Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales believes the Wikipedia model can help salvage
journalistic integrity, but in the year since Donald Trump took office as
President of the United States, the online encyclopedia has instead proven
unable to even restrain its own biased editing community.
A look back on five of the biggest cases of
political bias that gripped the site in 2017 should discourage anyone from
looking to Wikipedia as a source for reliable and neutral information on the
political topics of the day.
1. Instructor at Berkeley sending students on
anti-Trump editing spree
UC Berkeley instructor Michel Gelobter launched a course in January 2017 for his students to
edit Wikipedia advancing an “environmental justice” narrative. Gelobter’s course description cited
the importance of the course as being at “a unique moment in history…the first
few months of a historically unique U.S. President whose agenda has been
explicitly anti-environmental, sexist, and racist.” He encouraged his students
to “edit and/or create Wikipedia articles in order to create a neutral,
well-documented record of the assaults on the environment and environmental
justice expected to unfold early in the Trump Presidency.”
Despite the clear bias of the course
description, Helaine Blumenthal of the Wiki Education Foundation, which
oversees such editing projects, posted it to Wikipedia without any alterations.
After a few months, Wikipedia editors discussed the problems the course was
creating and swiftly banned Gelobter
from the site. While Wikipedia editors did delete some of the more egregious
additions, others remained. In one of the
worst examples, a lengthy section about
“environmental injustices and the Trump Administration” consisting of over an
eighth of the article on air pollution in the United States still remains
essentially untouched, as do similar sections in the articles on food security and the Port Arthur Refinery in
Texas. On Facebook, Gelobter
insisted the pages were all neutral.
2. Burying CNN’s Blackmail
controversy and other scandals at the network
Shortly after CNN’s blackmail controversy, an editor created
a page on the topic. Other editors promptly had the story buried by moving the content
into the bottom section of an article about CNN controversies. Roughly two
dozen editors, mostly left-wing, supported this move citing a policy that says
Wikipedia is not for news. Five of
these editors showed a double standard, having previously voted to keep an article
on Trump’s disclosure of intelligence about ISIS threats in a meeting with
Russia where the same policy would apply.
A few editors went even further by cutting
out critical information on the blackmail controversy from even the general CNN
controversies article, as well as gutting nearly a third of the article’s
content covering a variety of scandals that gripped the network, despite much
of it being backed by sources considered reliable by Wikipedia standards. These
removals included a section on CNN New Year’s Eve host Kathy Griffin’s firing from the network, which was justified
by claiming it wasn’t a CNN
controversy. The same argument was used to keep out mention of
undercover journalist James O’Keefe’s video series on CNN, itself denied its own article
by many of the same editors.
Only a small amount of the removed content
had been restored after the flurry of deletions. When the situation was
mentioned on the Vox Popoli blog of
science fiction author Vox Day, the founder of Wikipedia alternative Infogalactic, an editor sought to restore noteworthy
content about the blackmail controversy and was immediately reverted.
3. Removing evidence backing James Damore’s
Google Viewpoint Diversity memo and attacking the memo’s supporters
When Google employee James Damore’s memo on
the company’s diversity programs and treatment of conservative views went viral, editors on Wikipedia began removing reliably-sourced parts of
articles he cited to support his positions. On the article for neuroticism,
this sparked an edit war based on meeting the
site’s standards for sources about medical claims. Although sources meeting
this standard were provided, material favoring Damore’s perspective was moved
to make it less prominent. Editors also fought to remove material from the
article on Damore’s memo citing scientists supporting his position and added
material seeking to discredit Damore.
Following Breitbart Tech’s coverage, these
issues were mostly resolved, but editors also went after pages of Damore’s
supporters. Hours after libertarian philosopher Stefan Molyneux interviewed
Damore, editors began editing his page to
label him “alt-right” with one adding material to suggest he
was racist. An editor mentioned in Breitbart Tech’s coverage also joined the
effort when Molyneux tweeted a link to the
story and unsuccessfully took the
effort to label him alt-right to the Google memo article as
well. Attempts at removing this label or to note his statements rejecting such
labels have been repeatedly undone.
4. Downplaying Antifa’s violent far-left
tendencies
An article on the violent Antifa movement
in the United States was created shortly before its involvement in violence at
the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, for which Antifa was condemned by President Trump. Even before the
events in Charlottesville, left-wing editors sought to remove or minimize mentions of the group’s
violent history despite reports in sources considered reliable by Wikipedia.
Following the violence, this suppression got to the point where the
article’s only mentions of violence was in the headlines of its sources. Claims
of Antifa being far-left were also removed.
Many editors active on the Antifa article
were sympathetic to the group and some even openly showed support for Antifa on
their profile pages. Editors with these sympathies were instrumental in removing material from the
page’s intro noting that Antifa has been characterized as a terrorist group by
government agencies. These editors also added material portraying Antifa as victims of smear campaigns
who ostensibly help “protect” people from
far-right violence. Members of Wikipedia’s powerful Arbitration Committee
were active on the article as well to
help burnish the group’s image. Frustration with this conduct and the CNN
controversies dispute moved one editor to back away from political
articles declaring them beyond repair.
5. Enacting a “purge” of media sources
critical of Russia hacking narrative
Citing a recent Associated Press report
that merely elaborated on year-old circumstantial evidence, a discussion was started
over whether to “purge” sources critical
of claims about Russia hacking into the DNC from the article on alleged Russian
interference with the 2016 election. Advocates of this purge, nearly all
established anti-Trump editors, overwhelmed those opposed and thus the purge
was implemented as “consensus” decision. One editor who objected to this purge
was quickly attacked by its advocates then reported for “incivility” and
“assuming bad faith” by criticizing the bias of those supporting the “purge”
proposal. The editor was subsequently banned from
discussion of U.S.-Russia relations and allegations of election interference on
these grounds.
Conclusion
Members of Wikipedia have begun raising concerns
about bias against conservatives on the site, with Wales appearing interested in examples,
but the editing community’s standard response is noting that Wikipedia has
mechanisms in place to address incidents of bias. Unfortunately, Wikipedia’s
mechanisms have proven consistently lop-sided
in favor of editors supporting left-wing positions. Editors from the left
frequently get away with misconduct, while editors defending the right face
more frequent and much harsher sanctions. Disputes over articles about the Alabama U.S. Senate race and outgoing FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe are other examples demonstrating this pattern.
Last week, Wales attended the World
Economic Forum in Davos and participated in a panel on fake news. There
he promoted the Wikipedia hybrid model of his new journalism outlet WikiTribune
as the solution to the fake news problem and the partisan sensationalism
permeating media, despite the same flaws already emerging there before his project even
officially launched. Should the five examples above be any indicator, then
Wikipedia’s use as a leading example for improving the honesty and integrity of
information on the Internet is minimal. Failing to address this is likely to
only prompt more on the right to seek out alternatives.
(Disclosure: The author has been involved
in disputes with several of the parties referenced in the article)
T. D. Adler edited
Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting
conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to
previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler
writes under an alias.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/02/01/five-of-the-best-examples-of-left-wing-bias-on-wikipedia-in-2017/