Last week we started a new participatory project to expose the government agencies, corporations and lobbying groups that have been censoring, whitewashing or otherwise spinning Wikipedia. (See CMD Senior Researcher Diane Farsetta's great blog post for some background on this sordid tale.) So far we've logged several attempts at spin into the respective SourceWatch profiles, including:
- Chevron deleting the article on "Biodiesel";
- Military contractor Raytheon deleting information on them spying on their competitors and the U.S. Air Force;
- Republican-friendly broadcaster Clear Channel adding allegations of plagiarism to Democratic Senate Candidate Al Franken's profile;
- PR firm Hill & Knowlton removing descriptions of the political repression by the government of the Maldives, an H&K client;
- Amway parent company Alticor removing descriptions of the company's use of "Google bombing" to drive down the search engine rankings of Web sites critical of the company;
- Electronic voting machine company Diebold removing descriptions of the controversies surrounding their machines' failures and glitches;
- Conservative news network Fox News changing Keith Olbermann's profile (and not in a good way - see Olbermann's reaction on this video);
The information here is obviously very important and, thanks to SourceWatch's high rankings in Google searches, easily accessible to citizens, journalists and policymakers checking out the record of these politically active and high social-impact organizations. There are many dastardly edits left, however, and we need your help to make sure they aren't lost to history. There's no need for technical expertise, just head over to the SourceWatch page for the project, where there are complete instructions, examples and an email hotline for support. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here.
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