Posted on 05/26/2020 6:23:40 PM PDT by Mount Athos
Conservatives have long been blowing the whistle on Wikipedia’s leftist bias. The site’s co-founder Larry Sanger apparently agrees with them.
In a blog post last week, Sanger argued that Wikipedia has abandoned all neutrality in the name of avoiding what activist journalists call the “false balance” – the idea that not all opposing views of an argument should be given equal time. He goes through several pages to support his thesis, noting the rather charged language often employed.
When comparing the pages for former President Barack Obama and the current President Donald Trump, the differences are night and day, with the former receiving overwhelmingly positive treatment while the latter is frequently portrayed negatively.
“The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, and Fast and Furious, to say nothing of Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server scandal—or, of course, the developing ‘Obamagate’ story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump,” argued Sanger.
“A fair article about a major political figure certainly must include the bad with the good,” he continued. “The only scandals that I could find that were mentioned were a few that the left finds at least a little scandalous, such as Snowden’s revelations about NSA activities under Obama. In short, the article is almost a total whitewash.”
Though some might claim the information is “objectively correct,” Sanger asserted that nobody can claim they are objectively neutral. In contrast to Barack Obama’s glowing treatment, Donald Trump is treated as if he does only wrong.
“The idea that the Donald Trump article is neutral is a joke,” he wrote. “Just for example, there are 5,224 none-too-flattering words in the ‘Presidency’ section. By contrast, the following ‘Public Profile’ (which the Obama article entirely lacks), ‘Investigations,’ and ‘Impeachment’ sections are unrelentingly negative, and together add up to some 4,545 words—in other words, the controversy sections are almost as long as the sections about his presidency.”
“Common words in the article are ‘false’ and ‘falsely’ (46 instances): Wikipedia frequently asserts, in its own voice, that many of Trump’s statements are ‘false.’ Well, perhaps they are. But even if they are, it is not exactly neutral for an encyclopedia article to say so, especially without attribution,” he continued. “You might approve of Wikipedia describing Trump’s incorrect statements as ‘false,’ very well; but then you must admit that you no longer support a policy of neutrality on Wikipedia.”
After going through several more pages, including some rather biased language in reference to the existence of Jesus Christ and the abortion argument, Sanger concludes by calling on Wikipedia to just come clean and admit it no longer practices fair neutrality.
“It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one,” Sanger wrote. “Of course, Wikipedians are unlikely to concede any such thing; they live in a fantasy world of their own making.”
Good on Sanger.
Well, at least he owned up to it.
Interesting last name...Margaret (sp?) Sanger, the abortionist, right?
The MSM operates the same way. Corrections with the MSM, however, should be easier.
NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Axios are Comcast
CNN is ATT
Both Comcast and ATT are federally licensed telecom providers. Not only do both control vital infrastructure, the two also control the dissemination of “news”. Both should be forced to pick a service: telecom or news media, but not both.
Wiki is very useful as long as the subject has no current political significance.
If it does, though, Wiki is always distorted or censored. The permanent bias being to the Left.
Exactly. Never should have allowed this in the first place.
Interesting how quickly it was corrupted.
And in future news, Sanger didn't kill himself.
Wikipedia will never be good with current events. It is not in its nature to do so. But anything to do with history over 50 years old, it is priceless.
Never Trust Wiki on anything slightly political. BUT: on non-controversial subjects it’s a great entry level resource.
You still have to be careful of vandalism. I was looking up something on rabbits and found out they can run up to 300 miles per hour.
hard left.
Anything to the right of a Moderate Democrat is alt right or Far right according to Wikipedia.
hard left.
Anything to the right of a Moderate Democrat is alt right or Far right according to Wikipedia.
I suspect you might have to go a little further back. For instance, does Wiki mention that Margaret Sanger spoke at a KKK meeting, was for eugenics, and was openly anti-black?
..they can run up to 300 mph!
That sounds like a feature of Robots, not Rabbits.
Terminator Robots.
I noticed their Leftist bias 10 years ago and take anything written there with a grain of salt.
I’ve been banned from editing Wikipedia articles for a limited period without ever having tried to edit one once!
How did that happen, you ask? Easy. Articles and subsections now have an ‘edit’ symbol on the right side of the subhead line. Click on it, and you’ll be told that you can’t edit it unless you are logged in. I don’t have an account, so I never log in. But that icon is often where my finger lands when scrolling the article up or down. So it opens up and I close it. Do it enough times and, apparently, some algorithm alerts a moderator who judges whether you’re a nuisance or not. If you’re judged a nuisance, they ban you from editing for a period of time. My ban lifts at the end of July!
Give ‘em time. I know I’ve come across history articles that have been edited between times I reread them.
I depend on wiki only to identify plants.
That’s funny. I think some people go in to create a little humorous mischief from time to time.
During the recent ‘murder hornets’ craze, for example, the article for Asian hornets mentioned that scientists pitted individual specimens up against various insects. They won all contests except against one particular insect with a long latin name. Follow the link (still there!) and it’s some small meadow butterfly.
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