We're told that bloggers are not journalists because real old-media journalists use real sources and stuff and bloggers just look things up on Wikipedia.

Via Regret the Error, I see the cracks continue to appear in that particular facade. See, an internet prankster saw that the heroically named Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg was to be named the new German economy minister. The prankster decided to see if anyone would notice if he altered Karl-Theodor's Wikipedia entry to throw an extra "Wilhelm" in the middle.

No one did.

In fact, multiple German media sources, reporting on the appointment, copied the embellished name from Wikipedia and ran it.

This is my favorite part:

Along with other papers across the country, both Bild and Spiegel Online published corrections, but their tone seemed less apologetic than irritated at having had their reliance on Wikipedia revealed. On Thursday Bild wrote that the 37-year-old had been the “victim of a falsification” that many media sources, “including Bild, fell into.”

Yes, because when you can't crib out of Wikipedia, what is the world coming to?

Last 5 posts by Ken

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