On March 30, shortly after French composer Maurice Jarre died, Irish student Shane Fitzgerald inserted a fake quotation attributed to Jarre onto his Wikipedia site, to see how many journalists would be fooled.

Fitzgerald described the incident in the May 7 Irish Times:

“One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack,” I wrote into the Wikipedia entry. “Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head and that only I can hear.”

This was a totally fake quote and neither Maurice Jarre, nor anyone else, has ever been on record as uttering these words. …

While I expected online blogs and maybe some smaller papers to use the quote, I did not think it would have a major impact. I was wrong. Quality newspapers in England, India, America and as far away as Australia had my words in their reports of Jarre’s death.

Vigilant Wikipedia editors deleted the fake quotation twice on March 30 – once only six minutes after Fitzgerald had posted it the second time. But after Fitzgerald posted it a third time, it remained on the sire for 25 hours.

Fitzgerald revealed his hoax a month later, in e-mails to newspapers that had been fooled. The UK Guardian printed a correction on May 4, noting:

The absence of a footnote containing a reference for the quote ought to have made obituary writers suspicious. … The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn’t use information they find there if it can’t be traced back to a reliable primary source.

Fitzgerald’s conclusion:

If I could so easily falsify the news across the globe, even to this small extent, then it is unnerving to think about what other false information may be reported in the press.

Especially when the hoax fits the story line.