Student hoaxes world's media on Wikipedia

When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing 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 obituary-friendly quote – which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death on March 28 – flew straight on to dozens of US blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they'd swallowed his baloney whole.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said 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.

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, 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.

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "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 that only I can hear."

Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on internet sources – none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.

When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar- winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.

He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences. He noted that the Wikipedia listing on Jarre did not have any other strong quotes.

If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source – and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.

He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal who was solely to blame for their cut-and-paste content.

"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.

"It's worrying that the misinformation only came to light because the perpetrator of the deception emailed publishers to let them know what he'd done, and it's regrettable that he took nearly a month to do so," she wrote.

Fitzgerald said he had waited in part to test whether news organisations or the public would smoke out the quote's lack of provenance. He said he was troubled that none did.

And he warned that a truly malicious hoaxer could have evaded Wikipedia's own informal policing by getting a newspaper to pick up a false piece of information – as happened when his quote made its first of three appearances – and then use those newspaper reports as a credible footnote for the bogus quote.

"I didn't want to be devious," he said. "I just wanted to show how the 24-hour, minute-by-minute media were now taking material straight from Wikipedia because of the (More) Page 2 deadline pressure they're under."

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Gal   #15   02:55 pm May 13 2009

LOLOL! First of all it is clear (to me anyway0 that some people do not understand sarcasm:

FROM:::: "you're excused keith #6 01:41 pm May 12 2009

@ Keith: It means more on page two, you imbecile. The paranthesis has been added in as further explanation."

May I suggest "YOU'RE," STRONGLY SUGGEST TO YOU that before you go around correcting others you run spell check? LMAO!

Additionally, I SO APPRECIATE SHANE FITZGERALD.

I have had many thousands of debates over the so called "Scholar" of Wikipedia on more subjects than I can count. WIKIPEDIA is NOT a source to be trusted POINT, BLANK, PERIOD!

So many people think that just because they read it on Wikipedia it is the gospel truth! Wikipedia has it wrong more often than not. The ramifications of trusting ONLINE information and not implementing some other kind of follow-up on said information is just plain laziness if you ask me. All of a sudden many think they are genius because they read something online. LMAO!

In conclusion, what a brilliant thing you did there Shane. I love critical thinking and YOU are marvelous. (smiling big here) Maybe this will exact change that is so badly needed.

keith needs no excusing ****   #14   10:59 am May 13 2009

Are we to assume that the actual quote taken from this student was: "I just wanted to show how the 24-hour, minute-by-minute media were now taking material straight from Wikipedia because of the Page 2 deadline pressure they're under." and that the AP article added the word more for emphasis? What's a Page 2 deadline?? Is this a journalism term I am unfamiliar with...

OR

Did the author of the article absentmindedly (blindly) copy/paste to the end of one page, click over the the next, and start copying again without reading the paragraph he/she had just produced... as Keith pointed out. hmmmmmmmmmmm

Dylan   #13   08:05 am May 13 2009

Alex,

Perhaps the other website lifted the story straight from wikipedia, whilst Stuff waited until the story could be verified? ;P

Rob Woolley   #12   11:22 pm May 12 2009

Another example, if we needed one, of how poor the media really is and how so much of what we read now is not researched properly, misquoted or just written to get readership. My trust of media has gone, long live the truth (wherever it may be found).

Hogan   #11   09:52 pm May 12 2009

I don't get why he was so disturbed that, after a month, nobody had figured out it was a hoax. Who would have thought "hang on a minute, that doesn't sound like something The Jarrester would say" and then actually investigated an obituary?

Fail.

phil_style   #10   07:43 pm May 12 2009

Stuff (Fairfax), have you learned anything from this article?

Matthew   #9   03:48 pm May 12 2009

Unless "Page 2" is a reference to editorial oversight (which it may be, because editorials in the paper normally appear on the second page), perhaps Keith is right. To a lay reader, it does indeed seem like the text was copied from an electronic source spanning two pages and the link to the second page "(more) Page 2" was inadvertantly included.

Even if not, I still think the response and criticism in comment 7 was ill-considered and far to quick to insult.

Gravey   #8   03:14 pm May 12 2009

Just makes me think of the American Dad peanut butter conspiracy episode. Paraphrasing: "Where can we publish something that everybody will accept without question regardless of how ridiculous it is?" Cut to shot of computer screen, pull back to see "Wiki".

It is fine for ignorant individuals to believe what they read on the internet. But for a journalist? Jeez - don't people know that you have to consider the citiations provided for Wiki?

All I can say is "Brilliant work, Shane!"

Virginia Winder   #7   01:41 pm May 12 2009

you're excused keith   #6   01:41 pm May 12 2009

@ Keith: It means more on page two, you imbecile. The paranthesis has been added in as further explanation.

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