This is true if you’re an investigative reporter, but for me? I let them do the work and read the results at the WSJ or NYT.
You still need to keep your bs meter engaged. Remember, the Times had a whole series of articles about how the Iraqis were a big threat.
Very true. A dark secret of the scientific literature is a lot of papers (and even journals) are write-only. They are high prestige places to publish, but no one reads the papers (except for a small circle of friends, and sometimes not even then.) Even if peer reviewed, if the information is wrong no one might figure it out, if ever.
When I was in grad school I was the first author of a paper with new results in a prestigious journal, and second author on a paper in a more popular but less prestigious survey journal, where we didn’t give the new results. I heard over and over again that we should do the very work described in the first paper. Frustrating.
Speaking as a wiki-editor, I would agree with this, provided it’s an article that gets a fair number of views. Those tend to get pulled apart if there are errors. An article that deals with obscure matters, maybe not so much (unless it happens to attract the attention of the three people in the world who have each written articles IRL on that obscure topic, and watch out!) 
Bear in mind that one of the principles of Wikipedia is that it is not itself a reliable source (ie you can’t quote a Wikipedia article as a source in another Wikipedia article). It’s an aggregator of a variety of sources.
Wikipedia has a standard for reliable sources, and it mirrors what other posters have identified here as indicators of reliability. There are categories of sources which are just not accepted as reliable, because they aren’t subject to any sort of review: blogs and message boards (like the Dope) fall into that category.
There is also a list of the “sources of the damned” that are not considered reliable sources. For example, the Daily Fail is not a reliable source. Others are nuanced; the Rolling Stone is a reliable source for music news, but not for political commentary; I think the same applies to the WSJ, distinguishing between news articles and op-eds, the same point you made earlier.
I tend to write a fair bit on pre-Confederation Canadian political history (and that truly is a niche, in the grand scheme of Wiki!). I rely on the Dictionary of Canadian Biography as a major source, because those articles are written by academics, expert in their fields. I use history texts that review certain periods in Canadian history, again prepared by academics and subject to a strong peer review by the editors of the series. I use some monographs, and one old text, written in 1860. I sometimes remind myself that John A., Cartier, and George Brown likely had copies of that one in their personal libraries.
And even though it’s a niche area, I get called on things. Other editors will ask if something is truly notable, or supported by the cite I’m relying on, or if there is an alternative source that may weaken or strengthen it.
All of which is to say that Wikipedia articles are generally good if you want an overview, akin to a survey summary. They’re also good if you want to find cites to do your own research. But they are not meant to be an authoritative source.
(There’s also systemic biases, which vary depending on the article. Since most of the editors on English Wikipedia are from the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, and Australia, there is a built-in bias for an anglophone western perspective. Since most of those editors are also male, there is a bias to male-interest issues. Those are other factors that should be taken into account by a reader of a Wikipedia article.)
(And oh my, the disputes over whether India was the “Dominion of India”, the “Union of India”, or “India”, between the abolition of the Raj and the start date for the Constitution of India…)
This might be an interesting thought experiment: How can we use the power of government to regulate disinformation, without having a straight-up department of government censorship?
I’m thinking: Pass a law giving every citizen standing to sue a media outlet (of any kind, must work on definitions), if the citizen believes that the outlet has published something counter-factual.
We’d need some caveats. Posting a clear retraction within X amount of time would be a defense. Such suits would be automatically “loser pays”, so there’d be a disincentive to file frivolous suits against every story you dislike. Also, maybe require each outlet to post their wins vs total cases ratio in a prominent position, so people see that CNN is 80% reliable, and Alex Jones is close to 0%. Payouts would be dependent on how impactful the disinformation is.
Everyone has an opportunity to make their arguments in open court, and see if the judge/jury agrees. Beyond that, no real input from the government, no topics automatically banned, no worries about a new President suddenly flipping the tables on “what is true”.
The Texas anti-abortion civil action works like this.
Yeah, except that was heavily biased in favor of the people doing the suing. I want something that’s actually reasonably objective, giving both sides a fair chance to argue their position.
One (of many) problems. How would you keep the outlets from using weasel words like (
“it has been alleged that John Smith beat his wife.” The one doing the alleging is the guy who stocks the vending machines, still true, and the guy was told to do the alleging.
If you think that is far fetched, consider this. Richard Nixon used to say, all the time, that people on his staff told him not to do some action, implying he was a brave man for not listening to them. William Safire said afterwards that he was usually that person, and Nixon told him to object.
By not letting them play that game. If you can show they’re playing silly buggers like this, you win the case.
It’s like with mafia bosses, “I said I hoped he’d meet with a little accident, I never said to kill him!” Nope, bullshit, you’re guilty of murder.
That’s the fun part of being a judge - you’re allowed to call people on their bullshit.
I distrust narratives full of extreme statements. As an example, recently there was a story on a left wing website that stated a decommissioned nuclear power plant was deliberately boiling off their million gallons of radioactive wastewater to get around the prohibition of dumping it in the ocean. This just sounded too over the top. On further investigation they had done something that raised the temperature of the water to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and that slightly increased how much evaporated. Probably something to monitor closely, but clearly not an attempt to dispose of the wastewater.
In general, the truth is usually nuanced and not black and white. Of course sometimes, like the holocaust, it is even worse than reports.
I don’t see how there could be? Who is going to provide it: the Ministry of Truth?
All one can do is use experience and personal judgement.
The source of the supposed information has to be a major factor: eg if it’s something scientific from the University of Cambridge, I’d guess it’s likely to be correct, as far as current knowledge goes. Though of course one has to be sure it’s really from the university… there’s a sort of recursive issue there… 
And obviously one should attempt to cross-check from several independent sources. Of course the same caveat applies: how do you know they are really independent?
Again, I guess it’s personal judgement: if a source seems to have been reliable in the past, one gives it more credence.
Sounds like something Trump came up with. Clearly the rich would sue (not caring if they lost) so the press would be unlikely to do any stories about the rich and powerful until they got convicted of something, unlikely. Would Sullivan apply here?
Sounds like a great way to destroy the freedom of the press to me.
We could add in something about “Lose so many cases in a given time period and you’re declared a vexatious litigant”, with several possible consequences to that. Lose the right to sue for X years, perhaps, or a significant fine, enough to deter even rich people.
More likely most of the media (who are not made of money) are going to settle and issue a retraction to avoid an expensive court battle. Even Fox settled, remember? (Of course they were guilty.)
Perhaps you are forgetting that we live in a country where a family of rich people who killed hundreds of thousands of people (just a guess, I may be low) are paying some money and getting immunity. Depending on how the court decides.
Don’t tell me you can put limits on how much the trial will cost. That goes against due process.
There is not much wrong with any science type of article in Wikipedia. I did try to edit one Covid critic’s biography, as he was a surgeon and was way too much a critic of the government without backing his claims. I pointed out to the “world” that a professor of “public health policy” has no training in the actual science of public health.
If you then move on to some topic such as Hunter Biden’s Laptop, the facts are only half reliable.