-
It's On The Internet, So It Must Be True
-
You use Wikipedia? You trust Wikipedia? You think crowdsourcing information works well? Ask Joe Streater about that... if you can find him. Who's Joe Streater? He was a Boston College basketball player, and at some point six years ago, someone edited a page about the 1979 Boston College point-shaving/gambling scandal to say that he was one of the players involved. But that wasn't true. Yet other media outlets, including AP, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and a syndicated slideshow that appeared on many websites (including radio stations' sites), repeated the fake "fact." A writer from Awful Announcing looked into it and found that a) the edit was made by someone from Goodwill in Boston, b) Streater wasn't even on the varsity team that year -- he left after his freshman year, and c) Streater seems to have vanished from the Earth, with no trace of him after he left school. So, where is he, and why did someone decide to smear him? And how can you trust Wikipedia when it's so easy to post a lie that spreads to other media via lazy reporters, and get away with it for years? (Awful Announcing)
Have an opinion? Add your comment below.