Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 4/Signs of unreliable sources

So let's talk a little more about signs of unreliable sources. We already mentioned that the source has to directly address the topic, the thing we're talking about, and to be some kind of relevant authority on the topic: it needs to be a scholar or it needs to have some direct relevance. If we cite football statistics from the FIFA site -- FIFA is not a scholarly authority, but it is a relevant authority on football. Right?

We need to look at the time aspect, and make sure it is still a relevant source, relative to the time it was published and relative to the phenomenon we're trying to cover.

We need to look at the reputation of the author and the publisher, and whether they have a history of publishing falsehoods, especially unacknowledged and unretracted falsehoods. Because even the most reliable newspapers have, on a number of occasions, unwittingly, not deliberately, published falsehoods. But then they retract them the next day, right? Or even sooner, on the Web site. Or the next week or whenever it's pointed out. They say "we said that there were," say, "two people killed. Turns out it was one person killed and the other is missing", et cetera. Right. They will correct the record. Now, media sources that publish falsehoods and never correct them are generally unreliable. They are propaganda media. That's the kind of of media outlet that would never correct what it says. So, reputation matters, and it helps if the author or the publisher is a reputable one. And as we said, they have to be independent of the topic.

There are some obvious signs that a source is unreliable. For example, "sponsored content" and "sponsored" is itself a euphemism, right? "Sponsored" is just a nice way of saying "paid for"; sponsored content is paid for content, which is unacceptable as a source. And the reason it's unacceptable is that by paying for it, the authors have bypassed the editorial process.

And most newspapers and news portals on the web these days are selling space for "sponsored content", and usually they market, they say sponsored or, I don't know, "in partnership with Nestlé" or some other company. And that is your signal that this is paid content. This is not standard reporting with editorial control. Anything that is "sponsored" is not a reliable source! By definition, it's a text that is trying to convince you of something, to sell you something, to influence your opinion, rather than to inform you, to give you facts. That's why it is unacceptable. And again, pay attention: All the news portals, almost all the news portals do it. So it's not enough to say, "hey, but I found this in the New York Times!" Even the New York Times has "sponsored content". You need to make sure what you're citing is the reportage, the editorially controlled stuff of the New York Times and not advertisement from the New York Times.

Self-published sources are also generally not acceptable for the same reason: There's no editorial control. Anyone can publish anything these days. And that includes all the blogs, all the social media posts, forums, online stuff, anything that has not gone through traditional editorial control is generally not acceptable. I say "generally" because, again, the band's own website was an example of self published information -- they built their own website -- for the membership of the band, it is an acceptable source. But for most other things, like how good their music is and how many awards it won, it is not a reliable source.

Satirical sites: I don't know if you even know that such sites exist; these are sites that pretend to be news sites, like The Onion, that's a famous American one. These are sites that pretend to be news sites, but not in an in an effort to spread fake news. They are humorous sites. Everyone is supposed to be able to realize that these are satirical pieces. But in fact, if you're not from around, and you don't get the joke, or you don't know the real life event that this is a satire of, you might read this and think, "yeah, that looks like a news report about something, and I may cite it". If you do cite such a thing, it will of course be removed by someone else.

And finally, and most perniciously, there are news organizations that are state associated or state controlled without editorial independence. So lots of countries have state media. That is not necessarily wrong. It is an unreliable source for citations if it does not have editorial independence, meaning if the editor of that newspaper or radio station or TV news station doesn't have the independence to say and broadcast in the news what they see in the field, what they know to be true, but rather, they are beholden to some ministry or some Senate committee or something that can control them, that can fire them. Then they they are essentially government propaganda vessels and are not reliable for our encyclopedic purposes. (It doesn't mean everything they publish is false; it just means we can't reasonably trust their work.)

An example of that is a site called RT.com; it used to be called Russia Today, and then it renamed to RT in order to make it less obvious that it is coming from Russia, but it is still entirely controlled by the Kremlin, by the Russian government. And it has been routinely publishing false information while looking for every intent and purpose like a legitimate news website. And it does not publish retractions, apologies, etc. it is knowingly spreading these falsehoods, trying to get other media to repeat it, and to rely on the report in RT.Com. English Wikipedia volunteers discussed this and reached the conclusion that that site should never, ever be cited on Wikipedia. And that's just one example. There's a number of blacklisted sites, basically sites we know are lying to us and we never, ever want to rely on them. In Wikipedia, there's a link here on this slide to that blacklist. Make sure you don't cite those sources.