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

[Moulton]

It all comes down to editorial judgment.

Compared to other reputable sources of encyclopedic information, WP has abysmal editorial judgment.

[Grep]

It all comes down to editorial judgment.

Compared to other reputable sources of encyclopedic information, WP has abysmal editorial judgment.

I tend to agree with the point that there's no editorial judgement, because there are no editors -- just a mass of contributors and some rather incoherent guidelines.

[Cla68]

One more thing I wanted to say in response to this thread's original post...I believe you do yourself a disservice if you completely shun a newspaper because it is "conservative" or "liberal." I lived in the Washington DC area for five years. I had the Washington Post, supposedly a liberal newspaper, delivered to my residence, but I also read the Washington Times whenever a copy happened to fall into my hands. I thought both newspapers were excellent. The only part of either newspaper which appeared to push a political agenda was on the editorial page, in other words, about two pages out of 20-30 each day.

Having more sources of information, such as these two newspapers, is helpful. For example, see this article on the Pentagon military analyst program. I did a lot of work on this article, and you can see by looking at the footnotes that the Washington Times was an important source for information. The Post does not appear to have chosen to cover the story in any great detail. If you want to get the story out, you need to use whatever reasonably reliable source of information is available. Cite your sources, and the reader can decide on how much credibility to give the story.

It is true that Wikipedians argue over sources, and sometimes this is a sign of POV-pushing. I think there was one case of some POV-pushing going on in an animal right's article, and an editor, who also happened to be one of those who had done a lot of work on the reliable sources policy, stated that the journalists for some reliable source "have almost certainly just made a mistake". Clear sign of POV-pushing. Wikipedia should just stick with a reasonable definition of what a reliable source is, which it seems to have now, and let verifiability be the overriding principle. I guess that would be "verifiability, not truth." I think SV might be the one who first said this.

This post has been edited by Cla68:

[Milton Roe]

It is true that Wikipedians argue over sources, and sometimes this is a sign of POV-pushing. I think there was one case of some POV-pushing going on in an animal right's article, and an editor, who also happened to be one of those who had done a lot of work on the reliable sources policy, stated that the journalists for some reliable source "obviously don't know what they're talking about" or something like that. Clear sign of POV-pushing.

But unfortunately often also a clear sign of personal expertise, since it is usually the business of journalism to explain that which it personally does not understand. Again (to repeat again) you will get that if you ever read a newspaper article connected with an event or field which you personally know well.

Wikipedia should just stick with a reasonable definition of what a reliable source is, which it seems to have now, and let verifiability be the overriding principle. I guess that would be "verifiability, not truth."

No, wikipedia should let truth be the overriding principle and goal, despite the unfortunate fact that there is no gold standard for it. Well-sourced nonsense is still well-sourced nonsense.

You like military history. Compare Johnson's airstrikes on Vietnam the same night as the supposed second attack on the Maddox, and the Tonkin Gulf resolution 3 days later, with the intelligence from Curveball, the US congress' "Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq", Collin Powell's testimony before the UN General Assembly, etc. All well-sourced at the time, but the newspapers were only reporting what they'd been fed. Repeating a rumor or mistake or outright lie in print, does not convert into anything more than a rumor/mistake or lie. Now it's just a rumor, mistake or lie, with a footnote.

So how do you fix this? You leave room for skepticism. The Washington Post reports that the government's spokesman says that X is a fact. But the government has so far refused to answer all questions about how it, itself, knows X is a fact. Thus the factuality of X stands as a naked assertion without any evidence, other than being the official government position.

Now, the Post itself many not say this at the time, especially knowing that overly critical reportage can get you tossed out of the press corps. So somebody has to say it. Who is that going to be? Well, likely some newspaper with less standing and no press corps. So you see the problem.