PRESENT TENSE:GOOD OLD Wikipedia: the byword for the democratisation of information - and a byword for just how unreliable information can be. It should come with one of those small print warnings: "This site is for entertainment purposes only."
Wikipedia, and journalists' supposed reliance on it, came up again this week thanks to Shane Fitzgerald, a sociology and economics student at UCD. He carried out an experiment at the end of March, when he heard of the composer Maurice Jarre's death and placed a false quote on the musician's Wikipedia entry in the hope that it would be picked up by the world's media.
This was only the second-most innovative aspect to the prank. The greatest display of imagination came in the quote itself: "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head and that only I can hear."
That's quite convincing, unless you take one thing into consideration: it makes no sensewhatsoever. A waltz only he can hear? After he dies? This was its brilliance: it was vague, artful and just nonsensical enough to sound like something a French composer might say.
That it got picked up by a newspaper as influential as the Guardianprobably helped it get so widely distributed. But it was helped by how that newspaper is so refreshingly open in acknowledging and explaining its errors. All newspapers should be so candid. It's endearing and it builds trust with readers. And it reminds you that even the most conscientious newspapers make mistakes. Every day. Sometimes several times a day.
However, this was not simply about a mistake, but about using a source that everyone turns to but no one should rely on. Wikipedia, after all, specialises in the repeated use of the phrase "citation needed".
But does Fitzgerald's experiment tell us anything we don't already know about journalism? No. Wikipedia has been a problem for journalists for some time now. Google has been a problem for longer. And not just in how easy the web makes it to pick up wrong information, but in how long that wrong information lives on and how a reporter's honest (or not so honest) mistakes can live on for years afterwards.
I've been there. A few years ago, I wrote of how the made-up Star Treklanguage of Klingon had more speakers than the Native American language Navajo. In the hunt for a snappy statistic, this did the trick. Except that it had been a story made up by satirical website The Onion. I don't know what the Klingon for idiot is - hold on, a Google search tells me it's toDsaH- but the mistake was not one I want mentioned when I get a Pulitzer.
In modern journalism, the temptation to lean on Google is huge. There's amazement among younger journalists about how their predecessors survived without the web; how they got their facts straight. The answer to the first part, of course, is that they worked the phones, used an office library and got out of their chairs and went to the source. The answer to the second is that they didn'tget their facts straight. Not always, anyway. The media has long been riddled with half-truths, untruths, cover-ups, propaganda, exaggeration and an insidious repetition of falsehoods. Do some research of newspapers from the pre-Google days and you'll realise this quickly.
Why do journalists sometimes make mistakes and rely on unreliable sources? Because they're human, and people do it everyday. If you live in a small town, you'll have a particular appreciation for it. If you spend much of your life online, you'll understand it even more, because on the web, false information doesn't just thrive, it often forms the solid foundations of weak conspiracy theories.
Journalists are supposed to be above that. They're supposed to be scrupulous. Many are. Some are not. Some try hard but make rare lapses. It was always thus. Wikipedia - and the web generally - offers only greater opportunity to repeat false information, in a world where more information is demanded, and demanded now. And yet, Wikipedia is a handy resource. It's often a useful starting point or detour during research. You just can't rely on it. Fitzgerald's experiment made for an interesting story, and while it's unfair to generalise from it, the result was not entirely surprising.
Still, in a world where it's easy to be tempted by easy information, it should be noted by those hoping to go into journalism. Those of us already in the job shouldn't need to be taught it.
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shegarty@irishtimes.com
