Week 23 - 'Wikipedia bans Daily Mail as 'unreliable' source'

'Wikipedia bans Daily Mail as 'unreliable' source'

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia-bans-daily-mail-as-unreliable-source-for-website

• Wikipedia editors have voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source for the website in all but exceptional circumstances after deeming the news group “generally unreliable”
• The editors described the arguments for a ban as “centred on the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication”
• The decision by Wikipedia comes amid widespread debate over the rise of fake news, which has widened to include concerns about misleading information in traditional publications
• A spokesman for Mail Newspapers said that only a tiny portion of the site’s millions of anonymous editors had been involved in the decision, adding: “It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry at this move by Wikipedia. For the record the Daily Mail banned all its journalists from using Wikipedia as a sole source in 2014 because of its unreliability
• Last year, the Daily Mail and MailOnline together published more than half a million stories and yet received just two upheld adjudications each for inaccuracy from the UK industry’s regulator IPSO

The issue of fake news is growing wider and more extensive therefore the cut down and attempt to remove anything that could be deemed as 'fake' is understandable. However the most interesting thing about this article is the facr that last year the Daily Mail and MailOnline together published more than half a million stories and only 2 were upheld for it's inaccuracy, whilst the Daily Man banned all its journalists from using Wikipedia in 2014 due to its unreliability. It is interesting because Wikipedia is a site known for it's accuracy as anyone is able to publish on there, therefore it becomes an issue of blaming different sources to higher their reputation as an institution who are trying to impress an audience, whereas they themselves are not.