Matt Sanchez
May 14, 2008
Matt Sanchez is an international journalist and war correspondent. After
a year of cooperating with Wiki-editors he is currently banned from
contributing to an article based on him at Wikipedia, due to protests of
bias.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/wiki-whacked-by-political-bias/
Wikipedia is billed as the world's largest encyclopedia, but is it also
the world's largest propaganda tool for smearing conservatives and
promoting leftist views?
With the presidential elections looming, Americans will query the
Internet to make a decision on the candidates. Now more than ever,
accurate information is key. For almost any query, the chances are that
the search engine will turn up a Wikipedia article - and that's where
the problems begin.
In 2001, Bernard Goldberg wrote his groundbreaking book Bias to confirm
what we already knew: the media colored the news according to a liberal
ideology. Today, Wikipedia, the "world's largest encyclopedia," has the
potential of becoming the liberal left's largest propaganda machine.
Volunteer editors scour the Internet for "reliable sources" (RS in
Wiki-speak) and the typical Wikipedia article is better sourced than
most subscription-based encyclopedias, according to several studies. But
it's the choice of how to source an article that really shades the news.
Drawing from a mostly liberal media, a controversial figure like Senator
Obama's "spiritual guide," the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, becomes almost
a scholarly man presaging the woes of our time.
Most editors take their work very seriously, and are meticulous in
following the Wikipedia rule book. But many editors pursue childish
agendas with a perverted glee. Control, influence, and prestige - which
escape many Wikipedia editors in the mundane brick and mortar world -
are what some Wiki-addicts can establish in the virtual realm, except
here they mostly remain anonymous and irresponsible.
Editors Gone Wild
"Every year a couple of editors go crazy and deface the Wikipedia main
page," says Lise Broer, a Wikipedian with over two years of experience
in the Wikipedia project.
"Wikipedia has redundant systems for eliminating much of the vandalism,
but the more subtle stuff can get through," said Lise in a phone
interview. "That's where I come in." Broer has adopted the screen name
Durova, the first female Russian officer.
An historic female military figure is a fitting name because Lise Broer
has involved herself with the toughest and most contentious articles on
Wikipedia. Ms. Broer/Durova worked to ban an editor who claimed to be
the descendant of Joan of Arc and was intent on inscribing his shoddily
sourced lineage on the saint's Wikipedia page. "Wiki-drama" is as subtle
as using "sock puppets" to pretend you're more than one editor, to
outright stalking. Through hours of incessant emails, text messages, and
chats, Broer has dealt with these headaches with great professionalism -
and she does it all for free.
Liberal Bias?
Conservative figures are subject to both outright vandalism and the
subtle hostility of activist editors with an enormous ideological agenda
and no scruples. If several editors collaborate to block or stonewall an
article, they can stall well-sourced information or just entirely skew
the presentation. For some reason conservatives are an especially
appealing target.
"Is he best known as a (political) 'commentator' or as a 'TV presenter'
or a 'lying sack of sh*t?'" asks one irate editor of the Wikipedia Bill
O'Reilly article.
Conservative radio personality and activist Melanie Morgan has had her
Wikipedia article defaced for several years by editors who have lobbied
to have false information included in her Wikipedia article, including
changing her name.
Michelle Malkin's article is typically peppered with racial epithets.
Ann Coulter's article is on a permanent lockdown status, where only the
most trustworthy editors preside over the smallest of changes that have
to reach some type of peer consensus. I can't even reproduce much of the
comments and criticisms on the Coulter article.
My article, Matt Sanchez, is one of the most hotly contested articles on
Wikipedia and has been ****elded from editing for the better part of a
year.
There are hundreds of thousands of blogs and articles on the Internet,
so what makes Wikipedia any different from much of the dubious
information one can find on the World Wide Web?
"Take the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles
Times, CNN, and Fox News. Put them together and the traffic going to
Wikipedia is easily 10 times that amount and growing," Durova said. If
you do a search, any search, there's bound to be a Wikipedia article
among the top three results. The culture wars have found a new
battlefield; it's named Wikipedia.org.
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
". researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany
re****t the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years,
accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over
the last 100 years."
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