Wikipedia

Former Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani, who died Tuesday, was an architect of the 1973 oil embargo and widely misreported by Arab-language media, including CNN’s Arab edition, to have been the first Secretary-General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Arab News reported Wednesday that the claim of him serving as Secretary-General was false and attributed it to Yamani’s page on the Arabic Wikipedia, which has included the false claim since the page’s creation in 2005.

A Washington Post article published this week criticizes bias in political science articles on Wikipedia. However, rather than attacking the left-wing bias afflicting political articles, the author argues instead the problem is articles not citing enough female authors and academics. The author, Samuel Baltz, boasted of trying to fix this “bias” by expanding coverage of women in political articles, while otherwise celebrating Wikipedia’s “political and ideological neutrality” in its coverage.

An article about Wikipedia published last Thursday on the Fox News website examined the left-wing bias of the online encyclopedia. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, stated in an interview for the article: “The days of Wikipedia’s robust commitment to neutrality are long gone.” Fox also interviewed economics professor Bryan Caplan regarding the slanted coverage of communism and socialism on their Wikipedia pages, notably the omission of atrocities carried out by communist governments.

After the January 6 Capitol riot, Wikipedia editors distorted the facts of the event and even categorized it as a “coup” despite objections. Editors have also misrepresented the fraud allegations surrounding the 2020 election and supporting evidence in order to discredit them. Several editors have even been banned due to comments criticizing Wikipedia’s bias on each subject.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, announced last week that its Board of Trustees has approved a new “code of conduct” for the site and its affiliated sites. Plans for a code of conduct had been announced last year and an early draft pushing left-wing identity politics submitted for public comment a few months later. Several clarifying changes were made following the comment period, with final changes after approval broadening the scope of restrictions on “intimidating” content.

The San Francisco Board of Education voted to rename 44 of the city’s schools, claiming that prominent figures from American history, such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Paul Revere, were tied to racist incidents. The committee based their decisions on Wikipedia and other wildly inaccurate information to source its claims.

Guy Chapman, a Wikipedia administrator with special site privileges, was criticized late last year for banning an Antifa opponent from editing the far-left group’s page. Editors cited Chapman’s pro-Antifa stance as conflicting with policies against administrators using privileges when involved in disputes. Chapman subsequently resigned citing unrelated stress over disputes about the 2020 election results. This month in posts about pro-Donald Trump protestors storming the Capitol over election fraud allegations, Chapman claimed Breitbart News’ coverage of Wikipedia has undermined faith in the online encyclopedia.

Last week the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, responded to a defamation complaint submitted by conservative documentary filmmaker Lauren Southern. Her complaint noted numerous misrepresentations, omissions, and falsehoods, on the site’s page about her. In its response, the Foundation legal team stated that it was investigating her complaints and would conclude that investigation in early January.

When CNN became embroiled in controversy in 2017 after it threatened to identify the creator of a satirical image tweeted by President Donald Trump, left-wing Wikipedia editors had the Wikipedia article on the incident removed and its contents buried at the bottom of a page on CNN controversies. Editors proceeded to remove nearly a third of the CNN controversies article and have continued censoring the article up to the current year, including the controversy over its coverage of the 2020 election.

The government of Pakistan threatened unspecified “legal action” against Wikipedia and Google this weekend for featuring content about Ahmadi Muslims — considered “impostor” Muslims by radical Islamists — and for featuring cartoons of Muhammad in search results.

Although corporate media who praise Wikipedia as a counter to “fake news” have simultaneously criticized it for perceived gaps in coverage on gender and race, the site also shows a gap in its coverage of Christmas, the most widely-celebrated holiday on Earth other than New Year’s Day. In contrast to the generally under-developed nature of the site’s Christmas content, articles covering video games and the show South Park are generally more developed.

Documentary filmmaker Lauren Southern has submitted a defamation complaint to Wikipedia in response to a long-running smear campaign against her on the online encyclopedia by the site’s left-wing editors. Southern’s past activities have been misrepresented or taken out of context, such as details regarding her ban from entering the U.K. over prior political speech and her speaking events in Australia and New Zealand, which were subject to repeated cancellations following activist pressure campaigns. As Southern explains, “I don’t even recognize the individual they call ‘Lauren Southern’ on Wikipedia.” 

Since the election of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Wikipedia editors have been downplaying or removing mention of controversies from her page. This has included minimizing mention of antisemitism controversies over her comments about Israel and its supporters, excluding mention of personal scandals, and censoring details about Turkish lobbying ties. Editors have meanwhile given considerable attention to alleged mistreatment of her by others, particularly President Donald Trump who editors tied to threats Omar received.

The media and Big Tech censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, falsely claiming it was Russian disinformation. Here are some major offenders.

Politico reported last Thursday that a paid editor earlier this year had scrubbed and fluffed the Wikipedia page for Jeffrey Zients, an adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden recently named as the “Coronavirus Czar” for the prospective Biden Administration, to burnish his progressive credentials. The company behind the edits did not disclose their connection to Zients at the time as required by the site’s Terms of Use, and the account used for the edits has since been banned from Wikipedia by a site administrator.

A study published Tuesday in the Journal of Management Information Systems examined the gender bias of Wikipedia articles. Comparing Wikipedia’s treatment of 50 female Fortune 1000 CEOs to similar groups of male CEOs, the study found the men were 22 percent less likely to have articles on the site than female executives, and the women had generally higher-quality articles as well. The researchers concluded this demonstrates activist editors overcorrecting for the site’s gender bias, leading to a bias towards women and suggested similar overcorrection could arise in other groups.

