As an experiment, Irish sociology student Shane Fitzgerald posted a made-up quote without attribution on a recently deceased composer's Wikipedia page.
The sham quote was caught and removed from the site within hours by volunteer editors, but not before many mainstream news outlets blatantly plagiarized the quote straight from Wikipedia without citing the source, including
"The Guardian of Britain, [which] became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia."
At least the Guardian 'fessed up and apologized. The other newsies either quietly deleted the reference without a retraction or have left the mistake in place on their own sites, even after Fitzgerald let them know that they had been punked:
"while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin."
Fitzgerald deserves an A and a pat on the back for exposing this sort of inexcusable laziness on the part of so-called "professional" journalists.
And we're supposed to feel terrible that newspapers are rapidly going the way of buggy whips?
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It's not just the MSM - I've taken classes where the prof told students that they couldn't use Wikipedia or similar websites as sources for research papers, and students (not just the fresh-out-of-high-school variety, either) groaned.
Of course, those groans were nothing compared to the screams that were heard when the prof gave out Fs to those students who ignored the "no wikis" rule.
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