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A while ago there was a study that compared the amount of factual mistakes in Wikipedia to the amount of factual mistakes in Britannica.

Are there similar studies that count the average number of mistakes for mainstream news articles. If a newspaper writes that within a big article that Joe Smith is 42 years old, what's on average the probability that Joe is really 42 years old?

Oddthinking
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Christian
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    I'd say that such a study would be meaningless, as it would have to involve both gossip mags where the likelihood is around 0% and respectable newspapers that actually do fact checking... – Lennart Regebro Mar 06 '11 at 19:47
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    I think the variance is going to be too large for there to be any real meaning to that "average probability". – mattdm Mar 06 '11 at 19:48
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    @Lennart: There no reason why a study should have to include gossip magazines and treats them the same way they treat respectable newspapers. – Christian Mar 06 '11 at 19:52
  • @Christian: It says "Average newspaper". A study would have to look at a specific subset, preferably only one paper. – Lennart Regebro Mar 06 '11 at 20:07
  • This is a good question. I'm now interested to see if there are such studies. – David Gerard Mar 06 '11 at 20:26
  • @Lennart: A study that studies both gossip magazines and respectable newspapers would also have include the data that provides global average. On a related note I find it very interesting how self professed skeptics reject the idea of confronting an investigation into how much wrong information they absorb from newspapers. – Christian Mar 06 '11 at 22:15
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    @Christian: Your criteria for a study is sloppy, that's what they're (rightly) complaining about. One could cross-reference a fact-checking project with survey results on trustworthiness to get a better picture. – James Cape Mar 06 '11 at 22:47
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    @Christian: I'm not sure exactly what you intend to gain by insulting people. This is not a discussion forum or other place for flame wars. – Lennart Regebro Mar 07 '11 at 09:18
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    Every fact is true. It's just the factual claims that may not be. [Spinsanity on Bowling for Columbine](http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2003_08_31_archive.html). – Andrew Grimm Mar 07 '11 at 12:11
  • If only looking at "respectable newspapers", what is the criteria for determining respectable status - from a UK POV, one would assume The Guardian would be considered respectable, and the Daily Sport not respectable, but what about the Mail, or the Sun etc.....? – Doogie Mar 07 '11 at 13:44
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    And what does "a newspaper writes" mean - someone on staff writes an article? A sub-contracted writer writes an article? They print an article from Reuters? They print an article written by a PR agency? - I think the whole scope is too vague to come up with even a starting study. – Doogie Mar 07 '11 at 13:47
  • As a quick example, a recent (Dec 2010) issue of Private Eye magazine contained a story claiming that a journalist deliberately inserted a bogus fact about Queen Victoria into the wikipedia page for April 29th (the date of Prince William's wedding) on the day that it was announced, as a kind of test of whether newspapers would just quickly check wikipedia for "facts" and report them without verification. According to Private Eye, two major UK newspapers did. I think that speaks for itself! – Nellius Mar 09 '11 at 10:35
  • When you look at how many times The Onion has been quoted or referenced as factual news by news media before they realize that The Onion is a comedic parody, you start to realize that humans are prone to err in any situation. The balance between fact checking and being the first out with a story is a cruel mistress. – jdstankosky Nov 06 '12 at 13:53

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There is a published study called "A Question of Accuracy: How Journalists and Scientists Report Research on Hazards". They state in their conclusion

Two-fifths of the news stories we coded had one or more statements that were “substantially different” from statements in the original research report

I found another study looking at 14 daily newspapers in the US titled which found the following result

A survey of 4,800 news sources cited in fourteen newspapers provides a cross-market assessment of newspaper accuracy and the effect of errors on newspaper credibility. Sources found errors in 61% of local news and feature stories, an inaccuracy rate among the highest reported in nearly seventy years of accuracy research.

Mad Scientist
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  • which comes as no surprise, as currently most mainstream "journalist" just get their news from Twitter and blogs, hence obvious hoaxes as "The (F)lying Dutchman" make it into mainstream media. – vartec Mar 27 '12 at 14:53