news, it was labeled as such.
Then media consolidation happened, the fairness doctrine was tossed and newsrooms nationwide were expected to turn a profit.
You've hit the nail on the head. If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading Flat Earth News [amazon.co.uk]. It covers how the new owners of news organisations increasingly cared more about sales (and advertising) than real news, cut their journalist head count (especially serious investigative journalists), and now get most of their content from a handful of agencies (which is why you see the same stories, often word-for-word, in multiple outlets).
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I think this is subtly reflected in the film "The Illusionist".
Even though one has in his possession a machine which can duplicate people, the owner of the machine realizes it's value is in what the audience desires. So he takes a technical marvel and presents it safely to the audience as a polished magic trick.
People want the entertainment and they want to feel smart. Infotainment provides both, but when they have to exert themselves, you don't have a captive audience, so it's mostly entertainment. Once
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How do we know what the audience "prefers?" Simple: the "industry association" of propagandists hires Nielson to poll a carefully-chosen selection of the most brain-dead, white-bread Americans to decide whether they prefer the misinfotainment perpetrated by propagandist A or the misinfotainment perpetrated by propagandist B. (Seeing a broadcast of actual facts isn't a choice, of course, so exactly nobody "prefers" it.)
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And the culprit is (Score:4, Interesting)
Wikipedia. The journalist with "less and less time" are never to blame.
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What a shock. The "Encyclopedia that anyone can edit!" is regularly edited to have biased, incorrect, or even libelous information.
And then everyone is shocked when lazy people treat Wikipedia as an actual vetted information source.
Re:And the culprit is (Score:4, Interesting)
I've lied on Wikipedia, but only one time, and in a harmless-fun manner (normally I'm only produtive and helpful). It was about a thing that's virtually unknown where I live. They had a list of what the object in question is called in different languages, and I added an entry for my language which means basically "WhatTheHeckIsThis?" Because so many sources copy Wikipedia, now whenever I search for the "WhatTheHeckIsThis" term on Google Images, I find tons of pictures of the object in question - from people selling them, people discussing them, etc. Imagine searching on say ebay and seeing someone advertise something as a "WhatTheHeckIsThis?" in your language. lol.
Sorry..... I know, one shouldn't lie to Wikipedia. But someone will notice it eventually, get a good laugh, correct it, and no harm done. Unless the joke goes too far, wherein one day I may walk into a store and see the object in question being sold and listed as a "WhatTheHeckIsThis?", having been marketed as that by a foreign seller or a fellow countryman who found the joke funny. Which also would be great, lol.
Re:And the culprit is (Score:4, Interesting)
Wikipedia is full of factual inaccuracies, it gets even worse the closer you come to articles on politics or popular culture. Then the neutrality goes right out the window because someone, somewhere is always carrying an agenda. I think my current favorite is the #gamergate article where the founder of wikipedia has stepped in because a particular subset of users and ultra-leftwing feminists skewed the neutrality so badly that even he could spot it. Couple that with a particular senior editor having done nearly 25% of the edits and breaking the neutrality rule, it's now led him down the path where people on both sides of the spectrum want him stripped of the ability to edit at all.
Re:And the culprit is (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in 2005, Wikipedia was studied for accuracy against the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And they were found to be about the same. Since then Wikipedia has improved a lot, and they've stopped printing the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Whilst Wikipedia can suffer from malicious or prankerster edits, it's balanced out by the fact that it's up to date, and a printed encyclopedia is always years out of date. Even when a new edition comes out, most articles won't have been touched.
Wikipedia could be improved, and the problem to tackle is anonymity. There's really no good reason for allowing anonymous edits. It's not a free speech issue. After that, one could work on ensuring that the editors who adopt certain pages as their own are actually qualified to be reasonably knowledgable about that thing, and not just the people most prepared to jump in and edit most often.
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Back in 2005, Wikipedia was studied for accuracy against the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And they were found to be about the same. Since then Wikipedia has improved a lot, and they've stopped printing the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The 2005 "study" comparing Britannica and Wikipedia was not a rigorous peer-reviewed study, and they only looked at articles on relatively obscure science topics [wikipediocracy.com] – a fact that no one seems to remember these days. The average Wikipedia vandal would not even know how to find an entry on a topic like the “kinetic isotope effect” or “Meliaceae” (two of the articles they looked at).
