Wikipedia and getting your facts straight
October 5th, 2007Posted by Laura Oliver in Online Journalism
It seems almost too obvious to point out, but journalists using Wikipedia should remember that you can’t always believe what you read in an online encyclopaedia.
As an article in The Register shows, many hacks fell foul of this caveat in writing the obituary for composer Ronnie Hazlehurst this week.
It claims The Guardian, The Times, BBC News, The Independent, Reuters and The Stage all (though we can only find it in two) carried obits wrongly stating that Hazlehurst c0-wrote the song ‘Reach’ for pop group S Club – a ‘fact’ lifted straight from the Wiki site and which has now been removed. Lazy journalism or a forgivable mistake?
Tags: BBC, online encyclopaedia, pop group, reuters, Ronnie Hazlehurst, S Club, The Guardian, The Times
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October 5th, 2007 at 11:21 am
[...] Danny Sullivan wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerptIt seems almost too obvious to point out, but journalists using Wikipedia should remember that you can’t always believe what you read in an online encyclopaedia. As an article in The Register shows, many hacks fell foul of this caveat … [...]