Dr Joseph Mercola – mercola.com Sept 2, 2023
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Story at-a-glance
Wikipedia is the most biased encyclopedia in history, having been hijacked by U.S. intelligence, industry and the political establishment years ago
- Wikipedia is the most biased encyclopedia in history, having been hijacked by U.S. intelligence, industry and the political establishment years ago
- According to Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger, U.S. intelligence has been manipulating the online encyclopedia since at least 2008, if not longer
- Sanger noticed a bias creeping in around 2006, particularly in areas of science and medicine. Around 2010, he noticed that articles about Eastern Medicine were being changed to reflect blatantly biased positions, using “dismissive epithets” to paint this ancient tradition as quackery
- Over-the-top kind of establishment bias includes Wikipedia’s assertion that the Ukraine-Biden scandal is a conspiracy theory designed to undermine Biden, even though evidence of Biden’s corruption has been made public
- One explanation for why ideological bias has taken over Wikipedia is that it’s intentionally being used as a propaganda tool by intelligence agencies and the globalist establishment that is seeking to establish a One World Government. To succeed, they can’t allow a multitude of dissenting viewpoints to proliferate, and intelligence agencies are working together to disseminate and uphold the Deep State’s narratives worldwide
Intelligence agencies have a long history of using propaganda as a tool of war, and the effectiveness of information warfare radically improved with the emergence of the internet, to say nothing of artificial intelligence and social media.
If you’re over 50, you can probably remember a time when your family had a row of encyclopedias on the bookshelf — usually obtained at considerable cost — which were perused whenever you needed to learn more about a particular topic.
Today, you can’t even give a complete set of encyclopedias away because, well, we have Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia has also become a favored propaganda tool, so to call it unreliable would be an understatement.
According to Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger — who left Wikipedia in 2002, the year after its inception — U.S. intelligence has been manipulating the online encyclopedia since at least 2008, if not longer. Sanger recently sat down to speak with independent journalist Glenn Greenwald (video above) about the subversion of the site he helped create.1
The Blatant Bias of Wikipedia
Sanger says he noticed a bias creeping in around 2006, particularly in areas of science and medicine. Around 2010, he started noticing that articles about Eastern Medicine were being changed to reflect blatantly biased positions, using “dismissive epithets” to paint this ancient tradition as quackery.
In 2012, evidence also emerged revealing a Wikipedia trustee and “Wikipedian in Residence” were being paid to edit pages on behalf of their clients and secure their placement on Wikipedia’s front page in the “Did You Know” section,2 which publicizes new or expanded articles3 — a clear violation of Wikipedia rules.
“It really got over the top … between 2013 and 2018,” Sanger says, “and by by at the time Trump became president, it was almost as bad as it is now. It’s amazing, you know, no encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has ever been as biased as Wikipedia has been …
I remember being mad about Encyclopedia Britannica and The World Book not mentioning my favorite topics, [and] presenting only certain points of view in a way that establishment sources generally do. But this is something else. This is entirely different. It’s over the top.”
Greenwald agrees, highlighting some recent examples of the “over the top” kind of establishment bias, such as Wikipedia simply declaring that the Ukraine-Biden scandal is a conspiracy theory designed to undermine Biden:
“The very first sentence reads: ‘The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was Vice President of the United States, engaged in corrupt activities relating to his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.’
‘As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump’s first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden’s reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign,’ the Wikipedia entry still reads.
So, notice: The Biden-Ukraine scandal is — according to Wikipedia — the ‘Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory’ but the Trump controversy involving Ukraine is ‘the Trump–Ukraine scandal’. Everything is written to comport with the liberal world view and the Democratic Party talking points.”
Wikipedia’s treatment of all things COVID-related is equally skewed. It presents only the establishment’s “truth” across the board, no matter how much evidence there is to refute it.
‘Truth’ Has Been Married to Ideology
“Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia devoted to truth,” Greenwald says. The problem is that “The premise seems to be that you don’t have truth anymore independent of ideological outlook.”
We know that a great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online, and where, if not on websites like Wikipedia? ~ Larry Sanger
Indeed, Sanger points out that Wikipedia’s official policy even declares that 80% of Right-wing media is unreliable, and “that really, really colors the articles and what the editors allow the articles to say,” he says. Just how did we get to a point where “truth” is tied to a particular ideology? Common sense tells you it simply cannot be so.
Intel Agencies Control Wikipedia
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One explanation for why this ideological bias has taken over Wikipedia is that it’s intentionally being used as a propaganda tool by intelligence agencies and the globalist establishment that is seeking to implement a new global governance, a New World Order/One World Government.
To succeed in that Herculean effort, they can’t allow a multitude of dissenting viewpoints to proliferate, and intelligence agencies are working together to disseminate and uphold the Deep State’s narratives worldwide. Sanger puts it this way:
“I think that the Left … very, very deliberately seeks out to take control. Except it isn’t just the Left. We’re learning that now, aren’t we? No, it’s the establishment, and they have their own agenda.
