Irish Student Hoaxes World's Media with Fake Quote

Here's another reason why you should read and "believe" Wikipedia at your own risk. And considering that even the "established" media fell into this, one might want to consider even reading such sources with full caution.

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.

The sad thing here is that there are so many people who read Wikipedia and somehow accept what they read wholesale! There doesn't seem to be any more interest in the quality of one's sources of information anymore nowadays. It's all "convenience" at the expense of accuracy.

Zz.