The problem with Wikipedia and bias

By Tim Anderson - posted Thursday, 7 February 2008

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.

The Time magazine view was a bizarre distortion of the debate at the summit, which had been televised live through channels such as Telesur and Venezolana de Television. The arguments of Chavez against Aznar were very clear and can still be seen in the many excerpts on YouTube and other online video sites. But this presumes you are interested enough, and can understand Spanish.

On the reputations involved, let’s remember that Jose Maria Aznar sits on the Board of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, probably the largest corporate media network on earth. Murdoch was a strong backer of George W.Bush and the Iraq war. News Corporation, like Time Warner, has directors cross linked to banks and industries unhappy with the reversal of privatisation policies under Chavez. Importantly, these groups quite deliberately shape what is regarded “normal” (or “biased”) debate in the US, and in the English speaking world.

I decided to try to clarify the “fascist” references by adding this section to Wiki’s “Por qué no te callas?” page:

While there was indeed vigorous debate over not simply investment but privatisation of basic services in Latin America, according to Chavez, in public statements at the summit and soon after (and as reported on Venezolana de Television and Venezuela Analysis) his reasons for calling Aznar a fascist were far more specific than those suggested by Time magazine:

Aznar in 1999 had urged President Clinton to bomb Serbian radio and television

Aznar's government, along with the Bush administration, openly backed the April 2002 military coup against Chavez

Aznar actively participated in the “illegal” and brutal invasion of Iraq, on the basis of false assertions about weapons of mass destruction.

Chavez also recounted, after the summit, that at an early meeting with Aznar he (Chavez) had asked how countries like Haiti would survive under the neoliberal (open market) regime? Aznar's response, according to Chavez was: "they've already screwed themselves".

However very soon after adding this, my entire section was deleted by a Wiki administrator who said to me, in the Wiki talk section:

I removed this section to the talk page, for further work; it has some clear POV [“point of view”] and sourcing issues, and appears to be original research/synthesis, but perhaps something can be salvaged.

When I said I thought that my section was better sourced than the rest of the article, the administrator replied:

The rest of the article is scrupulously sourced. First, Zmag is a highly biased source. Second, you have strung together conclusions from several different sources into a whole … That is, you are presenting your own conclusions rather than conclusions of a secondary, reliable journalistic source. And finally, the text is POV … [for example when] you introduce POV language like "brutal invasion of Iraq". … You also cited VenAnalysis [my note: actually Venezuelanalysis.com] in the text (another highly biased source) … you should discuss and come to consensus before re-inserting the text.

So here was Wiki’s problem with clarifying the Chavez explanation of Aznar as a “fascist”: the BBC was OK but ZNet and Venezuela Analysis were both unusable “biased” sources, unlike Time magazine. No “original research” was allowed but rather reportage based on administrator-determined “reliable” sources. I was urged to agree on a “consensus” with the Wiki administrators. I gave it up as a bad bet.

The result is that, according to Wiki, amplifying its “reliable” sources such as Time magazine, and despite what all the other online sources tell us, Aznar was apparently called a fascist simply because he supported “free markets”. Further, even if the war on Iraq was illegal it was not a “brutal invasion”. That is apparently a “point of view”.

Here is history rewritten, by North American “consensus”. The full story is still out there, but English speakers will have to look a bit harder, because you won’t find it on Wikipedia.

By Tim Anderson - posted Thursday, 7 February 2008
from Opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Tim Anderson is a lecturer at the School of Political Economy, Sydney University and is a member of the Committee of Management of AID/WATCH