Circular reporting



In source criticism, circular reporting or false confirmation is a situation where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in fact is coming from only one source. In most cases, the problem happens mistakenly through sloppy intelligence gathering practices, but in a few cases, the situation was believed to have been intentionally caused by the original source.

This problem occurs in variety of fields, including intelligence gathering, journalism, and scholarly research. It is of particular concern in military intelligence because the original source has a higher likelihood of wanting to pass on misinformation, and because the chain of reporting is more liable to being obscured.

Wikipedia is sometimes criticized for being used as a source of circular reporting. Wikipedia advises all researchers and journalists to be wary of using Wikipedia as a direct source, and instead focus on verifiable information found in an article's cited references.

Specific examples
In the following examples, false claims were made due to circular reporting:
 * The 2002 Niger uranium forgeries.


 * Wikipedia and Der Spiegel in 2009, regarding Karl-Theodor Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.


 * Wikipedia and The Independent in 2007, propagating the false information that Sacha Baron Cohen worked at Goldman Sachs.


 * Wikipedia and coati beginning in 2008, when an arbitrary addition "also known as....the Brazilian aardvark" by an American student resulted in many subsequently citing and using that unsubstantiated nickname as part of the general consensus, including published articles in The Independent, The Daily Mail, and a book published by the University of Chicago.