In response to a recent post from a well-known Wikipedia bias critic, X owner Elon Musk hinted at forbidding the use of the online encyclopedia as a go-to source for censoring users’ posts on X.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger requested that Musk consider banning citations of Wikipedia from Community Notes, Aug. 7, calling the influence it has over the Community Notes on X “disturbing.” Musk criticized the woke online encyclopedia for its bias in response the following day: “I agree that Wikipedia cannot be used as a definitive source for Community Notes, as the editorial control there is extremely left-biased (and nihilistic imo). Actual source material, not derivative, matters much more.”
Sanger has harshly criticized Wikipedia for its leftist bias before. He has even called the online encyclopedia “one of the most effective organs of Establishment propaganda in history.”
MRC Free Speech America studies, and Wikipedia’s publicly available editorial standards, clearly demonstrate the online encyclopedia’s bias.
MRC laid bare Wikipedia’s leftist slant in a recent study, exposing how the website effectively blacklists right-leaning outlets from being used as citations across the website. Wikipedia rigs the game even before its notoriously leftist crew of editors gets to work, utilizing a list of “reliable sources” to effectively blacklist 100 percent of right-leaning media. Wikipedia tagged The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Nation, Pro-Publica, Vox, and National Public Radio as “Generally Reliable” media outlets, while dinging as “generally unreliable” or even “deprecated” media outlets such as LifeSiteNews, The Daily Wire and The New York Post.
By prohibiting editors from citing right-leaning media sources, Wikipedia’s coverage of a whole host of material is rigged from the very start.
MRC researchers found that Wikipedia editors trashed the pages of President Donald Trump’s nominees after he announced their nominations, including the pages of now-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and now-FBI Director Kash Patel. The attacks against the nominees went as far as removing some of Hegseth’s war medals, while shrinking the infobox devoted to them. The editors also reversed previously described events. When describing Hegseth accidentally injuring a man with an axe, Wikipedia stripped out language about "minor injuries" and the man recovering and rejoining the event in favor of details from a lawsuit emphasizing damage. These changes were part of a pattern of spinning previously described events with negative characterizations and inserting negative details and sections wherever possible.
Wikipedia did the same to Vice President JD Vance's page right after major political developments. When Vance ran for Senate, editors significantly stepped up criticism of Vance, including adding criticism of his book from an NYU professor who said it was part of a trend of “sloppy analysis” that was “killing our politics.” Additionally, editors emphasized past Vance criticism of Trump at a time when he needed to unite Ohio Republicans. Editors even said Vance “falsely claimed that President Biden was flooding Ohio with illegal drugs.” This obtuse fact-check completely ignores how fentanyl enters this country and the Biden administration’s infamously lax border enforcement.
Furthermore, when Trump selected Vance as his running mate, Wikipedia editors accused Vance of promoting white nationalism and further emphasizing Vance's criticism of Trump in a transparent effort to create friction between the two candidates. Editors also stripped away helpful context explaining a Vance statement on energy, increasing the odds that readers would see the statement as a partisan non sequitur.
“Given Wikipedia’s jaded track record, Musk deserves credit if he moves off of using the website as a source for his platform’s crowdsourced fact checks (Community Notes),” said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris. “Not using overtly left-leaning sources as a means to suppress speech would be a welcome addition to Musk’s continued efforts to promote American values online, and more can be done.”
Unlike Musk, Google does not appear to be keen on moving away from reliance on Wikipedia. Google has frequently used the online encyclopedia for its “knowledge panels,” which it often prominently displays at the top of the page for searches.
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