The assertion that Wikipedia is as reliable as Britannica is ludicrous. Granted, it's a lot bigger
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You complain about the lack of peer review on the study, then with no evidence whatsoever, only your hunch, you assert that Britannica is superior.
has articles on breaking news stories... did not contain false information inserted by anonymous people for fun
I already covered the very different ways ways the two encyclopedias are inaccurate in my post.
It's no meme. You disbelieving the study doesn't make it so.
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Secondly, it is a matter of record that Nature only examined science articles, many of them quite specialised [wikipediocracy.com]. It is inexcusable to omit that qualification. There simply is no evidence at all that Wikipedia is superior to Britannica in other topic areas, and copious evidence within Wikipedia itself of how often articles are biased by special interest groups (just look at the history of Wikipedia a
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You keep on repeating my point that the category of errors that are in Wikipedia and Britannica are different as if it's making your case for you. No one is denying that vandalism and deliberately false information are amongst Wikipedias main source of defects. Nor is anyone denying that having less coverage and being out of date is the main source of Britannica's.
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At least say that based on a small sample of articles, a journalistic news report in Nature opined that Wikipedia's science articles were only slightly less reliable than Britannica's, but considerably less well-written, and that Britannica contested those results. That would be the truth, rather than the meme. Mkay?
Your point about the hazards of anonymous contributions is well taken.
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"Meme: A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another."
That is NOT a description of what's happening here. It's not a virally spreading idea. I made mention of 2005 study. And I know that not because of a chain of repeats, but because I remember the report from the time, and looked it up.
It is NOT a meme. And you not agreeing with the study doesn't make it a meme, regardless of whether your skepticism is valid
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That is NOT a description of what's happening here. It's not a virally spreading idea.
Sorry to interject in your debate with this other user, but yeah -- actually, this IS a virally spreading INACCURATE idea, i.e., that Wikipedia is "almost as good as" or "just as good as" or (in some sources) "even better than" Britannica in terms of accuracy, on the basis of this particular study.
I made mention of 2005 study. And I know that not because of a chain of repeats, but because I remember the report from the time, and looked it up.
A meme is a meme if it is a meme. Whether or not you personally have learned of this information through subsequent viral spreading is irrelevant to whether it is, in fact, a meme or not. If you happen to post a
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Like the other poster you are asserting it's a meme with nothing more than your gut feeling to say it is. It's Not a meme, it's a citation of a study from 2005.
The empty accusation that I haven't read it does nothing to further your opinion either.
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I looked up a German Theologian the other day.
A nameless one apparently.
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The study was flawed, you now know that now as two people have dissected it for you.
Two slashdot posters being of the same mind does not make them right.
Frankly you deserve WP: the world's largest dump of unreliable facts for use by idiots.
WP is used by everyone, including academics.
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The problems are worse, but it has better coverage of Sailor Moon.
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Improved how?
It's had 9 years more input. Which means vastly more topics, and more editing of the existing ones.
No thanks to whiny anonymous cowards who criticise people who actually created something.
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Journalists have less time... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Reading wikipedia, I think.
Re:Journalists have less time... (Score:5, Informative)
developing the complex work of fiction they want to portray as news, it takes some time to make an elaborate and convincing lie
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Hardly; it's spoon-fed to them by the 'news' organisation up the chain.
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"...because they're busy doing what?"
ebola. ebola. EBOLA!
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Covering the beats of the four co-workers who were let go, mostly.
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...because they're busy doing what?
Collecting unemployment checks.
Re:Journalists have less time... (Score:4, Interesting)
Doing nothing. Having less time doesn't necessarily mean they have more to do, it can also mean that turnaround times have been drastically reduced - while 20 years ago a journalist had until the evening news or the late edition print run (or early edition) to break a news story, with everyone else working on the same basis, today you have people checking news sites hourly, getting push updates, and a lot more discussion going on. Minutes can matter to news networks these days, as its the difference between breaking it first or second.
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Minutes can matter to news networks these days, as its the difference between breaking it first or second.
Which is silly since the difference between first and last is thirty seconds at most. First used to mean something back when papers came out once a day. A full day's lead time on an important story means everyone buys your paper that day. Today, I'd rather pay attention to a news service that checks sources and gets the story right than one that "had it first".
