On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 16:35:19 -0700, "Matt Brown" <morven(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
* A man who posted nude pictures of himself on websites
whose domains
he registered advertising himself as a $200-an-hour gay prostitute can
not be identified as a prostitute.
Seemingly absurd, but actually fixable as long
as reliable secondary
sources call him that.
I'd suspect the problem is that the original primary
source no longer exists?
Not a problem if reliable secondary sources repeat the claim;
otherwise it's original research (given that it required synthesis
from primary data, the name not, as I recall, being given in full on
the contact ads).
* The Columbia Journalism Review is a reliable source.
A blog run by
the Columbia Journalism Review on the website of the Columbia
Journalism Review is not.
Seems fair.
Hmm? Some blogs are trustworthy, some
are not, despite what some
people want WP:RS to read (generally, they want an 'All blogs are
untrustworthy' stance, despite the evidence). I'd say an official
blog of an organisation is trustworthy. Blogs where we can be sure of
the author and that their opinions are notable are also reliable, at
least for that individual's thoughts and opinions.
Yebbut all blogs are essentially opinion rather than reporting. So
they might be reliable in terms of documenting the blogger's opinion
on a given topic, but in this case they are analogous to the
newspaper's leaders or opinion pieces, which are typically not used as
sources for factual data.
* The New Republic, among other reputable,
long-standing publications,
cannot be used as a source because they are "too partisan".
Reliable in
respect of one party's view of something and if balanced
from the other perspective, I'd say.
Many (most?) sources are partisan one way
or another; it's our job to
strive for NPOV, regardless. (And NPOV does not mean 'balanced' in a
journalism sense; we don't have to give equal airtime to unequal
opinions).
Which is why, without more detail, it's hard to form a view. It might
be a case of someone pushing the Aryan Nation website as a "balancing"
view on the holocaust, or it might be wanting to cite the majority
view that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are Complete Bollocks (i.e. a
majority view in an article which mainly discusses the minority view),
or more likely it's somewhere between the two.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG