p2pnet news view P2P:- More than once, p2pnet spoofs we thought were blatantly obvious parodies or satires have been taken as serious news items.

We’ve also noted repeatedly how easy it is for completely untrustworthy elements within the music and movie industries, in particular their RIAA and MPAA, to get the lamescream mainstream media to publish completely phoney or, at best, extremely dodgy ’statistics’ and statements as though they were accurate, emanating from credible and reliable sources.

Now Shane Fitzgerald has discovered just how gullible the corporate press corpse is.

He posted “When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head,” a supposed quote from the late Oscar-winning French composer Maurice Jarre, on the Wikipedia, “to show the dangers of relying too heavily on the Internet for information,” says Reuters.

“The 22-year-old sociology and economics student at University College Dublin said he had expected blogs and perhaps small newspapers to use the quotes but did not believe major publications would rely on Wikipedia without further checks,” says the story, which quotes him as saying:

“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,” Fitzgerald.

No surprises there.

Britain’s Guardian had to correct its obituary and, “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,” Reuters has the Guardian’s readers’ editor Siobhain Butterworth saying.

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Reuters – Irish student’s Jarre wiki hoax dupes journalists, May 7, 2009