A website ran a story yesterday that the great tenor Nicolai Gedda passed away. There was only one problem with the story: It was incorrect. As colleagues began sharing pictures alongside R.I.P., the source recanted the story, with the explanation that they had the news from two "usually reliable" sources, as well as from Mr. Gedda's Wikipedia entry.
The journalistic rule of thumb is that one should have two, or if possible three sources to confirm a piece of information. Reuters' guidelines state that a single, anonymous source should be the exception and not the rule, but that if the supervisor is convinced the source is "authoritative" then the story may be run. The link below is to Reuters' complete guidelines on sourcing.
Bottom line: be sure.
Wikipedia, while a wonderful public resource, does not count as a source at all. Nor do sources stemming from Wikipedia. It's very easy these days to go to three different websites to read something that is simply a cut and paste of wikipedia, with no real verification process.
While we're at it, also incorrect: Mark Twain did not say, "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." He said, "the report of my death was an exaggeration." My source for that is the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Their source was the New York Journal, June 2, 1897. Does that count as two?
LH
http://handbook.reuters.com/?title=The_Essentials_of_Reuters_sourcing#Gradation_of_sources
The journalistic rule of thumb is that one should have two, or if possible three sources to confirm a piece of information. Reuters' guidelines state that a single, anonymous source should be the exception and not the rule, but that if the supervisor is convinced the source is "authoritative" then the story may be run. The link below is to Reuters' complete guidelines on sourcing.
Bottom line: be sure.
Wikipedia, while a wonderful public resource, does not count as a source at all. Nor do sources stemming from Wikipedia. It's very easy these days to go to three different websites to read something that is simply a cut and paste of wikipedia, with no real verification process.
While we're at it, also incorrect: Mark Twain did not say, "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." He said, "the report of my death was an exaggeration." My source for that is the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Their source was the New York Journal, June 2, 1897. Does that count as two?
LH
http://handbook.reuters.com/?title=The_Essentials_of_Reuters_sourcing#Gradation_of_sources
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