More on reliable sources Options

[It's the blimp, Frank]

.http://www.truthout.org/072509Z?n

As my friend and colleague Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks pointed out in a Daily Kos blog recently, billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the NY Post, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5 million a year on The Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington Times.

Why are these guys willing to lose so much money funding "conservative" media? Why do they bulk-buy every right-wing book that comes out to throw it to the top of the NY Times Bestseller list and then give away the copies to "subscribers" to their websites and publications? Why do they fund to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year money-hole "think tanks" like Heritage and Cato?

The answer is pretty straightforward. They do it because it buys them respectability, and gets their con job out there.

It certainly gets their con job on Wikipedia

[Grep]

Good marks for hilarity to the discussion at the Sam Blacketer RFD. Policy states that the most reliable sources are [...] mainstream newspapers, amplified to Material from mainstream news organizations is welcomed, particularly the high-quality end of the market, for example the Washington Post in the United States and the Times in Britain, as well as widely used conglomerates such as the Associated Press but when it happens not to suit the cabal suddenly it's

• because the reporting is so erroneous and biased
• The great danger with this article is that while it simply parrots what the press says
• we know that the current sources are deeply flawed
• the "reliable sources" get many of the fundamental facts wrong
• "Reliable" sources whose accounts are wrong on almost every point. I know ... verifiability, not truth ... That is all very well as long as the article is about someone else

An amazing demonstration of doublethink: the last sums it all up really.

[Milton Roe]

Good marks for hilarity to the discussion at the Sam Blacketer RFD. Policy states that the most reliable sources are [...] mainstream newspapers, amplified to Material from mainstream news organizations is welcomed, particularly the high-quality end of the market, for example the Washington Post in the United States and the Times in Britain, as well as widely used conglomerates such as the Associated Press but when it happens not to suit the cabal suddenly it's

• because the reporting is so erroneous and biased
• The great danger with this article is that while it simply parrots what the press says
• we know that the current sources are deeply flawed
• the "reliable sources" get many of the fundamental facts wrong
• "Reliable" sources whose accounts are wrong on almost every point. I know ... verifiability, not truth ... That is all very well as long as the article is about someone else

An amazing demonstration of doublethink: the last sums it all up really.

Blame SlimVirgin. That's what I always do. She WROTE that part of WP:RS: it has the effect of elevating as "reliable" stuff that (whether in the Washington Post or not) may well have been written overnight by one "investigative journalist" and blue-penciled by one managing editor (who has to take the journalist's word that they've gotten ONE independent hearsay source check for each statement). Now this can be cited in equivalence with articles in peer-reviewed science journals which publish only content which survives months of rather brutal scrutiny form half a dozen subject matter experts. Or (for that matter) with historical journal reviews and books which have had time to do the same with history.

And (surprise) overnight reporting of news gets a lot of stuff wrong. In their heart-of-hearts, Wikipedians know this (even SlimVirgin knows it), but how else are you going to write that Wiki-article on the death of Michael Jackson, as the reports come in? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif) I mean, you really wouldn't want to deny yourself THAT, would you? It's too much to ask. Who the hell wants to work with stale history that happened 50 years ago?

[Cla68]

Blame SlimVirgin. That's what I always do. She WROTE that part of WP:RS

Actually, I think SV has addressed the issues with this, stating that Verifiability trumps Reliable Sources. Unless I misunderstand her, what she's trying to say is that, of course sources have issues, some are more reliable than others, some are more reliable at varying times, and it's difficult and a matter of perspective to prove how reliable everything is.

In that case, it's more important that the source is verifiable, i.e. that anyone can look it up to ensure that the source is actually saying what it is reported in Wikipedia that it is saying. If sources are verifiable, then readers can decide for themselves how truthful the information is by judging the source for themselves. Wikipedia sets a basic, reasonable standard for reliable sources- newspapers, newsmagazines, published (not self-published) books, no blogs or personal webpages, etc., but after that it's up to the reader to decide the credibility of the information.

So, if someone doesn't want to believe a story because it was in the NYPost or Washington Times (both conservative newspapers) and not in the NYTimes or Washington Post, then they're free to do so. The sources used for Wikipedia are right there in the footnotes, at least they're supposed to be.

This post has been edited by Cla68: