Ground Report, 17 July 2013 link
According to experts, internet is a great source but informations are often erroneous. Take the case of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is already well known as the free online encyclopedia but it is not yet reliable enough to use as a source by the newsrooms across the globe. According to Wikipedia homepage, Wikipedia is a wiki, meaning that anyone can edit any unprotected page and improve articles immediately for all readers. You do not need to register to do this. Anyone who has edited is known as a “Wikipedian”. It means that anyone can edit and add in-formations which may be incorrect and not up to the mark. Wikipedia contributors are amateur and not experts in their respective fields.
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Indeed, the primary knock against Wikipedia is that its authors and editors are also its users — an unpaid, partially anonymous army, some of whom insert jokes, exaggeration and even outright lies in their material. About one-fifth of the editing is done by anonymous users, but a tight-knit community of 600 to 1,000 volunteers does the bulk of the work, according to Wikipedia co founder Jimmy Wales. Members of this group can delete material or, in extreme cases, even lock particularly outrageous entries while they are massaged.
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Some of its commentary is remarkable but some contributors are comically dense, like the person who demanded proof that 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift wasn’t serious when he wrote that landlords should eat the children of their impoverished Irish tenants.
In India, newsrooms should adopt clear policies to use Wikipedia as a primary source. They should follow the journalism mantra that if your mother says she loves you, check it out.