Is Wikipedia news?

There has been a lot of discussion in recent weeks after the discovery that Google News is attaching Wikipedia links to results in online news searches. Essentially, the search engine is offering up uncredible opinion, as factual news. A massive elevation from its current status for what we must remember is merely a wiki.

Whilst I realise that most people only use Wikipedia as a starting point for information, this worrying elevation of status for ‘the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit’ is not good for journalists or PROs. Literally, anything can be written on Wikipedia without the usual journalist code of conduct and if Google is now passing off a wiki as a credible news source, we need to apply some quality control.

Drew Benvie said ‘How will the future of news look, when you can write your own reviews, feedback and headlines? And when anyone can then press delete, re-write or tarnish? It's the beginning of the end of fire-and-forget news’.

This also throws open the age old debate of whether or not PR departments should manage their Wikipedia entry. For the very reason that many people use Wikipedia as a starting point for information, I’m all in favour of PR teams monitoring and managing their entries - as long as they open and transparent in the approach.