Lesson
An unintentional error might slip into a document and then be multiplied by a hundred different newspapers (even though they quote it accurately). For this reason alone, you should always trace back important facts to their primary sources, or at least compare two different publications of fact. It is always a good idea to double-check the accuracy of facts and statistics, but it is an essential step if you are using sources from the Internet. Web pages do not have to pass through any editor, fact-checker, or review process before being published. Anyone with a little technical knowledge and a host computer can publish web pages. It is entirely up to you to decide whether the information you find on the Internet is reliable. Here are some things to look for:
- Sources for facts and statistics are provided so that they can be verified by you. (Read critically! Clever writers can make their opinions seem like facts.) Be wary of sites that rely on volunteers to provide factual information.
- There is evidence that either an editor or other accountable person has checked for accuracy. For example, online editions of newspapers and magazines are likely to have editors; personal web pages are not.
- The information is free of grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors.
- If a particular piece of information is wrong, later issues of the page contain retractions or corrections.