In an article published Sunday in the Signpost, Wikipedia’s in-house newsletter, one editor involved in purging conservative media from the site responded to an article in British magazine the Critic, which analyzed left-wing bias on the site and suggested this purge was one result. The Signpost writer defended the process by claiming conservative media is generally less reliable. He further claimed Wikipedia was “center-right” citing a study relying on the political affiliation of people linking to sites on social media.

Newsmax has seen growing audiences at its online and televised news platforms since the disputed 2020 Presidential election amid President Donald Trump’s criticism of other conservative media coverage. After a Wikipedia editor suggested having the outlet treated as reliable, other editors responded by having Newsmax banned from use as a source for factual claims instead, partly citing its coverage of election fraud allegations, making it the latest conservative outlet banned on Wikipedia in an ongoing purge.

Multiple academic studies and critical analyses of Wikipedia have pointed towards the site’s left-wing bias. The findings include its content being more left-leaning than Encyclopedia Britannica and left-leaning editors being more active and partisan than right-leaning editors. Left-wing outlets have been found to be the top-cited sources and represent most citations on articles about American politicians, and right-leaning editors have at the same time been found to be six times more likely to face sanctions.

Page view statistics on Wikipedia indicated that on the day of the U.S. Presidential election, which hinges on mere thousands of votes in key states, the page on Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden saw an additional 66,000 views for 110,000 views total. Readers of the page would see allegations of him having corrupt foreign business dealings called “debunked conspiracy theories” and, due to editors censoring the page, find no mention of recent New York Post bombhells on apparent Biden e-mails lending credence to corruption allegations.

Leading up to the 2020 Presidential election, Wikipedia editors worked tirelessly to swing articles towards Democratic nominee Joe Biden. This started with slanting articles on President Donald Trump’s impeachment where allegations against Biden figured strongly. It continued with editors pushing the Black Lives Matter agenda on which Biden sought to capitalize and sanitizing pages of his vice-presidential prospects, including Kamala Harris. Finally, editors sought to suppress revelations about Biden family corruption, aided by well-timed restrictions on conservative media.

After initially censoring New York Post revelations about Biden family corruption citing the Post as an unreliable source, Wikipedia editors eventually added the story to an article labeling it “debunked” and a “conspiracy theory” while rejecting reports confirming the story. Editors have also added the Post story to an article on “Russian interference in the 2020 United States elections” despite no evidence of Russian involvement.

Since Donald Trump’s surprise 2016 presidential election victory, Wikipedia editors have been gradually purging conservative media from the site claiming to fight “fake news” and leading to the recent suppression of the New York Post’s Biden corruption revelations. The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the site, has leaned into these efforts to tout Wikipedia’s reliability, which has been echoed by mainstream media. This messaging followed a strategy recommended to the Wikimedia Foundation in 2016 by Minassian Media, a firm run by the Clinton Foundation’s Head of Communications.

Silicon Valley has repeatedly proclaimed that Wikipedia is the best way to deal with “fake news” on their platforms. Co-founder Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation that owns the site have touted its sourcing policies in agreement and been amplified by establishment media. Yet just as Big Tech suppressed prominent conservative media following President Donald Trump’s election, most recently censoring New York Post revelations regarding alleged Biden family corruption, Wikipedia’s community of editors has done the same by slowly purging conservative outlets from use as sources.

Since the New York Post published e-mails detailing the alleged corruption of the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, editors on Wikipedia have censored the Post’s story and Fox News confirmation of some details. Editors cite recent discussions limiting their use as sources. Reporting by the Daily Caller confirming the authenticity of one key e-mail and Sinclair reporting confirming Hunter Biden is the subject of an FBI investigation are now also being suppressed.

The foundation that owns Wikipedia and its co-founder Jimmy Wales bill the online encyclopedia as the solution to Silicon Valley’s alleged problems with “fake news” due to the site’s sourcing standards and neutrality policy. Corporate media have echoed their narrative in touting the online encyclopedia.  Yet thanks to skewed policies, the site is itself a huge source of partisan opinion and fake news masquerading as fact, leading to incidents such as editors censoring recent revelations regarding the alleged corruption of the Biden family.

In a piece for British magazine the Critic, American academics analyzed evidence of left-wing bias on Wikipedia. Noting research into Wikipedia’s left-wing bias and its increasing bans of conservative media, the authors point to a greater sign of bias: the enforcement of site policies on major political topics by administrators with special privileges on the site. They find in their analysis that editors favoring right-leaning views were six times more likely to be sanctioned than those favoring left-leaning views.

For years, the corporate media have touted Wikipedia as a tool against “fake news” and “conspiracy theories” in line with the messaging of the Wikimedia Foundation, owners of the site. Media recently praised the site’s handling of political controversies, where editors favor establishment media narratives such as when censoring and downplaying recent Hunter Biden revelations. The media also advanced Wikipedia as a credible source on the coronavirus pandemic and even as a general medical source, prompting wide use by Big Tech and a partnership with the World Health Organization, But in reality, Wikipedia comes up short in all categories.

The World Health Organization and the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, announced a collaboration last week responding to “misinformation” on the coronavirus pandemic. As part of the collaboration, the W.H.O. has released several “fact-check” graphics on a free license so they can be used on Wikipedia and other sites owned by the Foundation. The partnership prompted criticism from some Wikipedia editors due to the W.H.O.’s mishandling of the pandemic in its early stages in China.

In a decision last month by Wikipedia’s community, statements in “userboxes” on editor profile pages were no longer allowed if they expressed or implied opposition to gay marriage. Breitbart’s coverage of the decision prompted Christian media and organizations, as well as family groups, to condemn Wikipedia for censoring the views of traditional marriage supporters.