Looking to the Same Old Sources

By: Chris Johnson

Readers of this email likely grew up in a time where researching a new subject meant a trip to the library, flipping through a card catalogue, finding a relevant title or two, and then locating the poignant section in those books.

That is no longer how the curious learn about the world.

Now we simply type the question in the Google search bar and read the answer. But where does Google find its answers? Often, it pulls straight from Wikipedia.

From its inception, students were warned against using Wikipedia as a source because its entries were so easily manipulated. Twenty years later, and it is the lens through which most internet users observe the past and explain the present.

Today the issue is not that just anyone can make edits to the encyclopedia entries, but that only certain people can edit certain controversial topics, no one knows who they are, and there’s no recourse if they get something factually wrong and simply don’t want to change it.

In the last few days, a founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, has stepped forward to call out the current iteration of the site to reform. He published an article consisting of nine recommendations for reform to The Free Press and sat down with Tucker Carlson to recap.

In that interview, he reveals this, “What I can tell you is that over the years, conservatives, libertarians, were just pushed out. They, in many cases – well, there is a whole, you know, army of administrators, hundreds of them, who are constantly blocking people that they have ideological disagreements with…

“So, the point is, it wasn’t always like this. Over the years, basically, the left consolidated its power. The way I like to put it is that – that the left has its march through the institutions. And when Wikipedia appeared, it was one of the institutions that they marched through.”

As an example, Sean Davis of the Federalist reminded everyone on X, of how Wikipedia had treated him back in 2014.

Popular scientist/public figure Neil deGrasse Tyson had been caught fabricating quotes to mischaracterize several semi-celebrities, including George W. Bush. This 2014 article at the Federalist details Wikipedia’s response, summed up here:

“According to a review of the edit history of Tyson’s page, one long-time Wikipedia editor deleted an entire pending section summarizing the issue of Tyson’s fabricated quotes. Another editor attempted to insert a brief mention of Tyson’s fabrication of the George W. Bush quote. That mention was also deleted. When it was reinserted, it was deleted yet again …

“Literally every single mention of Tyson’s history of fabricating quotes has been removed from Tyson’s Wikipedia page.”

The Federalist is now blacklisted as a source on Wikipedia, along with Breitbart, Daily Caller, Epoch Times, Fox News, and the New York Post, meaning a Wikipedia entry cannot cite their journalistic efforts. While left-wing sources like the New York Times and the Washington Post are the standard of reliability.

As artificial intelligence takes over for search engines as the default source of knowledge, Wikipedia’s influence is still frequently felt. Elon Musk’s Grok tells me it relies on Wikipedia for roughly 10-20% of its responses. ChatGPT says about 5-10%, meaning Wikipedia’s understanding is appealed to tens of millions of times per day.

Since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2023, the once perennial complaints of media bias seemed to dry up. The left’s monopoly on the information space was shattered. Many consumers were disillusioned that just because they saw a talking head say something, it should be accepted as fact.

But, while fewer and fewer Americans are turning to the New York Times, or CNN, or other liberal news on purpose, they’re still receiving that leftist perspective by default when they look to Wikipedia, Google, ChatGPT, etc.

Left-wing media bias is still shaping the world.

 

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