The Irony: Reuters Slams Wikipedia's Credibility, Issues Own Correction
Posted by junger - 07/10/06 at 07:07:14 pmThe most classic part of this whole Wikipedia-Ken Lay-Reuters story (as described here and here) is the fact that the original Reuters story, which said Lay's death "underscored the challenges facing online encyclopaedia Wikipedia," contained a major error. As posted on the story:
Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The death of former Enron Corp. chief Ken Lay on Wednesday underscored the challenges facing online encyclopaedia Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/), which as the news was breaking offered a variety of causes for his death.
Lay, 64, died of an apparent heart attack, according to a pastor at the Lay family's church in Houston. It was six weeks after a jury found him guilty of fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history. A family spokeswoman said that Lay passed away early on Wednesday morning in Aspen.
Now that's all fine and dandy, but it seems like Ken Lay's death prompted confusion at Reuters, also. Here's the correction:
Corrects and recasts paragraph two to show that a spokeswoman for the Lay family did not give the cause of Lay's death. It was given by another source.
So Wikipedia can get confused because inital reports were varied about the cause of Lay's death, but Reuters can't even identify who gave them the information they used in their report?
And journalism has sunk to a new low.
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[...] I was thinking of titling this as Reuters Sucks, but decided that would be too harsh. As I was reading Slashdot tonight, I saw this: Reuters offers correction to Wikipedia slam. junger writes "Reuters put out a hit piece on Wikipedia, saying that the encyclopedia wasn't credible in 'covering' the breaking news of the death of Enron's Ken Lay, but then Reuters has to correct their own story because they couldn't properly identify one of their sources." [...]
Pingback by Reuters stinks at Elliot Lee — July 13, 2006 #
That was an intriguing read. Why no comments on this post? Did you disable them?
Comment by Elliot — July 13, 2006 #
You know what, Wikipedia is not a news site. You should check the article on Lay in a few weeks/months/years.
That said, I think editors should wait with posting new facts until they are sure about the information.
Comment by Mike — July 13, 2006 #
That is the most ridiculous overstatement I've heard in months. Journalists are human and can make minor mistakes, which is precisely what misquoting a source is. Journalists are not given free reign to deface an article just for half a second of infamy.
I think if you truly cared about Wikipedia and this open-editing movement in general, you might agree with Reuters and propose some solutions or ideas about ways that Wikipedia could combat article vandalism, particularly during unfolding current events.
Comment by Jason — July 13, 2006 #
"And journalism has sunk to a new low."
That's a little too strong, don't you think?
Comment by Joe — July 13, 2006 #
Comments are definitely not turned off — just a bunch of drive-by viewers, I guess!
Comment by junger — July 13, 2006 #
Joe — the statement is obviously tongue-in-cheek, as the entire situation is filled with irony.
Jason — first off, I'm not a full-fledged Wikipedian. It's obviously a revolutionary idea, and I'm a big fan of the site, but the wiki format in general is not something I'm particularly passionate about.
That being the case, as an informed observer, there's a ridiculous level of irony when a news organization, especially one that feels threatened by a non-news site, slams the site for making mistakes, then has to correct one of their own.
Of course journalists are human beings — away from the computer, I'm a journalist (and, obviously, a human). Mistakes happen, but the timing and circumstance of this one make it too laughable to pass up.
Comment by junger — July 13, 2006 #
Wikipedia sucks. It is revisionist history written by large corporations, governments, and dumb kids. Each of these malicious sources have either large resources or unlimited free time to spend censoring anything they don't want other people to know.
Why isn't the Manning Memo in the US-Iraq war article in Wikipedia? Cause the U.S. government doesn't want people to know about it.
NPOV means whitewashing history. If Wikipedia was around in 1938, it would revert any edits that mentioned the holocust because it's not NPOV.
Comment by Tom Jefferson — July 13, 2006 #
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo
Comment by MrCopilot — July 13, 2006 #
Does anyone know what the Encyclopedia Britanica article on Ken Lay says? How many minutes did it take before they updated all of their encyclopedias to reflect his death?
