From “Wikipedia hoax points to limits of journalists’ research” at Ars Technica:
“Upon learning of the death of the Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre, [college] student [Shane Fitzgerald] modified [Jarre’s] Wikipedia entry, adding a completely fictitious post that was nicely designed to fit perfectly into any obituary. ‘When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear,’ the added material read in part.
Fitzgerald was apparently curious how far his hoax would spread, and expected it to appear on a variety of blogs and similar sites. Instead, to his surprise, a search picked it up in articles that appeared at a variety of newspapers. Fitzgerald eventually removed his own fabricated quote and notified a variety of news outlets that they had been tricked, but not all of them have apparently seen fit to publish corrections or to ensure that their original stories were accurate…” [read rest of article]
Could be worse: at least the journalists didn’t use an Elsevier journal as an authoritative source.
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