Mainstream media falls for fake Wikipedia hoax
We couldn’t have timed the launch of our Wikipedia monitoring service WikiAlarm better. This week the mainstream media has been embarrassed after quotes they published in an obituary were revealed as a hoax.
“When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head,” Oscar-winning French composer Maurice Jarre once said, according to several newspapers reporting his death in March.
However, the quotation was invented by an Irish student who posted it on the Wikipedia website in a hoax designed to show the dangers of relying too heavily on the Internet for information.
Shane Fitzgerald made up quotes and entered them on Wikipedia — an encyclopedia edited by users — immediately after Jarre’s death was first reported on March 30.
The Guardian also had to edit the content of their obituary.
Imagine if somebody had written some fake information about a company and lots of newspapers published it? Anybody with a Wikipedia page needs to monitor it every single day because these events are all too common.
Post category: Social Media Tweet
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 6 comments below, or add your own!
It all started from here http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft/status/1708810017
The media getting things wrong is nothing new.
Most articles published by the mainstream media contain inaccuracies. You only realise this though when you read an article on a topic you have an indepth knowledge of.
This can be expected though as Journalists can’t possible be experts on all the topics they write about.
I agree with John that “mainstream media contains inaccuracies”, however, for an online business to have misinformation posted about it’s brand this can be detrimental.
The Wiki Alarm is a very cool resource, I would also urge online brands to set up brand name (and brand name derivatives) monitoring. Google Alerts is a great place to start and will make it easy for you to see what is being said about your company across the web.
Thanks for sharing,
Karl
i do agree with this post
Agreed wiki has errors. The beauty is that correction is a snappy affair. As wiki reliability levels increase mainstream journalism will use it increasingly. And who said mainstream journalism doesn’t contain errors.? Given the time lines under to which mainstream journalists have to adhere to they follow the dictum ‘publish and be damned’.
The Wikipedia misinformation trap has been around for a looooong time, but it can get more insidious than the above example. As Wikipedia relies on attribution and corroboration, once a mainstream news outlet publishes something erroneously entered on Wikipedia as fact, that reference can then be used to corroborate the initial Wikipedia entry in a misinformation feedback loop of potentially catastrophic proportions. Journos are loath to mention Wikipedia as their source when lifting info from it, meaning that they are often seen as independent validation for the lie. In this case, the hoaxer came forward, exposing the mistake. But what if he hadn’t? What if the newspaper mentions fed back into the Wikipedia article?
There is terrible potential to cause serious damage either unwittingly or maliciously. In fact, there is a suggestion that just such a feedback loop was partially responsible for Wall Street being blinded to the potential collapse of their lending practices and the financial newspapers failing to report the true risks.
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May 8, 2009 at 1:44pm