A criticisms of the Internet by traditional and corporate media is that the net is full of inaccuracies and cannot be trusted. The implication, and often the stated position, is that corporate media are "professionals" and provide a much more reliable service than mere amateurs.

The reality is different as anyone knows who has ever been reported in corporate media, or found an article about something in which they are well informed. The media always get something wrong, perhaps a detail that annoys, often a misunderstanding of the issue, editing that distorts the facts or just plain misquotation that makes a nonsense of what you have said or done.

Yet we tend to believe that all the rest of the paper, news bulletin etc is wholly accurate and a moment's thought will show that is not justified. Now Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald has provided a lens into how the media gets it so wrong, so often.

They don't follow their own advice. via Student hoaxes world's media with fake Wiki quote - web - Technology.

He posted a poetic but phoney quote on Wikipedia to test how our globalised, 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 made-up 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 US blogs and newspaper websites in Britain, Australia and India.

They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an email and the corrections began.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said on Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

But the key to the internal mindset of traditional media organisations is next.

[...] So far,

1. The Guardian and the Herald are among the only publications to make a public mea culpa,
2. while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version -
3. or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.

The reality is that paid journalists are under ever increasing pressure to deliver fast, first and full on while being denied the actual resources they need both to meet those demands and sustain a professional standard.

The difference with the internet is that there is always someone watching who knows the facts and if they can watch, they also have the tools to correct.  Wikipedia editors are just one of guardians at the gates of misinformation, there are plenty of others with blogs, twitter accounts and websites to argue the issue.

(For a fascinating look inside Wikipedia and how it works, check last weekend's interview between Kim Hill and Andrew Lih an administrator of the English edition of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, and author of The Wikipedia Revolution)

The real lesson of the information revolution is that we don't have to trust anyone blindly and we have the tools to check their facts or opinions always at hand. We can also find all their published statements on any particular topic and stack them up against each other, always good for a laugh.

• Do you correct and debate online the issues you understand?
• How do you do that?
• How much of your organisational time goes into defending your position?
• Does it pay off?

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