Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 4/Exercise - Is this a reliable source part 1

So let's do a quick exercise: Can you help me decide whether or not the following is a reliable source in context? Remember, it depends on what I'm trying to establish with it, right? So can I cite a band's official website for the names of the members of the band? We literally gave this example just a few minutes ago. We said that is one example of something we can cite from the band. Most of the things we cannot cite from the band's own website, because it is not independent, right? But we said this is one example of something that we can use from the band, because who else is going to tell us who is a member of the band? The band itself gets to decide who is a member, right?

What about the second example? A library catalog for the names of a band's albums. If I want to establish that these are the albums the band has issued, can I use a library catalog that lists them? Is that a reliable source? I have some "yes"es here, and that is correct. A library's catalog is good enough proof that these albums exist and that they are by this band.

What about a news site regarding a terrorist attack? Can I use a news site? Can I cite a news site for a terrorist attack? It depends. Right? It depends on which news site; for example, RT.com is not a reliable news site, though it pretends to be one. And it depends on when: if the terrorist attack just happened, I probably shouldn't already be citing full information about it on Wikipedia. I should wait for the information to become more reliable. The news sites themselves are publishing partial and unreliable information for the first few hours -- sometimes days! -- of a terrorist attack. So my advice would be to wait. But ultimately, yes, you can cite the news reports about a terrorist attack. And by the way, very often in the end, Wikipedia has the most balanced report about a terrorist attack because Wikipedians have been reading all the different news sources and kept tweaking and changing and updating the description on Wikipedia, whereas the news sites themselves don't always go and re-edit things that they've already broadcast or already printed. It just stays there, partial and maybe wrong. And Wikipedia eventually ends up with the best coverage of such events usually.