Ooooh! That one makes me cringe! That would open the door to every kind
of bad journalism possible.
Let me give you an example.
A few months ago, a very influential e-zine written by a reporter for a
major American newspaper, ran an article about the French Minitel system
(little terminal that connects to proprietary systems). Living in
France, I was particularly interested to read what was said. But to my
surprise, the text was full of mistakes: like "50% of French people are
civil servants"
Well, I made a list of all the errors and wrote back to the writer, who
tried to pass the blame off on Nexis/Lexis, from where he had gotten all
of his information. Unfotunately, that is not reason enough to present
false information in an article. He should have confirmed all of that
information with another source. It so happens that he did speak with
someone I know in Paris, who gave him lots of names of people to contatc,
but, obviously, he did not contact them.
So the problem is, if journalists can be allowed to just cut and paste,
we will be reduced to a very sterile form of journalism, and one without
freedom. The few companies who will supply the information will control
it.
Kirk
Kirk McElhearn
Translations from French to English, English to French
Traductions francais-anglais, anglais-francais
kirk@lenet.fr
http://www.nirvanet.fr/kirk/kirk.html
91 rue de la Mesangerie
37540 St Cyr sur Loire
France