Ah, sunlight! When all the machinations are revealed, it’s a lot harder to get away with being unethical.
Apparently Wikipedia almost joined the media outlets operating a cover-up of the Gosnell baby-killing trial. For a while a debate raged on the site, with an editor advocating that the article about the abortion doctor at the center of the horrific allegations and testimony be deleted entirely, because Gosnell’s trial is only a “local multiple-murder story in Pennsylvania.” Yes, and the Newtown murders are just a multiple-murder story in Connecticut. Outright hoaxes stay on the site for years, puff piece entries on virtual non-entities and insignificant organizations clog it, but a case with major policy implications bearing on a contentious national, bioethics and human rights issue of long-standing isn’t worthy of a page? The editor in this case, whoever he is, is too biased and incompetent to hold the position. Had his argument prevailed, Wikipedia’s credibility and perceived trustworthiness would have been severely diminished, for an encyclopedia cannot have an ideological agenda, and the desire to marginalize the Gosnell story is smoking-gun proof of one.
Luckily, Wikipedia got it right in the end, and the article survived. What saved Wiki was transparency. The argument about the Gosnell article was open and public, and ethics always benefits when transparency reigns. You would think that would be one of the news media’s mottos…but not, apparently, when it means letting the public know how it is that certain stories get buried, marginalized and ignored.
(The mainstream media, not surprisingly, didn’t cover the Wikipedia debate, either.)
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Sources: Daily Caller1, Daily Caller2, Newsbusters
Ethics Alarms 
Unfortunately, the transparency and locks when there’s a firestorm on the topic mean I trust them more than regular media. Why is moderate a curse word from both ends? Everything allowed is as bad as everything banned.
Media shouldn’t be moderate either. It should simply be factual, the end. Who what when where.
It would be amazing if legislators were required to write position pieces on their votes – supreme court justice style – and even more amazing if the practice could be extended to private organizations. Wed probably see alot more wikipedia type transparency. *longing sigh*
[I couldnt log in through my FB, hence the backup profile]
A frightening thought indeed. The recent example is this...