Fox News Wikipedia Controversy
August 30th, 2007 by Joe Hack
It is reported that Fox News, the house-channel of the Republican party, was caught with its pants down sabotaging Wikipedia entries. The Wikipedia is a hugely successful and valuable wordwide resource that relies on the honesty and integrity of its contributers, who can submit and amend entries to the internet encycopaedia . Fox News has allegedly been abusing this to change the Wikipedia entries of their critics and competition (like Al Franken) . A scanning device introduced by Wikipedia was able to trace the changes back to a Fox News IP address.
Here is an example of a Wikipedia entry which originally (and accurately) read :
- The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the National Public Radio program “Fresh Air” on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was “literally laughed out of court” and that “wholly (holy) without merit” is a good characterization of Fox News itself.
but this is how it was altered by Fox :
- The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the liberal National Public Radio program “Fresh Air” on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was the best thing to happen to his book sales.
Walken is not the only one who’s entry suffered in this way. Also targeted by Fox were Keith Olbermann, Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith and Brit Hume.
Many companies use Wikipedia to build their own image, reputation and search rankings, but when it comes to damaging the Wikipedia entries of their competition and changing actual comments this clearly crosses the line. Misrepresenting the sense of what someone says is the direct opposite of what any news channel should be doing, but of course few outside of the US regard Fox news as a legitimate or even serious ‘news channel’. Their daily editorial ‘memos’, directing what the public should see, are alleged to closely mirror the official Republican ‘talking points’ on any given day. Generally speaking Fox news, although popular with some sections of the American public, is notorious around the world for its unbalanced and biased reporting.
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Tags:activism Bush dirty tricks fox news Political News president Republicans
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Posted in Political News |
August 31st, 2007 at 7:53 am
Unfortunately this was not the first time someone was caught with their pants down changing entries on Wikipedia. It’s even sadder when it’s done by some of the “big boys” around.
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:05 pm
I don’t think “sabotage” is what you’re doing when caught with your pants down.
Just a thought …
The Almighty Kmuzu
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
This is why you have to take things like Wikipedia with a grain of salt. The intention of the site might well be pure, but it is to open ended as this demonstrates.
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:42 am
This isn’t Fox News’ problem, it is Wikipedia’s. The idea that truth can somehow be gleaned via a wholly democratic vote of self-interested parties manifests into the tyranny of majority.
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:51 am
Best thing to do would be for Wikipedia and google and yahoo ect to come together and penalize (in therms of search engine ranking) such efforts. Of course, this is assuming one could find a way to prevent abuse of the system.
September 11th, 2007 at 9:11 am
[…] is done more often that I would have thought. Recently an article on Joe Hack.com reporting how Fox News was caught with their pants down changing their own Wikipedia pages. This prompted me to research some more on the subject and try […]
September 13th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I am currently reading the report of the independent review panel by Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi on the Sept 8th, 2004 60 Minutes Wednesday segment concerning President Bush’s Texas Air NAt’l Guard Service. CBS defended the authenticity of false documents. They are supposed to stand for “journalism of the highest quality and unimpeachable integrity”. They don’t. They all suck!