More More More on the Treachery of the *Mostly* Reliable Source

E-Media Tidbits Home > Online & Technology > E-Media Tidbits Will Sullivan A group weblog about the intersection of news & technology Posted by Will Sullivan 12:30 PM May. 8, 2009 Hoax Leads to Questions about Journalists' Use of Wikipedia A 22-year-old student in Dublin, Ireland, recently set up a Wikipedia hoax that led several major United Kingdom news outlets to publish a fake quote after they used the socially-curated encyclopedia site to get information about French composer Maurice Jarre, who died in March. The hoax was left unnoticed for weeks. Genevieve Carbery of The Irish Times reported this week: "The quote ... was posted on the online encyclopedia shortly after [Jarre's] death and later appeared in obituaries published in the Guardian, the London I! ndependent, on the BBC Music Magazine Web site and in Indian and Australian newspapers.