Comment by Kyle — July 13, 2006 #
[...] There are a group of folks who just love to criticize Wikipedia — usually because they want it to be something it's not. As long as people understand the methodology in creating Wikipedia entries, there's really no issue at all. That's why it seemed so bizarre last week, after reports of Ken Lay's death showed up, that Reuters ran what was a pretty useless article about how Ken Lay's Wikipedia changed rapidly after reports of his death came out — and some of those changes were somewhat different than the eventual story that came out. There's nothing particularly newsworthy there. Like any breaking story, some of the details may get confused at the beginning, but as the details become clearer the story gets crafted. Plenty of mainstream news stories have experienced the same exact thing. In fact… it happened in this very Reuters article. Slashdot points to someone who noticed the irony over the fact that Reuters needed to issue its very own correction on the story after it got its sources confused. What's even more ironic is, of course, that there are still plenty of versions of the uncorrected Reuters piece out there, but over at Wikipedia you can easily look back at the history yourself and see the corrections. So, where's Reuters breathless article on how Reuters' mistake "underscores the challenges" facing a news agency like Reuters "which as the news was breaking offered a variety of [sources] for [its story]"? [...]
Pingback by digital aesthetics» Blog Archive » Irony: Reuters Article Slamming Wikipedia For Corrections… Needs Correcting — July 16, 2006 #
[...] Maybe this might confuse you Reuters – SpiralFrog, a new online music service, said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement with EMI Music Publishing to authorize SpiralFrog's use of EMI's music catalog for legal downloading in the United States via SpiralFrog's advertising-supported service. Maybe this might help irony: Reuters Article Slamming Wikipedia For Corrections… Needs Correcting There are a group of folks who just love to criticize Wikipedia — usually because they want it to be something it's not. As long as people understand the methodology in creating Wikipedia entries, there's really no issue at all. That's why it seemed so bizarre last week, after reports of Ken Lay's death showed up, that Reuters ran what was a pretty useless article about how Ken Lay's Wikipedia changed rapidly after reports of his death came out — and some of those changes were somewhat different than the eventual story that came out. There's nothing particularly newsworthy there. Like any breaking story, some of the details may get confused at the beginning, but as the details become clearer the story gets crafted. Plenty of mainstream news stories have experienced the same exact thing. In fact… it happened in this very Reuters article. Slashdot points to someone who noticed the irony over the fact that Reuters needed to issue its very own correction on the story after it got its sources confused. What's even more ironic is, of course, that there are still plenty of versions of the uncorrected Reuters piece out there, but over at Wikipedia you can easily look back at the history yourself and see the corrections. So, where's Reuters breathless article on how Reuters' mistake "underscores the challenges" facing a news agency like Reuters "which as the news was breaking offered a variety of [sources] for [its story]"?.Did you know that Article means a particular part or subject; a specific matter or point. This will be worth your time giant PC Chip Merger: AMD Buys ATI (NewsFactor) NewsFactor – In a move that could impact the kinds of choices available to home and business PC users, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced yesterday that it was buying video chip maker, ATI, for $5.4 billion.Did you know that Giant means one that has no substance or importance; a nonentity: "A nothing is a dreadful thing to hold onto" (Edna O'Brien). This is also worth to check out [...]
Pingback by Bill Gates » SpiralFrog in music download deal with EMI Music (Reuters) — October 3, 2006 #
Don't understand the problem…Each is still just an current events site with historical data that couldn't be used for any kind of academic purposes so it is still a laymens site. Neither can be used for any creditable references.
Bob
Don Lapre Is Cool
bob@dec50th.com
Comment by Don Lapre Is Cool — December 19, 2006 #
So I want to know does any body else use wikipedia and what for?
what was the most informatibve artical you found there?
What was the wierdest one you found?
I use wikipedia mostly durring my lunch time at work to just read up on stuff. the most informative artical I found was on the mineing and refineing
process for copper (because I learned about the job I have, and got to show off to co-workers ;p) the most interesting was probably on cheese witch I
actualy e-mailed to my self so I could finish reading it after work.
oh well, got wiki?
Comment by Charlie — December 20, 2006 #
Being a writer on wikipedia I can atest to the fact that this site is one of the single best resources on the internet. I am amazed how quickly this site has become a tool for millions of visitors every day. It is breathtaking.
I live close to the St Petersburg Florida originator of Wiki and am proud to be a part of the team. Atleast a contributor.
Happy New Year folks!
Comment by James M — December 31, 2006 #
Comment by eric — January 17, 2007 #
the-irony-reuters-slams-wikipedias-credibility-issues-own-correction/
Comment by eric — January 17, 2007 #
Wikipedia is nothing more than a big clique. Sorry, no one is impressed by that.
Comment by Candice Brown — March 18, 2007 #