Wikipedia has been accused of excluding conservative media from being used as source material.
The Media Research Center, a conservative organization, published a report on Wikipedia’s list of “reliable sources.”
The report stated that all the American news outlets that the center categorized as right-wing failed to meet Wikipedia’s criteria as a trusted source for its administrators. These included “New York Post,” “Breitbart News,” “The Daily Caller,” and “Newsmax,” according to The Times.
In comparison, the report added that Wikipedia considered around 84% of what the center categorized as liberal media reliable, including “Mother Jones,” “ProPublica,” “NPR,” “The Atlantic,” and “The Guardian.”
“Wikipedia has now become a joke,” said Dan Schneider, vice president of the center, in a statement. “Its radical editors and staff show their disdain for conservatives in almost everything they add to descriptions.”
Wikipedia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger as a free resource, written and maintained by a volunteer community, relying on public donations for its operation.
On a page titled “Reliable Sources/Always Reliable Sources,” the site published a traffic light system that rates sources as generally reliable, without consensus, generally unreliable, to be avoided for use, and excluded.
Wikipedia’s editors, believed to number in the hundreds of thousands, are responsible for determining the reliability of sources.
The Times and The Sunday Times are considered “generally reliable” according to this categorization.
In an editorial article, the New York Post called for tech companies to block Wikipedia until it stops “censoring and spreading misinformation.”
“For Wikipedia, ‘truth’ now equals ‘left-wing,’” wrote the New York Post editorial board, citing the fact that Wikipedia is often the top result in Google searches.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has increasingly targeted the site in recent months, alleging it misrepresents him and promotes left-wing ideologies.
On January 21, he posted several times on X about the site after it edited his page to include a reference to a Nazi salute he made at an inaugural meeting.
“Help shut down Wikipedia until balance is restored,” he wrote, offering $1 billion to rename it “Dickipedia.”
In response to Musk’s posts, Wales, co-founder of the site, wrote that Musk was dissatisfied simply because Wikipedia is not for sale.
“If Elon wanted to help, he would encourage the intelligent and kindly intellectuals he agrees with to engage,” Wales wrote.
According to Semrush, a digital marketing platform, Wikipedia was the fourth most visited site in the world in November, with about 6.7 billion visits.
