Ethics Alarms hasn’t pointed out what a biased, often incompetent, purveyor of progressive and Democratic propaganda Wikipedia is for a while, and I regret that. I am reminded of Wiki’s key role in hammering woke propaganda into the brains of unsuspecting users (like students) virtually every day, however, when I choose to use the crowd-written web encyclopedia for basic facts (when did Jerry Lewis die was the latest) and am irritated both by what the badly curated articles leave out, and the dunning for contributions. The promise of AI Grokipedia as a more ethical alternative has been dimmed by my dawning realization that I can’t trust bots either, and that Grokipedia uses Wicki among its sources.
“Reason” has posted an exposé of sorts on the Axis ally, here. Nothing in it unseats what I had already included, but the brief against Wikipedia is damning. As we would assume, the site reallt went over to the dark side, and violated its alleged mission, when Donald Trump shattered the Left’s dream of forever power in 2016. Reason notes, describing the page on the current President,
“He’s described as an “American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States.” Biographical details include his time as a real estate developer, reality show host, and his 2016 presidential victory over Hillary Clinton. So far, no disagreements.
But the first policy mentioned is a travel ban against seven Muslim-majority countries, expanding the border wall, family separations, rolling back environmental and business regulations, downplaying the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, refusing to concede the 2020 election, and getting impeached. Then comes a recounting of his legal battles, his second term involving “mass layoffs of federal workers,” “targeting of political opponents,” the “revers[al] of pro-diversity policies,” and “persecution of transgender people.”
The final paragraph concludes that “many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racist or misogynistic” and that “he has made many false or misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics.” It also states that his actions “have been described as authoritarian” and “historians ranked him as one of the worst presidents in American history.”
Even more revealing is the reaction of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, whose response to Reason’s query about that biased alignment, replied, “If you get a negative view of Donald Trump from reading it, that’s not our fault.” Wow. No bias there!
Ethics Alarms 
I once read of a poll of college journalism students that included a query on why they chose that field. The most common answer was essentially some form of “I want to tell people the right way to think about issues.” Studies show them, not surprisingly, to lean left politically, expressing goals of wanting to “point people toward possible solutions to society’s problems” and “be a voice for underprivileged individuals”, & etc.
Wiki volunteer “editors” are predominantly wannabe journalists, producing and defending left-leaning narratives, and deleting and/or arguing against the inclusion of right-oriented information when it’s presented.
“But as in so many other areas—education, journalism, the professions, academia, entertainment—the public and those they depend upon to preserve society and civilization were complacent, apathetic, naive and inert.”
I wouldn’t say that. I would say ‘powerless’. People did push back, but the opposition to the leftist elites are generally of modest means, law abiding, and not terribly murderous. They filed lawsuits and were told they had no standing or were subjected to ridiculous court rulings (oh, we have a different standard for racial discrimination depending on what race you are). They tried to speak out and were told to be quiet or face reprisals in their workplace or against their children at school. The people who were pushing back weren’t rich, they didn’t own magazines, and the discriminatory hiring practices of the media are protected by the legal community to this day. The last person who had the ability to do something about this was Joe McCarthy and we all know what happened to him. You can argue with his tactics, but in the end, he was essentially right. There were Communists trying to undermine this country in academia, in journalism, in Hollywood, and in the bureaucracy. Our decision to allow them to remain there is what has led to this, but what was the option? Declare them all traitors and executed them? Should we have banned them from all responsible positions in society? Should everyone in education, the government, and journalism be required to certify that they believed in our democratic republic and they weren’t trying to undermine and subvert it for communist causes? For 50+ years, people have been forced to turn their children over to Communists for 6 hours/day for the school year. Any attempts to get the Communists our was thwarted by the unions and the legal system. Are you surprised what happened?