Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to the nonprofit operator of Wikipedia alleging a pattern of liberal bias in articles on the collaborative encyclopedia.

“I write to request information about ideological bias on the Wikipedia platform and at the Wikimedia Foundation,” Cruz wrote to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander in a letter dated October 3. “Wikipedia began with a noble concept: crowdsource human knowledge using verifiable sources and make it free to the public. That’s what makes reports of Wikipedia’s systemic bias especially troubling.”

Citing research from the conservative Manhattan Institute, Cruz wrote that “researchers have found that articles on the site often reflect a left-wing bias.” Cruz alleged that “bias is particularly evident in Wikipedia’s reliable sources/perennial sources list” because it describes “MSNBC and CNN as ‘generally reliable’ sources, while listing Fox News as a ‘generally unreliable’ source for politics and science. The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center gets a top rating, but the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, is a ‘blacklisted’ and ‘deprecated’ source that Wikipedia’s editors have determined ‘promotes disinformation.’”

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    15 hours ago

    It certainly has worked on MSM.

    Its been less effective on independent media and journalists. But its also just a rhetorical ploy. The real rightward shift in mass media towards conservative bias has come with mass consolidation of media ownership over the last 40 years.

    Where as we once had a plethora of different regionalized perspectives and local coverage pools, now we’re dealing with national syndication of conservative opinion pieces, police-blotter local news (incentivized by far-right broadcast managers), and wave after wave of native advertising used to turn news media into a more profitable revenue stream.

    I would say the worst thing about modern American local news isn’t even the naked reactionary Op-Eds and crime stories. It is the daily drum-beat piece about the lottery - who is winning, how much the pot is worth, where you can buy tickets, how many people are excited to participate… Fucking horrible. Since I gave up terrestrial TV, these ads stick out like a pus-spewing boil on the face of every single broadcast news feed.