Editor’s Note: Despite being cited hundreds of times across Wikipedia, every attempt to create a simple factual AmmoLand News page, over two decades, has been denied or deleted—proof that “Wokepedia’s” bias reaches even the footnotes.
Opinion
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Wikipedia is “Wokepedia,” complains Elon Musk. That’s because it’s become so left-wing.
“It’s designed to push an ideological agenda that you can’t see,” says journalist Ashley Rindsberg in my new video. He runs “Neutral Point of View,” a Substack publication that exposes Wikipedia bias.
“So what if it’s biased?” I ask. “It’s just one website.”
“Wikipedia’s information spreads into everything online,” he replies, “ChatGPT, … Siri, Alexa. Ask a question, it is all Wikipedia.”
As a result, “a few thousand powerful editors determine what gets counted as information.”
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Those editors sure hate President Donald Trump. When he put undocumented immigrants in what people called “cages” at detention centers, Wikipedia editors listed the centers under “concentration camps.”
Since Wikipedia says, “anyone can edit,” I tried to put that in perspective, adding, “President Obama built these cages.”
Within a day, my edit was taken down.
“Wikipedia has definitely been taken over by woke activists,” says Rindsberg.
An editor of my page even posts pictures of Lenin and Che on his website profile!
To make sure the content stays leftist, Wikipedia labels conservative media “unreliable.” Editors should not cite Fox News, The Federalist, The Daily Wire, the New York Post …
By contrast, Wikipedia labels CNN, and even MSNBC, VOX, Slate, The Nation and Mother Jones, “reliable.”
That’s nuts. Fox sometimes gets things wrong, but MSN and Slate don’t?
Another example: After years of leftist media labeling the claim that COVID leaked from a lab a “conspiracy theory,” most eventually acknowledged on the new evidence.
“COVID-19 likely originated from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China,” summarized the “Today” show.
But Wikipedia still says there’s “no evidence supporting laboratory involvement.”
My own Wikipedia page is filled with not just mistakes but smears. Wikipedia editors make me look cruel.
They claim that when I anchored “20/20,” I complained that AIDS research gets “too much funding.”
But all I’d said was that AIDS research gets disproportionate funding compared to other diseases — diseases that kill more people.
Former President Bill Clinton said the same thing: “We’re spending 10 times as much per fatality on people with AIDS!”
They don’t trash him, just me.
Wikipedia’s socialists sure hate libertarians.
It’s not fair.
“There’s no recourse, there’s no accountability,” says Rindsberg. “Nobody for you to talk to and say, ‘This is wrong.’ If this was a news organization, there would be an avenue or a channel for you to at least address it. In Wikipedia’s case, that is not true.”
At least things may be changing now, because there are new options, like SciencePedia and Justapedia covering science and law.
“Justapedia,” says Rindsberg, “was founded by a veteran Wikipedia editor who couldn’t handle the left-wing bias. … This is exactly what we need … people to be able to choose among different sources, so we’re not all forced into the Wikipedia information funnel.”
Most important, since he has an extraordinary track record of success, is Elon Musk’s Grokipedia. It’s new and AI, so it makes mistakes, but Grok currently leads AI intelligence tests.
When it comes to topics I checked out, such as the probable origins of COVID, and my page, Grokipedia does better.
“Is there any way to fix Wikipedia?” I ask Rindsberg.
“The best chance we have is for dedicated people who are really interested in these topics to get in there and become an editor that can make those kinds of changes. We only need a few dozen, maybe even fewer, to make an impact … If enough people say … ‘I’m going to give it a go.’ … they actually can make an impact. The question is, are enough people going to take that leap?”
I hope you who read this column will!
About John Stossel
Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines.”