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Not to mention that it was a lot more obvious who was copying and who was not. Ever hear the expression "yesterday's news"? Well that was whatever they read in a competitor's paper yesterday and printed as news today. Today I'm sure they all have watcher services on each other, for every article posted they have someone evaluate whether they can run a copycat article. And I don't mean that in terms of copyright infringement, but just knowing that some event happened and is newsworthy they can write their ow
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Ever hear the expression "yesterday's news"?
That was a brand of cat litter I used about 20 years ago, it was made out of recycled newspaper and I always liked the name. Looks like they still make it, I wonder how long before it gets discontinued due to a lack of raw materials.
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Most of them are busy not being employed as journalists, since no one wants to pay for the news or even see ads. The few journalists left with jobs are swamped with work. The common modern problem: people demand more for less, get it, and complain that quality has gone in the shitter.
Re:Journalists have less time... (Score:5, Interesting)
...because they're busy doing what?
At first I read this comment as throwaway snark about listicles and the like, but then it raised for me a pretty interesting question:what evidence do we have that current reporting is less rigourous than it was in the past?.
I recently looked up the newspaper from the day after I was born and found it full of trivial stuff (except my birth announcement of course!) and articles that looked like they uncritically repeated what one source had told them. I am not sure the quality of reporting, in reality, was ever any better than now.
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I think there have always been low-budget reporting. The problem seems to be that today there is much less high-budget reporting.
Re:Journalists have less time... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want evidence that current journalism is worse than previous generations, just look at the number of absurd hoaxes that get reported as fact. Back when it took a little effort to gather information, people took it more seriously.
There have always been hoaxes, small and large. I'm just saying I haven't seen any study (though I would hope such a study exists) showing if the quality has gone up or down or is unchanged. My comment (and yours) are simply anecdote.
A sense of declinism (things were better "in the old days") has been a recurring theme for millennia.
Deciding what not to report... (Score:2)
...because it might put favored liberal policies or politicians in a bad light. That's why Sharyl Attkisson resigned [politico.com].
Journalists? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody does any investigative journalism anymore. They take press releases, talking-points, and pre-packaged bits from government agencies and NGOs and tag them with an open and close bit by a local anchor and that's it.
Look at your average idiot on Tumblr. That is the quality of the average "journalist". Actually, pick a random Tumblr user and they probably *are* a "journalist".
Also, so what? We've already decided you can say whatever you want about whoever you want on the internet and that's okay. No recourse. Look at Rip Off Report or Yelp or that site that "shames" ex boyfriends. If all of that is fair game, why shouldn't wikipedia be?
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There are plenty of journalists doing good investigate journalism. Look at Pro Publica.
It's just the old-guard media organizations--ABC, The Washington Post, etc--that have cut back. The American public was blessed for 40 years in that the large media outlets did pretty decent investigative journalism. Far from perfect and unbiased, but still rather good. It was an anomaly. Now we're back to the way things were for nearly 200 years in terms of the commercial media. But with sites like Pro Publica, etc, at l
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The content is obviously left leaning. But it's well researched and quite professional. AFAIK, there's no journalistic ethic that says you need to publish articles for conservative interests along with those for liberal interests.
I also like the Financial Times, which is generally conservative (not American Conservative, but conservative nonetheless). And they do decent reporting as well. I also read the South China Morning Post.
Grow up.
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The content is obviously left leaning. But it's well researched and quite professional. AFAIK, there's no journalistic ethic that says you need to publish articles for conservative interests along with those for liberal interests.
I wouldn't know Pro Publica from a hole in the wall of a newspaper building, but there is a difference between publishing well-researched articles though only those that favor your leanings, and publishing tripe for the sake of publishing. The first are still informative even if they aren't want you would like the reality to be, while the second makes you question anything such an organisation publishes. This all assumes one really is a critical thinker since too many people who claim to be are not.
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Warning: Pro Publica is a site for leftists posing as journalists.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
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Nobody does any investigative journalism anymore.
What's the incentive? The whole world is on this *kill the messenger* bent. What does honest reporting get you? A lot of grief, that's what. It sure doesn't pay the rent...
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There would seem to be few benefits to bothering with actual investigative journalism, anymore and a lot of negatives.
One problem is that it is simply easier *not to*.
