Higher education, means higher thinking

When I ask you to compare the content of an article and a website, I expect a comparison with a thoughtful look at who the authors are, the supporting organizations, where there might be bias or mis-information, whether you can check resources for facts, and whatnot. If you simply spout back to me what I have told you in class - that internet resources might be full of bias and opinion, or that anyone can post information on the internet, or that the database resources are usually more reliable - you will not get a good grade.

Because here's a secret: It's possible to find scholarly and peer-reviewed information for free on the web. It's also possible to find non-scholarly information in the databases, they do carry newspapers and popular magazines after all.

Your library database source is a newspaper. You admit you can find no information about the educational background of the author or any purpose listed for the publication. You then say that the library database source seems more reliable. While it is often true that a library database source may be more reliable than what is out there on the web, unless you have opinions to back this up when you have outright admitted to being unable to find any information about author, publication purpose, or bibliography within the source, just saying it's more reliable is not necessarily the correct answer.

On the other hand, your internet source, although not what I would consider scholarly does contain a bibliography, which is a point in its favour. Granted, the author is not an expert in the field, and the website does not seem overly professional, but you can see who he is and see where he got his information.

Personally, I'd use neither of them in a paper that I was writing, but it's all right to say in your summary as well.

"Don't believe everything you read."

We want you to be careful of using information that can be placed on the web by anyone with the technical know-how (research know-how or not). But that doesn't mean that A) everything printed by a publishing house is accurate and that B) everything on the web is evil and full of bias and opinion.

In the case of this question, it's all about you showing to me that you know how to evaluate information, and unfortunately this response is not showing me that you can.