Watch Out Wikipedia

'The problem with Wikipedia and bias

By Tim Anderson

The popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has come to play an important
role in informing and also shaping public debates. Yet as a Florida-based,
US creation, it brings its own baggage to those debates.

US corporate media sources (Time, CNN, Fox, and so on) are privileged as
reliable and "neutral" sources in Wiki entries, despite the fact that many
of these bodies are intimately involved in many of the most contentious
public debates, such as privatisation, intervention and war.

The online tool Wikipedia Scanner also demonstrates that Wiki is heavily
edited by powerful organisations, such as the CIA, the Vatican, US
government funded agencies, news corporations, banks and embassies.

Yet perhaps even more important is the role played by Wiki's 1,000
administrators, who have "special powers" to edit and summarily remove
content, determine what constitutes Wiki's stated policy of a "neutral point
of view", excluding other points of view, disputed fact and "biased"
sources.

Here is one example of the US worldview in Wikipedia when, as a voluntary
"editor", I tried to help explain Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's
accusation that former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was a
"fascist".

The Wiki page in question was on the sideshow generated by the King of Spain's
frustrated demand at the November 2007 Ibero-American summit in Chile, that
Chavez "shutup". The page is called: Por qué no te callas? (Why don't you
shut up?).

The Wiki page begins by putting the incident in context of an implicit
critique of Venezuelan economic policies, using mainly Time magazine
sources:

Chávez repeatedly interrupted the speech of the Prime Minister of Spain José
Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to call [his] predecessor, José María Aznar, a
"fascist" . and accuse Aznar of having supported a failed coup d'état aimed
at removing Chávez from power. Zapatero had earlier irritated Chávez by
suggesting that Latin America needed to attract more foreign capital to
combat its chronic deepening poverty; Chávez's leftist policies shun outside
investment.

It goes on to repeat the Time magazine line ("Behind the King's Rebuke to
Chavez", November 12, 2007) that a dispute over "free markets" and poverty
policy may have been behind the "fascist" accusation against Aznar:

What may have motivated Chávez was that Zapatero - who is a socialist -
"insisted that Latin America needs to attract more foreign capital if it's
going to make a dent in its chronic, deepening poverty". Because Chávez
blames capitalism and insists that only socialism can address inequality in
Latin America, he went on the tirade against "Aznar and other free-market
'fascists'," resulting in Zapatero's reminding him that Aznar had been
democratically elected.'

Lees verder: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6954