Looks like FoxNews has been caught editing Wikipedia in an effort to smear rivals and to spin content. Apparently the FoxNews folks, who have the lowest educated audience in broadcasting, hires "to market".
I am guessing they did not pay attention to their own story about the WWE wrestler who's Wiki site was modified prior to his wife's murder and that the editor was tracked by his IP address. The Clueless @ Fox didn't even wear gloves. Gotta love the honesty. Fair and balanced.
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Fox News Changes Wikipedia to Smear Rivals;
Comprehensive List of Changes
By Brian Boyko
Contributor, [GAS]
Call Stephen Colbert, whose “Wikiality” has entered reality.
There are a few news stories breaking about people editing Wikipedia - including the CIA, Diebold, and U.S. Congressional Offices.
O’Reilly Media (the techie O’Reilly) has come out with information detailing that Fox News has been changing entries on Wikipedia as well - including one on Al Franken’s case with Bill O’Reilly (the caustic O’Reilly).
So we went ahead and took a look at other changes to Wikipedia allegedly made by the people from the Fox News offices - the changes originating from IP address “12.167.224.228“. (Here’s the DNS lookup for 12.167.224.228.) We’ve done the legwork of poring through all the edits and published a comprehensive list below, omitting corrections of minor errors and clarifications of fact, i.e., the innocuous. The following below are clearly anything but, however.
Below, you’ll find changes that were made by IP address 12.167.224.228, which resolves to Fox News. Changes are to the articles “Keith Olbermann”, “Chris Wallace”, “Carl Cameron”, “Brit Hume”, “Shepard Smith”, “Al Franken”, “Brian Wilson”, “CNN”, and “Greta Van Susteren”.
Pretty sleazy, but they aren't the only ones caught with their johnsons hangin' out...
Quote:
A new data-mining service is making it possible to check anonymous Wikipedia edits, confirming that yes, the US Government is editing Wikipedia, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) apparently making changes to entries about itself, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Richard Nixon, and Pope Benedict XVI. On a lighter note, it appears that someone at the CIA also made changes to entries about Secret societies, Fortune cookies and the Beatles.
When users make changes to Wikipedia anonymously, their IP address is logged, and this is what has allowed a computation and neural-systems graduate student at CalTech, Virgil Griffith, to create Wikpedia Scanner.
Wikipedia Scanner allows you to search anonymous Wikipedia edits by organization, location, or IP address.
To create his database Griffith downloaded the entire contents of Wikipedia, capturing the IP addresses of anonymous edits. He then matched those IP addresses to companies and organizations using IP matching services such as ARIN and IP2Location.com.
Already a number of other interesting discoveries have been made.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have busy making changes to Wikipedia, as have the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US National Institute of Health. Corporates have also been contributing, with Diebold, Amgen, Pfizer, Wal-Mart. Microsoft, Apple and Exxon Mobil all doing their bit. News agencies, including Fox News, the New York Times and Al-Jazeera, have also been participating in the Wikipedia community.
To be fair, many of the edits simply involve updating information or making corrections. For example someone at an IP address associated with the New York Times made a contribution to the entry on Louis XIV of France. And some of the edits are more than likely being made by Wikipedia buffs on their lunch break using their work computers.
But that certainly doesn't account for all the changes, as Wired's John Borland found out.
For example, Borland noted that in 2005 someone at an IP address associated with Diebold deleted paragraphs detailing concerns about the integrity of the company's voting machines and the company's fund-raising activities for George Bush. Thankfully the deletion was noticed by a legitimate Wikipedia editor at the time. Borland also busted Wal-Mart making more subtle changes, such as changing a line that said it pays less than other retailers to saying that it pays more than twice the minimum wage.
Is it such a surprise that companies and organizations are changing entries related to their sphere of activity. Not, really, but at least now we have a tool to help keep "the bastards honest", as we say in Australia. And surely that's going to make Wikipedia even stronger.
Pretty sleazy, but they aren't the only ones caught with their johnsons hangin' out...
That has been mentioned but the FoxNews one has gained attention because of the types of edits [like modifying the info on Olbermann and their competitors]. The samples that I have seen from some of the other news sources have been more like real edits. NYT and Diebolt have also been caught taking things out that disparages them.
On the other hand, some Democrat and Republican congressional campaigns are really getting into it in a bad way. It will result in some kind of moderation.
As an aside, the guy that was the Religious "editor" for Wiki, their expert to monitor the flow of information on all religious entries turned out to not be the expert they had assumed. He got most of his information from Catholics for Dummies and Religion for Dummies. I truly loved the irony of that.
We live in a world of spin, seem to like it even. Finding a source without it is becoming increasingly difficult.
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