Wikipedia no longer maintains the neutral point of view (NPOV) it promised readers when the site was created, says co-founder Larry Sanger.
“The word for it is propaganda,” he told LockdownTV’s Freddie Sayers. And the site’s authors are living “in a fantasy world of their own making.”
Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in 2001 and authored much of the site’s original governing policies. He left the company in 2002 and has been a critic ever since.
“The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy. There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call ‘false balance,’” writes Sanger. “The notion that we should avoid ‘false balance’ is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy. As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science.”
In other words, Wikipedia has joined mainstream media’s disturbing presentation of the news through a liberal lens while ignoring or silencing the conservative perspective.
Examples include:
- An article about former President Barack Obama that makes no mention of the Benghazi scandal, the federal probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, or his administration’s illegal monitoring of Donald Trump.
- An article about former President Donald Trump that is overwhelmingly focused on scandal and impeachment.
- An article about President Joe Biden that fails to include Republicans’ concerns about him.
- Scientific articles that present global warming as undisputed fact.
- Articles that present talking points in favor of liberal objectives such as abortion, drug legalization, and LGBTQ adoption but offer few if any arguments against.
Educational resources such as Wikipedia should present a subject with neutrality so that readers can form their own opinions.
“True neutrality…requires that the article be written in a way that makes it impossible to determine the editors’ position on the important controversies the article touches on,” argues Sanger. “It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV.”
Author’s Note: It’s important to keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a news source; it is an online encyclopedia students use for research.
What that means is that the site’s content is presented as fact, not interpretation. Those facts are now being presented with a liberal bias. The implications here are staggering.