UC Davis student exposes MSM’s shoddy research… or did he?

Were the education of the public by major media not such a serious matter, this story would be hilarious.

One intrepid UC Davis student, Shane Fitzgerald, was… as he put it… facing “…. the arduous task of writing yet another essay on social science’s current fad – globalisation…”. Inspired by the flashing Sky News alert at the bottom of the TV screen, Fitzgerald decided to lay a trap for the new age media machine.

Just how reliant reporters are on the world wide web was the question that suddenly gave me the idea of carrying out an internet hoax. The global world is connected through the internet, and news reporters are relying on this resource more than ever. I wanted to prove that this was indeed the case, and show the potential dangers that arise.

Winston Churchill once said that all great things are simple and a great Guinness ad once said that good things come to those who wait. Armed with these two nuggets, I waited patiently for a few days until a golden opportunity arose and I knew it was my time to act.

My plan was without doubt simple, and maybe it was great as well. The death of the French composer Maurice Jarre was reported in true Sky News fashion in the very early hours of March 30th.

I immediately grabbed my laptop, went to Maurice Jarre’s Wikipedia page, clicked the edit button on screen and proceeded to lay the trap for my unsuspecting prey, the journalists.

“One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack,” I wrote into the Wikipedia entry. “Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head and that only I can hear.”

This was a totally fake quote and neither Maurice Jarre, nor anyone else, has ever been on record as uttering these words. Social science experiments always have ethical issues, because you are in effect using people as guinea pigs. I did not wish to taint or distort anyone’s reputation, so I purposely made the decision to put in a general, random quote that would not affect Jarre’s stature.

Per Shane’s op-ed, the results were shocking.

While I expected online blogs and maybe some smaller papers to use the quote, I did not think it would have a major impact. I was wrong. Quality newspapers in England, India, America and as far away as Australia had my words in their reports of Jarre’s death. I was shocked that highly respected newspapers would use material from Wikipedia without first sourcing and referencing it properly.

Indeed, Fitzgerald notes that a renewed focus on the quality of media reporting was, itself, a subject that had far reaching implications. If he could so easily falsify news contact, what else is making it into the news that isn’t true?

Well, Shane… you’re a little late to the reality game, guy. Many of we bloggers have been aware of this shoddy research performance by the major media for quite some time. But I have great faith in you, and your future. You’ve managed to open your own eyes. And now that you’re aware, you will wisely question the news around you daily.

And that puts you miles ahead of most of your fellow UC Davis grads.

But wait! There’s a possible flip side to the story.

It might be noted that the above linked op-ed appears in the Irish Times. As you may guess, there’s not a ton of media types jumping on this story right off the bat. (lots of blogs, happy to do a “na naa nanaaa naaaaa” tho) I did see a news blurb about Fitzgerald’s successful exposé on ABC’s site, but it’s not exactly being touted as front page breaking news. No surprise as they would not bring such incompentency to light willingly.

But what could make this absolutely perfect is if Mr. Fitzgerald’s reported “hoax” was… well… just another “hoax”. Certainly I’ve tried to locate the papers that used his bogus quote. They show up in searches, but a visit to the site reveals that language is no longer in the articles. They have, apparently, been corrected with no formal notice to obviously avoid such embarrassment.

But without a screen shot, as I demonstrated with Reuters just yesterday, I’m hard pressed to verify Mr. Fitzgerald’s hoax as true.. or just another hoax.

Beautimous, eh?

Either way, I still give Fitzgerald the prize for his internet experiment. Either way, it certainly drives home his point that news… both true and false… can spread like wildfire across the new media. And the leap to be “first” with a headline may also carry the dubious honor as being the first fool in line for public humiliation.