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Hnery Cavill tsks reporter for using Wikipedia as a source
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 3:16 am
by NadirAli
Just what a reporter using Wikipedia needs. A celebrity to tell them
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mFcJVUZNRDA
Re: Hnery Cavill tsks reporter for using Wikipedia as a source
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2022 8:24 pm
by ericbarbour
Notes:
a) this interview was from some years ago. The Immortals film he played Theseus in was released in 2011.
b) It doesn't matter -- this "journalist" was a damn fool to use a WP article for his sole "reference". Sorry to report, thousands of working reporters all over the world are still using WP and treating it as "fully believable". Better organizations like the AP and NY Times have fact-checking departments. But the lower you get in the journalism "tower of blabber", the more likely you are to find people blindly trusting Wikipedia.
c) if the fact-checking departments in those major news organizations start using WP without some verification, we are DOOMED.
d) The
Theseus article currently states "Theseus is sometimes described as the son of Aegeus, King of Athens, and sometimes as the son of the god Poseidon. He was raised by his mother, Aethra, and when upon discovering his connection to Aegeus travels overland to Athens, having many adventures on the way. When he reaches Athens, he finds that Aegeus is married to Medea (formerly wife of Jason), who plots against him." That's vague, and since no one has proven that Theseus actually existed in the first place, the celebrity botherer in that video is skating on thin ice.
Re: Hnery Cavill tsks reporter for using Wikipedia as a source
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2022 6:20 am
by oranges33
ericbarbour wrote: ↑Tue Nov 15, 2022 8:24 pm
Notes:
a) this interview was from some years ago. The Immortals film he played Theseus in was released in 2011.
b) It doesn't matter -- this "journalist" was a damn fool to use a WP article for his sole "reference". Sorry to report, thousands of working reporters all over the world are still using WP and treating it as "fully believable". Better organizations like the AP and NY Times have fact-checking departments. But the lower you get in the journalism "tower of blabber", the more likely you are to find people blindly trusting Wikipedia.
c) if the fact-checking departments in those major news organizations start using WP without some verification, we are DOOMED.
d) The
Theseus article currently states "Theseus is sometimes described as the son of Aegeus, King of Athens, and sometimes as the son of the god Poseidon. He was raised by his mother, Aethra, and when upon discovering his connection to Aegeus travels overland to Athens, having many adventures on the way. When he reaches Athens, he finds that Aegeus is married to Medea (formerly wife of Jason), who plots against him." That's vague, and since no one has proven that Theseus actually existed in the first place, the celebrity botherer in that video is skating on thin ice.
I'm actually not aware of any media org outside NYTimes that does half-decent, sentence-by-sentence fact checking at all nowadays. I'm sure they exist, i've just never run across any in the last few years.
As far as asking the people they write about for comment, another thing journalists are supposed to do, I only know of Wa Post and NYTimes to do that on all their articles.
The 50k other news outlets on Google News, almost all of them, are just garbage
Re: Hnery Cavill tsks reporter for using Wikipedia as a source
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2022 6:25 am
by oranges33
most digital journo outlets just rehash a combination of wikipedia ledes and wire sources. They really need to drop their wikipedia addiction because it's not even a source.
Re: Hnery Cavill tsks reporter for using Wikipedia as a source
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2022 1:37 pm
by wexter
oranges33 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 16, 2022 6:25 am
most digital journo outlets just rehash a combination of wikipedia ledes and wire sources. They really need to drop their wikipedia addiction because it's not even a source.
Well, Wikipedia is "free" and wire sources are "cheap" compared to sending out reporters to find facts; and no effort is required to drive revenue. Quoting Wikipedia (which is known to be mostly wrong) and a wire (which cannot be verified) is a lazy and cheap way to generate revenue.
What is even funnier is that stuff originating from Wikipedia finds its way back to Wikipedia in a giant echo chamber.
Wikipedia (a product that goes around in circles in every conceivable way) claims to have a poultry 4600 {{Circular reference}}'s based on a tag.
The number has to be many a magnitude higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template: ... _reference
For tagging references that cite Wikipedia itself, a mirror or fork, or a republished work.