The Daily Mail has been tarred with the same brush used to purge fake news sites from online dictionary Wikipedia.
Editors voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source after deeming the news group “generally unreliable”.
The move is thought to break new ground for the encyclopedia which rarely puts a blanket ban on publications beside those peddling untruths or provocative material.
According to the Guardian 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 Wikimedia Foundation said: “Based on the requests for comments section [on the reliable sources noticeboard], volunteer editors on English Wikipedia have come to a consensus that the Daily Mail is ‘generally unreliable and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist’.
“This means that the Daily Mail will generally not be referenced as a ‘reliable source’ on English Wikipedia, and volunteer editors are encouraged to change existing citations to the Daily Mail to another source deemed reliable by the community. This is consistent with how Wikipedia editors evaluate and use media outlets in general – with common sense and caution.”
Wikipedia discussion boards cited all kinds of Daily Mail scandals from reporting the wrong verdict in the Amanda Knox trial, accusations of fake celebrity interviews and manipulating climate science to undermine the consensus on global warming (CF article below).
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