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?
I’m not sure it’ll make you feel better, but my kids were not allowed to use Wikipedia for reference in school. There’s still encyclopedia Brittanica available online. I haven’t looked at it lately but it’s there. I think the old reference books that can’t be altered so easily and easily acquired at antique shops, used book stores and thrift stores are our best bet. The history of slavery really hasn’t changed. Unfortunately, for that to be useful, you have to have a literate society with a decent reading level as well as curiosity. Both of which seem lacking right now.
I remember, back in 2024, watching the Gaza Pier fiasco unfold in real time. In particular, I was paying attention to the flotilla’s deployment to the Area of Operations and what that said about our fleet maintenance, our readiness for amphibious operations and what they call Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS). What it said was not encouraging.
Originally, 5 Army vessels and 2 Navy ships were sent out. From the Army we had the Frank Besson, the James Loux, the Wilson Wharf, Matamoros, and Monterrey. From the Navy we had the John P. Bobo and the Baldomero Lopez.
The Bobo was forced to turn back almost immediately due to serious engine trouble. We were forced to substitute the Benavidez in her place; the John P. Bobo never made it to Gaza. The Wilson Wharf was held up in Tenerife for weeks due to unspecified mechanical trouble. The James Loux was briefly held up in Crete for unspecified reasons. Of the original 7 vessels sent, 4 reached their destination as planned and on schedule. Even if we don’t count the Loux’s brief delay, that’s still 5 for 7, on a non-combat mission, in peacetime.
WhenI checked the Wikipedia entry some time later, it felt like I had fallen into an alternate dimension. The John P. Bobo was disappeared from the mission completely. So was the Baldomero Lopez, for reasons I can’t fathom. The Wilson Wharf’s multi-week layover in Tenerife might as well have never happened.
Wikipedia is helpful, especially if it is discussing topics of a more neutral bent. However, Wikipedia should never be the endpoint of research. As a launching point, it is fine, for some quick, basic facts it is fine. And within that context, I don’t really think there’s that much of a problem.
I say this as a Catholic who has learned just how much Protestant history (and the United States has inherited much of that Protestant history, and at least initially its anti-Catholic viewpoints) has distorted events in an effort to paint the Catholic Church as monstrous. If anyone thinks about Catholic history, immediately people think of the Crusades and the Inquisition, which have been so vilified in history, literature, and popular culture that to defend the Crusades and Inquisitions as good things would land someone in the loony bin. Yet a great deal of recent research has uncovered that so many things believed about the Crusades and the Inquisitions were either flat our false or were distorted. The bulk of Crusaders were not second, third, or fourth sons looking for land, but were often lords and heirs seeking what the Crusades actually promised: remission of the temporal punishment due to sin. Many Crusaders beggared themselves for the chance to earn this grace, and if they didn’t die in the Crusade, they often returned home practically destitute. The Inquisition was not a cruel institution, at least not by comparison with secular practices at the time, and was so careful about the rights of the accused that people accused of secular crimes would blaspheme so their cases could be remanded to the Inquisition. But try to find any hint of these facts in the general populace!
My point, though, is not an extensive defense of any Catholic topic. My point is that history is actually replete with heavily biased “official” reports. Listening to Mike Duncan’s “History of Rome” podcast, I heard Mike detail dozens of times how so many unflattering descriptions of various Emperors, traits we commonly believe today, might be black legend fashioned by the Emperor’s enemies who had the opportunity to shape the prevailing narrative. I’ve also heard historians detail how most ancient cultures rarely if ever recorded defeats, but we could get a glimpse of those defeats when the celebrated victories kept occurring closer and closer to home.
History is rife with examples of misinformation and bias coloring entire groups of people, even to a global level. But we live at a time with unprecedented access to information. The trick is to never just stop at Wikipedia, but to conduct deeper dives, or read other peoples’ deeper dives, into topics to find if there is more than the surface reading of Wikipedia. Or maybe, the trick is to convince people that there’s more than what they find in Wikipedia…