The House Oversight Committee submitted an information request to the Wikimedia Foundation that owns Wikipedia in August with a deadline of September 10 for providing requested documents, with which the Foundation has failed to comply with according to Jewish News Syndicate citing a press assistant for one Committee member. Republicans on the Committee are investigating bias, particularly anti-Israeli bias, at the online encyclopedia.
Aaron Bandler at JNS quoted a statement from Carlie Baker, a press assistant to Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) who is chair of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation. Baker stated that “The Wikimedia Foundation is engaging with the Oversight Committee about its request” yet has failed to satisfy their request for documents. In the request for information sent on August 27, the Oversight Committee set a deadline of September 10 for records and other documents relating to coordinated editing of Wikipedia by state actors or academic institutions, particularly regarding Israel, along with other internal records about Wikipedia processes and policies.
Bipartisan members of Congress sent a letter earlier this year regarding alleged anti-Israeli bias. That request merely presented several questions to the Foundation regarding its handling of bias and coordinated editing on the site without requesting any specific documents. A response to the bi-partisan letter is cited in the Oversight Committee’s request for information, but the response has not been released publicly.
Editors on Wikipedia responded poorly to the initial news of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation. One editor launched a gratuitous insult towards Mace that had to be removed from public records during discussion of the letter. Similar hostility greeted Acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin after he sent his own information request earlier this year with editors smearing him on his Wikipedia page and launching into angry tirades against him. Site co-founder Larry Sanger has also repeatedly faced smears and attacks from editors over his criticism of the site’s left-wing bias with them most recently censoring a reform proposal he published on Wikipedia claiming “harassment” of site editors.
Sanger’s reform proposal was initially raised on Tucker Carlson’s podcast last month in a lengthy interview discussing his “nine theses” proposing reform. A moment in the interview where they discussed Wikipedia’s purge of conservative media, including Breitbart News, went viral on social media and prompted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to send a letter to the Foundation inquiring about the sourcing blacklist behind the purge. Cruz’s letter requested a response to his inquiries no later than October 17. In an interview last week, Sanger stated he was planning to organize a signed letter from people allegedly defamed or mistreated by Wikipedia to send to U.S. officials and the Foundation.
Pressure from U.S. government inquiries over Wikipedia’s anti-Israeli and left-wing bias have also aroused concerns among the site’s community. During recent elections for community representatives on the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, two candidates were rejected prior to voting without a clear explanation. One claimed his rejection was motivated by his involvement with a Wikipedia community newsletter and his requests for transparency at the Foundation, while another was purportedly rejected for anti-Israeli views expressed on social media. News of the rejections has sparked a community revolt and allegations that Israeli and U.S. government pressure were behind the decisions.
Wikipedia’s bias against Israel was most recently reflected in a decision last month to declare Israel committed genocide in Gaza and add the “Gaza genocide” article to the site’s front page “In the news” section. Reports about anti-Israeli bias have also been censored on a Wikipedia community newsletter due to an article discussing that bias noting the identities of two anti-Israeli editors, despite being reported by an outlet deemed “reliable” on Wikipedia. Concerns about the site’s blacklisting of news media has most recently been evidenced by editors discussing the potential blacklisting of CBS News after pro-Israeli journalist Bari Weiss was selected to head the outlet.
T. D. Adler edited Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias.
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