I’m not going to try to offer any opinions — because it’s not something that I study — as to how they bring that about. But it’s clear that between 2005 and 2015 … Wikipedia moved onto the establishment’s radar, and we … have evidence that … even as early as … 2008 … CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia. Think they stopped doing that? No.
And not just them. We know that a great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online, and where, if not on websites like Wikipedia?
They pay off the most influential people to push their agendas, which they’re already mostly in line with, or they just develop their own talent within the [intelligence] community. [They] learn the Wikipedia game and then push what they want to say with their own people. So, that’s my take on that.”
Google and Social Media Are Controlled Too
As noted by Greenwald, Google has played a significant role in Wikipedia’s growth and success by algorithmically placing Wikipedia answers at the top of most searches, and, of course — while they don’t discuss this in the interview — Google also has deep and longstanding ties to the military-intelligence-industrial complex and the globalist Deep State.
The same can be said for social media companies like Twitter and Facebook. As reported by Jimmy Dore in the video above, in early 2023, Elon Musk released documents showing Twitter’s former executives censored content at the request of the FBI and assisted the U.S. military’s online propaganda campaigns.
Twitter also censored anti-Ukraine narratives on behalf of several U.S. intelligence agencies. Similarly, Facebook censored accurate information that was damaging to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign at the direct request of the FBI. There’s simply no doubt that intelligence agencies are directly involved in controlling and directing public information flow, and Wikipedia is invaluable in that respect.
Anonymous Writers Have No Credibility
Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t stress a key feature of Wikipedia that makes it unreliable, no matter what, and that is the fact that contributing authors and editors are all anonymous.
Clearly, the credibility of an author, regardless of the media format, is of importance when trying to determine the veracity of a given topic, keeping in mind that even experts in the same field will often reach different (and perhaps opposing) conclusions.
Not every expert will have read and evaluated the exact same evidence, for example, leading to differences in interpretation of data. This is normal and unlikely to change, as it is human nature to draw conclusions based on our own breadth of experience and knowledge.
It’s then up to the reader to make up their mind about which of the two or more experts they believe is most correct — a choice that in turn is dependent on the reader’s own prejudices and knowledge base. That said, it should be obvious that no one individual, or even group of individuals, can be the final arbiter of which expert opinion is “the truth.”
However, that’s exactly the position that Wikipedia has inserted itself into. They now decide who they think is right and which position is the correct one, and they simply censor opposing views.
Google Must Have Known They Were Promoting Unreliable Info
Considering that one of the primary factors that come into play when determining the credibility of an author is his or her credentials, affiliations and previous writings,4 how is it that Google promotes Wikipedia as an authority for every possible type of information by listing them at the top of its search results?
And how can Google use Wikipedia as a primary tool for its quality raters to establish credibility of other online material?5,6 It doesn’t make sense, unless you realize that neither Google nor Wikipedia are about giving people accurate and unbiased information. Their function is to facilitate the programming of people with a certain set of narratives and viewpoints.
As early as 2011, the fact that Wikipedia editors were being paid by corporations to remove and suppress unwanted information was well known and had been declared scandalous.7 Yet nothing changed. At least not for the better.
A 2014 paper8 titled, “Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia” by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu, compared 4,000 articles that appear in both encyclopedias and found 73% of Wikipedia’s articles contained political buzz words, compared to 34% in Britannica, and in nearly all cases, Wikipedia was more left-leaning than the Britannica.
Wikipedia Used to Smear and Defame Truthtellers
A key take-home from all this is that Wikipedia is not a reliable source. It’s a propaganda tool, and relying on it will frequently leave you wearing the dunce hat. Articles on science and medicine are definitely corrupted and biased in favor of establishment views and should never be used to make medical decisions.
According to a 2014 study,9,10 which assessed the veracity of medical claims made on Wikipedia by cross-checking them with the latest peer-reviewed research, reported finding “many errors” in articles concerning the 10 costliest medical conditions. In fact, 9 out of 10 entries — 90%! — contained assertions that were contradicted by published research.
“Health care professionals, trainees, and patients should use caution when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care,” the authors warned.
That said, articles about historical events, current geopolitical issues and the biographies of public figures are not much better. Greenwald himself has seen his personal page transform from a neutral listing of his work history and accomplishments to an “ideological war” description that paints him in a bad light.
Many excellent scientists and doctors who veered from the establishment narrative on COVID have also been shamefully smeared and defamed by Wikipedia, and anyone who tries to clarify or clear up inaccuracies on the site is simply blocked.
Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, for example, has repeatedly tried to “correct provably false facts” about her background on Wikipedia, only to be told she’s “not a reliable source” and having her edits overridden by anonymous editors that guard her page, making sure her award-winning work is kept hushed and her character portrait tarnished.11 Other examples of “sanitizing” certain pages and tarnishing others can be found in a June 28, 2015, article12 in The Epoch Times.
Ditch Wikipedia and Use Other Online Encyclopedias
If you’re interested in learning more about Wikipedia, its history and inner workings, pick up a copy of Andrew Lih’s book, “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia.”13 In it, Lih asks, “If Wikipedia is a minefield of inaccuracies, should one even be tiptoeing through this information garden?” It’s a fair question, for sure.
Similarly, in a 2005 blog post critiquing Wikipedia, Nicholas Carr, author of “What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” noted:14
“[A]n encyclopedia can’t just have a small percentage of good entries and be considered a success. I would argue, in fact, that the overall quality of an encyclopedia is best judged by its weakest entries rather than its best. What’s the worth of an unreliable reference work?”
The good news is there are dozens of other online encyclopedias, many of which do not suffer from this entrenched ideological bias. Two great resources are encyclosearch.org and encycloreader.org, which allow you to search for answers across dozens of encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, at once. This way, you can compare a multitude of sources.
Examples of more specialized encyclopedias include Ballotpedia (an explicitly neutral encyclopedia of American politics), Scholarpedia, EduTechWiki, MedlinePlus (a medical encyclopedia), Encyclopedia Mythica (religion, folklore and mythology) and HandWiki (computing, science, technology and general).
Sanger is involved in the creation of encyclosearch.org, which he describes as an effort to “strike a blow against censorship and control of information by simply making it easier to find the all the other encyclopedias that are out there.”
Truth be told, Wikipedia is dependent on your lack of knowledge about how they really operate. Taking advantage of your desire for quick information, their goal is to shuttle your thoughts, opinions and knowledge into a silo that doesn’t allow anything in except what they put in there. And what they’re putting on their site is some of the most biased information you’ll find anywhere in media today.
Wikipedia is a useful research tool, but it’s only good as a starting point.
It can point you in the right direction. Key phrases, ideas on what to look for.
Having said that, when you go looking at other resources, you’ll have the same problems.
While I’m here. The tax payer funds universities, but the public has zero access to their libraries and online resources. You can’t even pay a subscription or even access them during long university holidays.
So we have this huge divide between peer reviewed work, and the shit show that’s free. It’s free for a reason.
This is why I’ve always gone for the assumption method. You develope your own analysis skills, and make your own assumptions. You need to ditch your prejudices, or your analysis will be worthless.
We live in a highly secretive world. The fake news spews out the intel agenda, but probably only prints less than 5% of what it actually knows, and that 5% is mostly shit.
We have all this fact checking, which is about supporting fake Nazi facts. Most of the ideas and theories on social media come from the Nazi deep state, or they promote crap for sheeple consumption.
So assumption is the cutting edge of truth. You reach your own conclusions. They aren’t set in stone. You then convey your ideas and wait for feedback. It doesn’t matter how negative this feed back is.
Take my position that the West is a NWO Nazi sect. All I get in response to this is ‘ban me’. lol No one has come up with even a half baked argument.
When at least half the comments on this site are by AI bots, or Nazi state scribblers, you can be up against it, and it doesn’t help when your replies are never posted.
So given the secrecy, the 30yr and even 100yr rule, the fake news, the propaganda, the alternative fake propaganda, and the drivil that pours from most alternative sources, you need to be strong, & navigate your own course. Don’t trust the bouys, don’t trust the lighthouses, don’t even trust the charts. It’s a swamp out there, and it’s full of swamp critters.
Wikipedia also reflects the way mainstream scholasticism maintains the “importance of referencing” with “trusted” sources. As though anyone can be the arbiter of what is “trusted”? I laughed out loud when it gave the BBC as one of these sources.
The search term “moon landing conspiracy theories” throws up an article with 204 references in support of the mainstream narrative!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories
I don’t need any references to assert it was BS, but Wikipedia maintains the outer form of “truthseeking” by seeming to be “exhaustive”.
Another thing is, who has time to write and update these articles, let alone know the magic words that give you the credentials to be a Wikipedia writer?
In observing Wikipedia, I think we now also have to look at all mainstream “information”. We have to be disdainful of those citing “peer reviewed papers” — just more magic words excluding those with different views who can’t get the stamp of approval from mainstream funders — and “professor”, “doctor”, and other “experts” are just titles that are validations of mainstream academia’s hoop jumping.