If you watch media closely enough you will see countless "news stories" that are not only covering the same topic and doing so from the same perspective, but using the same catch phrases and identical story titles and blurbs. There are so many places out there (the government not the least of which) who will gladly provide you with free pre-pa
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Maybe they don't because it's getting dangerous: Hastings [wikipedia.org]
Citogenesis (Score:1)
obligatory link [xkcd.com]
Don't dis Wikipedia (Score:2)
Without it I would've never learned about CmdrTaco's role in the My Lai Massacre.
Your past will eventually catch up with you, Mr. Malda...
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Oh you kids... What do they teach you guys in school these days?
My Lai Massacre [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:3)
Citogenesis! (Score:3)
Seems legit [xkcd.com]
ObColbert (Score:1)
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/z1aahs/the-word---wikiality [cc.com]
Wikipedia is sometimes wrong (Score:5, Informative)
As an experiment, I added a spurious and incorrect fact to an obscure wikipedia article, complete with a reference to a document which did not support the claim. It took years before my edit was noticed and reversed.
This only works with obscure articles. The more obscure the article, the less it's checked. If you try inserting something spurious into the page on Obama it will be reversed in about 5 minutes.
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That's not an experiment, that's vandalism.
Re:Wikipedia is sometimes wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not an experiment, that's vandalism.
Exactly. As one of the people who spends time cleaning up stuff like that, it's seriously annoying. Fortunately, the tools for automatic jerk identification are improving.
The paid editors are even worse. But they have a recognizable editing pattern; they write PR-type prose. Self-promotion on Wikipedia used to be mostly from garage bands. Now it's more corporate. (Also, the self-promoting garage bands have been replaced by self-promoting DJs.)
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If that were true, you wouldn't be able to post on slashdot.
It was a legitimate experiment to an extremely obscure article, and it had no serious negative consequences.
Promoters of wikipedia frequently claim that the source is highly accurate because inaccuracies are rapidly corrected. If they make claims like that, it's legitimate to test whether
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No, it works with non-controversial subjects. Pick an article on a subject that's not obscure and als
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No, it works with non-controversial subjects. Pick an article on a subject that's not obscure and also not particularly controversial - for example, common household substances, typical garden flowers, etc. - and read a few of the citations.
You'll be surprised how many don't support - or, in some cases, don't even relate to - the associated statement in the Wikipedia article. Most of it is stuff that is "common knowledge" that is false - but some authors/editors are so sure of its truth that they cite anything vaguely related to back up the common belief.
Authors and journalists today are for the most part of extremely low caliber. I recently came across a blog by a guy who works at a Washington think tank. This guy regularly posts blogs where he discusses the dangers of Islam. He calls himself an expert on radical militant Islam and is in the process of publishing a book on the subject. This blog post of his contained a long tirade about how Islam is a religion of murder and intolerance and how it is a danger to all of the rest of human civilization. As a p
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Unfortunately, it also works with controversial subjects if the article is obscure enough.
I recently came across a page about a fringe crackpot group which included highly inflated membership estimates (in the millions of members, rather than a more accurate estimate of about 300 members). Since the group was very obscure, the incorrect claim had persisted for years. The only people monitoring the page appeared to be group members.
Citation needed (Score:1)
Which is why Wikipedia is better (Score:3, Informative)
In the good old days, people also wrote nonsense and published it and it was repeated over and over until everyone accepted it as the truth (the story of George Washington and the cherry tree is an example familiar to most Americans). Wikipedia is no different, except that it has an audit trail: now you can see where and when a specific statement came from. With older media, this is seldom possible.
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You can trace down the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, too. I'm not sure about the one about him throwing a half dollar over the Potomac.
Children will be children! (Score:1)
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Disclaimer: Not saying this LinkedIn page is him, but it could be.
Which puts you on the same level as all those trashy journalists and shady talkshow hosts:
Here are the "facts". We don't know if they are true. But you be the judge of that
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IIRC from my school years, when the Spaniards landed in the new world, the Indians already had dogs, but not horses. If this is correct, as I assume, at least one of your assertions is factually inaccurate, unless you push "native dogs" back 10,000 years or more. It would be almost like saying Australia had no native dogs. Sort of a weird use of the language, even if defensible if you specify what you mean.
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