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How Spurious Wikipedia Edits Can Attach a Name To a Scandal, 35 Years On

Posted by timothy on from the same-complaint-that-the-dracula-family-has dept.

Andreas Kolbe (2591067) writes For more than six years, Wikipedia named an innocent man as a key culprit in the 1978/79 Boston College point shaving scandal. The name Joe Streater was inserted into Wikipedia by an anonymous user in August 2008. The unsourced insertion was never challenged or deleted, and over time, Streater became widely associated with the scandal through newspaper and TV reports as well as countless blogs and fan sites, all of which directly or indirectly copied this spurious fact from Wikipedia. Yet research shows that Streater, whose present whereabouts are unknown, did not even play in the 1978/79 season. Before August 2008, his name was never mentioned in connection with the scandal. As journalists have less and less time for in-depth research, more and more of them seem to be relying on Wikipedia instead, and the online encyclopedia is increasingly becoming a vector for the spread of spurious information.

8 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Research by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As journalists have less and less inclination and ability for in-depth research

    FTFY

    1. Re:Research by knightghost · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I would go a layer deeper to see what drives lowering journalist integrity... to find that the audience prefers misinfotainment over news. They demand entertainment over learning. Illusion over reality.

    2. Re:Research by penix1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      to find that the audience prefers misinfotainment over news. They demand entertainment over learning. Illusion over reality.

      I am old enough to remember a day when the news was actually just that... News.... No opinion mixed in. Just the facts. When opinion was offered, usually after the real news, it was labeled as such.

      Then media consolidation happened, the fairness doctrine was tossed and newsrooms nationwide were expected to turn a profit. It is that, not the audience, that caused the decline of in-depth reporting. It is expensive to actually check all the facts in a story. It takes time, money and more importantly sources willing to put the story out. In trying to compete with the Internet, broadcast TV and newspapers nationwide have a tough time beating the net to "the scoop". Lastly, corporations (read "advertisers") are the real ones dictating what the audience sees. You will never see a story about an advertiser because that would be biting the hand that feeds them.

      I argue the last in-depth reporting really only happened when the Vietnam war brought the horrors of war to people's living room and the Watergate scandal opened people's eyes to government corruption. Since then, the government learned the lesson and wiped out all trace of regulation of what is supposed to be the watchdog of government itself.

      --
      This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
    3. Re:Research by lgw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What, a time before Crocknight lied every night about the Vietnam War because he wanted us out of it? Before the a CIA agent who wanted Nixon out used a of couple newspaper reporters as tools to accomplish his political agenda? Before 5 steady years of wartime propaganda to keep morale up on the home front? Before the press conspired to hide the fact the president was a Polio victim who couldn't walk? Was there ever actually a golden age when the press wasn't just politics? I doubt it. Oh, the political agenda changes from generation to generation, but that's about it.

      The only part of the paper you can believe is the sports section. I doubt it's ever been different.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  2. Journalists? by Seumas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nobody does any investigative journalism anymore. They take press releases, talking-points, and pre-packaged bits from government agencies and NGOs and tag them with an open and close bit by a local anchor and that's it.

    Look at your average idiot on Tumblr. That is the quality of the average "journalist". Actually, pick a random Tumblr user and they probably *are* a "journalist".

    Also, so what? We've already decided you can say whatever you want about whoever you want on the internet and that's okay. No recourse. Look at Rip Off Report or Yelp or that site that "shames" ex boyfriends. If all of that is fair game, why shouldn't wikipedia be?

  3. Re:Journalists have less time... by maliqua · · Score: 5, Informative

    developing the complex work of fiction they want to portray as news, it takes some time to make an elaborate and convincing lie

  4. Re:Journalists have less time... by real+gumby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...because they're busy doing what?

    At first I read this comment as throwaway snark about listicles and the like, but then it raised for me a pretty interesting question:what evidence do we have that current reporting is less rigourous than it was in the past?.

    I recently looked up the newspaper from the day after I was born and found it full of trivial stuff (except my birth announcement of course!) and articles that looked like they uncritically repeated what one source had told them. I am not sure the quality of reporting, in reality, was ever any better than now.

  5. Re:And the culprit is by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Back in 2005, Wikipedia was studied for accuracy against the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And they were found to be about the same. Since then Wikipedia has improved a lot, and they've stopped printing the Encyclopedia Britannica.

    Whilst Wikipedia can suffer from malicious or prankerster edits, it's balanced out by the fact that it's up to date, and a printed encyclopedia is always years out of date. Even when a new edition comes out, most articles won't have been touched.

    Wikipedia could be improved, and the problem to tackle is anonymity. There's really no good reason for allowing anonymous edits. It's not a free speech issue. After that, one could work on ensuring that the editors who adopt certain pages as their own are actually qualified to be reasonably knowledgable about that thing, and not just the people most prepared to jump in and edit most often.