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Spanish TV turns Wiki-hoaxer
John Leyden
The
Register
Tuesday Aug 21, 2007
The Spanish "silly season" has brought out
the gonzo element of the local media, with two TV stations vandalising
Wikipedia.
State-owned TVE2 changed an entry on John Lennon to say that
he was fond of paella. Antenna 3 altered the date of Elvis Presley's
date from 16 August 1977 to 16 August 2007 in the Spanish edition
of Wikipedia. Both the bogus edits were described as "experiments".
TVE2 persuaded an expert to make the changes to Wikipedia to
illustrate a story about how the CIA allegedly vandalised entries
in the encyclopedia about Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Antenna 3 said it altered Elvis's death to see how long spurious
information would persist on the site before it was corrected.
Not long, as it turned out.
(Article continues below)
Spanish blog Barrapunto was among those covering this spate of
wikifiddling to criticise Antenna 3 for failing to point out it
had to register on Wikipedia before making its edits to the online
encyclopedia.
Most of Spain goes on holiday in August and news is admittedly
thin on the ground. But you'd think editors might have the nous
to send their staff out to investigate why road fatalities have
risen a year after Spain introduced a points system against offending
motorists, for example.
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