Editors' Blogs

Did you read the one about the Dublin uni student who got the better of the international media? After the recent death of famed movie composer Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India etc. etc.), young Shane Fitzgerald went on Wikipedia and posted a few sentences “supposedly” attributed to Jarre. Others on Wikipedia soon found out that this quote was a fake and took it down, but major media organizations failed in their fact-checking and reprinted the quote even though there was no way that they could properly attribute it.

Shane didn’t do badly; considering how tough it is to get Lara’s Theme from Dr. Zhivago out of one’s head after simply thinking about it, let alone hearing it, the last sentence of Shane’s concoction is very à propos: “...When I die, there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear”.

Right—except, it's in all our heads, and we don’t have to die for it... Methinks young Shane has a future in ad copy or Hollywood writing—somebody better give him a job!