Yup, wiki is worthless and when you do look for information, they’ve got their hand out for money. I
“You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science”
For more on this charter for a slavish mindset:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/
He quotes Fauci:
‘Each time you do this, you exemplify the problem of anti-science bias that Dr. Fauci warned about in June:
“If you go by the evidence and by the data, you’re speaking the truth and it’s amazing sometimes, the denial there is. It’s the same thing that gets people who are anti-vaxxers – who don’t want people to get vaccinated, even though the data clearly indicate the safety of vaccines. That’s really a problem.” ‘
This “Ph.D. astrophysicist” establishment useful idiot stills believes in the Big Bang. This is the author’s website:
But hey, he’s got a “PhD”, so he must be right?
https://www.startswithabang.com/
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You know. Sometimes these academics are so constipated by their own certifications, I believe they believe they are the genuine oracles of our time rather than the salaried mortgage payers they truly are. Part of the problem is that their expertise is always narrow and they cannot relate to other fields. They are still in the Wikipedia referencing paradigm that rejects even the smallest intuitive leaps that anticipates human motivations for why certain theories are held to be true. They are in other words, politically naïve.
I was listening to the most knowledgeable of bible scholars on Josephus, St Paul, and the question of Jesus’ historicity last night. He was an incredible scholar in many ways. He was able to speak of time, place, political situation and so on, but he still subscribed to the mainstream “Holocaust” narrative. How can one be perceptive on questions of historicity 2000 years ago when events of 75 years ago belong to a mythicist framework?
Wickedpedia is nothing more than a small hat propaganda tool…..
(Now you know)!
Yes..Wackypedaphile is an ‘organ’ of propaganda run from Langley… heavily curated by male spooks in dresses and silk panties with an open wound for genitalia.. ‘Experts’… at something or other…
Unsurprisingly Wackypedo will also affirm that these spooky oddities are ‘real’ women..Yes they are… even though they are obviously castrated male sexual degenerates..which prior to Wackypedo didn’t really need substantiating..
because these lunatics would have be in an asylum…
.. which apparently is where anyone that ‘earnestly’ uses Wackypedo should be too…
That’s why I only use wikipedia for vintage car brands and such ..
Wikipedia is only reliable as far as what to disbelieve, since pretty much everything they publish is misdirection, misinformation, lies, phony photos, and more. Keep it up, Wiki, pretend that you are viable and trustworthy, you are not. We all know you are basically controlled horse manure.
It’s pretend media, as are the other famous websites, creating a fake reality. A fake world. And its because we know this then we can detect whatever crap is being pushed on the population. 24/7 bs.
Wikipedia: a real swell place to learn about the “early life” of a famous crypto Jew! Otherwise, not so swift.
When it comes to international politics, official propaganda works in the exact same way.
All major UK tv networks work in tandem; Sky, BBC, GBnews, TalkTV etc., follow the SAME official script, especially when any given news item relates to official government policy, such as the Ukraine and the Middle East.
The sad news is, if the head is permanently stuck in a certain part of the anatomy, no amount of factual news via alternative sources is going to make any difference if the brainwashed tv watcher has already made up their mind that it’s just “disinformation” or “conspiracy theory”.
Official Disinfo and the Deep State
When it comes to international politics, official propaganda works in the exact same way.
All major UK tv networks work in tandem; Sky, BBC, GBnews, TalkTV etc., follow the SAME official script, especially when any given news item relates to official government policy, such as the Ukraine and the Middle East.
The sad news is, if the head is permanently stuck in a certain part of the anatomy, no amount of factual news via alternative sources is going to make any difference if the brainwashed tv watcher has already made up their mind that it’s just “disinformation” or “conspiracy theory”.
1st paragraph of typical Wikipedia entry :-
2000 Mules
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2000 Mules is a 2022 American conspiracist[4][5][6] political film from right-wing political commentator Dinesh D’Souza. The film falsely[7][8][9] claims unnamed nonprofit organizations supposedly associated with the Democratic Party paid “mules” to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election. D’Souza has a history of creating and spreading false conspiracy theories.[10]’ etc etc , ad nauseum.
That isn’t ‘bias’ – that is just a witless rant that doesn’t even pretend to balance.
Most of my best and closest friends in life have been and are on the political Left, and have all been thoroughly good, loyal, decent and conscientious.
It is just a pity that the ‘Professional’ Left at this level, who I suspect are rather selfish and materialistic in private life, have been given such a stranglehold on all avenues of Art, Culture, Media and Communications in general at both the Corporate and State Level.
At this level, these exist in a pathological ‘end-justifies-the – means’ bubble of Untruth.
I wish the ‘Left’ at this level would stop being political and would actually demonstrate genuine love of fairness and of all Living Creatures in their own day-to-day lives.
Then at least they would be justifying their ideology as opposed to imposing it without living it.
As most of my friends as mentioned above have more or less done.
In about 2011 I had never used wikipedo because I knew it was mainstream, but when I was trying to tell a girl about R R Rife she went straight to her phone and Wik, which said he never existed. I had not quite expected it to be that blunt, but, of course, condemned it rather than the Rife info (I had books about him)