Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terry Moore (broadcaster)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Sandstein 12:53, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Terry Moore (broadcaster)

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Biography of a recently deceased local radio host, whose claims of notability are resting on directly affiliated primary sources rather than independent ones. Of the ten footnotes here, eight are connected to his own employer: four come directly from the radio station he worked for, two come from its co-owned television sister station, and two are reprints in two different newspapers of the same wire service obituary written by his radio station's own news director. And of the two remaining footnotes, one is the publication details of his own book cited as metareferencing for its own existence, which is not how you reference a person over WP:AUTHOR as a writer either. As always, to be considered notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia both broadcasters and writers need to have independent coverage about them in sources that don't directly issue their paycheques -- but the only reference here that actually meets that standard is a brief and unsubstantive blurb on the website of his same media market's other television station, which is not enough coverage all by itself to deem him notable if all of the other sources fail the "unaffiliated" condition. Bearcat (talk) 16:35, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Kpg jhp jm 16:37, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. Kpg jhp jm 16:37, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Kpg jhp jm 16:37, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep I am afraid this AfD seems rather disingenuous WRT the sources used in this article; the first ref is an obituary in the National Post which may not be my favourite newspaper but which would certainly count as a source for establishing notability. There's also references in the article currently to CTV as a source. This subject, clearly meets WP:GNG and I can't understand how his former employer, also a media organization, having eulogized him, and that being used as a source of uncontroversial information on this obviously notable person would be grounds for deletion. Simonm223 (talk) 17:31, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am not being disingenuous at all. The National Post did not write its own independent obituary of him; it merely ran a wire service article distributed by Canadian Press, which is bylined "Ryan Price, CFAX" — which means it was written by Terry Moore's own colleague, not by a journalist independent of him. (And yes, by the way, Ryan Price does verify on Google as an employee of CFAX.) And The Globe and Mail doesn't bolster his notability either, because that citation is actually the same wire service article, still bylined Ryan Price. And the CTV sourcing is to CTV's local station in Victoria, not to the national network — and Bell Media, the owner of CTV, is also the owner of CFAX. So that source is still not independent of him, but still represents directly affiliated coverage from his own employer's co-owned sister station. I am evaluating all of this exactly correctly according to what the sources actually are, namely non-independent coverage created by his own colleagues — passing GNG always depends on receiving independent coverage in sources the article subject is not directly affiliated with, and can never be gamed by the subject's own employer's self-created metacontent about its own staff. Bearcat (talk) 18:22, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bell media owns nearly half of the TV and radio stations in Canada. That's hardly a strong argument against the reliability of the sources. Simonm223 (talk) 18:40, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sources do not just have to be reliable to aid in making a person notable — they also have to be independent of the subject. Media companies cannot singlehandedly make their own employees notable by "covering" those employees themselves — Bell Media-owned sources help toward establishing notability if they're covering employees of Corus or Rogers or the CBC, but not if they're covering employees of Bell Media; Corus-owned sources help toward establishing notability if they're covering employees of Bell or Rogers or the CBC, but not if they're covering employees of Corus; and on and so forth. Each company counts for significantly less as evidence toward the notability of its own employees than it does as evidence toward the notability of the other companies' employees — because each company fails the independence test with regard to its own employees. Bearcat (talk) 18:49, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're, at best, being far too strict in your interpretation of independence by trying to exclude all Bell Media companies plus a National Post article derived from CP. Notwithstanding the origin of the Post article, it was subject to National Post editorial guidelines for inclusion. Simonm223 (talk) 18:53, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, I'm being exactly 100 per cent correct in my interpretation of independence. The "CTV" coverage, again, is not from the national CTV News division, but from its local news staff in Victoria, which is a direct sister station to CFAX, and thus they are covering their own coworker. The wire service obituary is explicitly bylined with the name of an employee of CFAX, who is thus covering his own coworker. The citations to CFAX itself are covering their own coworker. I'm not incorrect about one iota of this. Bearcat (talk) 18:58, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)The wire service may have originally been bylined by one of his co-workers but the National Post editorial board approved its inclusion; it was subject to their editorial standards. Considering the monopsony of Bell, Rogers, Corus and Shaw in the Canadian media landscape almost every media personality is a technical co-worker of a huge chunk of other media personalities. The standard you're setting is such that we couldn't use Global TV as a source to report on Mike Holmes despite there being nothing but a parent company connecting them. Simonm223 (talk) 19:02, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't matter that "the National Post editorial board approved its inclusion" — if the byline is from his own coworker, then it is not independent of Terry Moore and fails to constitute support for Terry Moore's notability regardless of who reprints it after his own coworker sends it out. The byline de-independents the source all by itself, because the content's author was a direct personal colleague of the subject.

And what you're missing — the reason why your Mike Holmes comparison doesn't wash — is that it is entirely possible for a source to be perfectly acceptable for the purposes of verifying information, while not counting as data points toward the initial matter of getting the subject over GNG in the first place. Once a person such as Mike Holmes has already shown enough non-Corus sourcing (which Mike Holmes very definitely has) to get him over GNG in the first place, then there's nothing wrong with using some Corus sourcing as supplementary verification of facts after his basic notability has already been clinched by unaffiliated non-Corus stuff — but what you can't do is deem Mike Holmes notable if Corus sourcing is the only sourcing there is, and unaffiliated non-Corus sourcing is nonexistent. (This is, for example, why the repeated attempts to write articles about the Real Housewives of Toronto keep failing AFD: they're lacking the unaffiliated non-Corus sourcing that Mike Holmes has.)

