The Guardian's readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth tells readers today that an obit in the paper on French composer Maurice Jarre included fake quotes which were added to his Wikipedia profile by a student.
Butterworth says: "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. "
The student, Shane Fitzgerald, of University College Dublin, says he is shocked by the results of his "experiment" with Jarre's Wikipedia page. "I expected the quote to get into the blogs, but I didn't expect it to get into mainstream newspapers."
Fitzgerald told Butterworth he came up with the idea while writing an essay on globalisation and the media: "My aim was to show that an undergraduate university student in Ireland can influence what newspapers are doing around the world and also that the reliance of newspapers on the internet can lead to some faults."
Butterworth writes: "Consider the job done Shane."
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