It's the same thing here: the directly affiliated sources would be fine for additional verification of facts if Terry Moore's basic notability were covered off by unaffiliated sources, but the directly affiliated sources do not count toward the basic matter of whether he's notable enough in the first place. Unaffiliated sources have to cover off that piece, and then an affiliated source or two can be used to verify additional stray facts afterward — but directly affiliated sources do not, and cannot, make a person notable all by themselves in the absence of adequate unaffiliated sourcing. Bearcat (talk) 19:21, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)I'd say a media personality with a 60+ year long career whose obituary is picked up nationally through a wire service by media outlets as disparate as City TV, National Post, London Free Press, etc. etc. etc. can be assumed pretty safely to be clearly independently notable. Simonm223 (talk) 19:24, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If his own coworkers created all of the sources themselves, then no, he can't. Wikipedia offers no notability freebies for the length of a person's career — the notability test is not what the article says, it's the quality and independence of the references that can or can't be used to support what the article says, and a person whose sources are all directly affiliated content created by his own colleagues does not get exempted from the independent references piece just because he happened to have a long career. Bearcat (talk) 19:26, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This line of reasoning would only work if every newspaper and TV station in Canada published every single article CP produces every time. And trust me, that's not the case. Media outlets select which wire service articles they republish, and that means that those wire service articles are subject to independent editorial control. The byline is irrelevant from that perspective. I mean, should it be a shock that a person's obit was written by his colleague? That's kind of normal. But for that obituary to run nationally across multiple media channels is notable.Simonm223 (talk) 12:28, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not normal for the initial news story reporting someone's death to be written by their own colleague. The death notice that runs in the classifieds might be, if there was no family or they're too grief-stricken, and the Lives Lived in The Globe and Mail three months from now might be — but it's not normal or expected for the only news story initially reporting the death of a notable person to be written by their own colleague. If a person was genuinely notable, in fact, then each major national media outlet would be assigning its own staff to write its own original content about their death, not just aggregating a single wire service article written by the person's own colleague. Bearcat (talk) 13:36, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - the article is a WP:MEMORIAL, which is an issue that could be overcome if better coverage existed on details of his life prior to his death. But I can't find it at all, the only reporting I can find on any aspect of his life is contained in an obituary. If I limit my Googling to a few months prior to his death, I find a little incidental coverage of his broadcasting career, mostly notes in radio history blogs that he moved from one station to another, but no significant write-ups. I find no coverage at all on his opera work, his best-selling book(s?), nor his work in film and television. I also, weakly, share Bearcat's concerns that we only see obituaries penned by Moore's co-worker and only republished in media affiliated with the owner of their radio station - not because I think this makes them poor sources (it doesn't) but because it indicates that Moore's death was not considered noteworthy beyond a local scale, else you would see other outlets (even affiliated ones) writing their own obituaries. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:15, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep - the article about this person does say that he was a best-selling author, so the article on him might be worth salvaging. Vorbee (talk) 08:16, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Any article about any author can simply claim that they're a "best-selling author" — that's actually one of the single most common ways for self-promoting writers to try to game our rules, by self-ascribing one or more of their books with "best-selling" status that they don't actually have at all. So we don't keep articles about writers just because the word "best-selling" happens to appear in the text — we require reliable source proof that the book was actually a best-seller, by citing exact day and date of the exact edition of The Globe and Mail's best-seller list that the book showed up in, before the word "best-selling" turns into a valid notability claim in and of itself. (Oh, and one more thing: I can check the archives of The Globe and Mail to see if a book ever showed up on the Canadian bestsellers list or not. Wanna take a wild guess what book doesn't turn up when I search for it?) Bearcat (talk) 17:16, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I get the noms argument but its too strict an interpretation of independent for this. Szzuk (talk) 09:14, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not "too strict an interpretation of independent" at all. If a media company creating and distributing "coverage" of its own employees is enough to make those employees notable, then we automatically have to keep an article about every single radio or television personality who exists in any city or town — every such person can always show verification of their existence on their station's website, and some form of "tribute" content on their station when they leave for another job or die. So if we don't hold to the correctly strict definition of "independent", then every broadcaster on earth gets an instant guaranteed inclusion freebie. Bearcat (talk) 19:29, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:30, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Bearcat may be strict, but he's right; an article syndicated from the subject's own radio station (and I don't understand how CA is sourcing from a radio station, which going by most radio station websites, is just a transcript of the radio story, which #1 completely reads as) doesn't meet N, along with all the others sourced to the station itself. This reads more as a MEMORIAL than a neutral look at the subject's life. Nate • (chatter) 13:16, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 21:21, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I appreciate Bearcat's outstanding contributions and time invested to review this entry, however, I cannot agree to delete it. The person in question has not only been a public media figure, but at death received a broad coverage. The argument that the obituary losses validity because it was written by the Canadian Press is, for me, unsupportive. What matters the most is the spread of a news story. If the obituary was reprinted and re-voiced from multiple media outlets that's more than enough to become notable. I agree that the WP entry reads like a memorial (WP:MEMORIAL), but that has never been a reason for deletion where the coverage from reliable sources even crosses national borders (here). Den... (talk) 16:39, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can you find any sources about him from before he died? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:51, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody said that the obituary loses validity because it comes from the Canadian Press. What was said, and is true, is that the author byline on the obituary is Moore's own colleague. It loses validity because it was written by his own friend — its status as a wire service article isn't the problem in and of itself, it just fails to be enough to negate the thing that is the problem, namely the fact that it was written by his own friend and thus isn't independent of him. And the only hint of "crossing national borders" that shows up in that Google search at all is the Puget Sound Radio forum, which is not a reliable or notability-conferring source at the best of times — and isn't evidence that he's special, either, because it routinely includes Van-Vic in its coverage area and so an obit of a Van-Vic radio personality would simply be expected to show up there. Bearcat (talk) 23:01, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.