PressEthic

Not only has the media been saturated by nasty political advertisements and coverage of alleged political scandals in recent weeks, but the proliferation of blogging and the increased importance of the internet in general have had an enormous impact on this year's midterm elections. Case in point: Wikipedia.

The Talk of the Town section of this week's New Yorker included an article by Nick Paumgarten that speaks to the ever-changing methodology of pre-election mudslinging, due in large part to the internet and one website in particular. Wikipedia, self-defined as "a multilingual, Web-based free content encyclopedia project" is "written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by almost anyone with access to the website." Visitors to the site have the ability to add to and change the content that is listed for each entry. This includes entries for candidates in this year's midterm elections. Paumgarten explains:

This election season, in several races, campaign staffs have been accused of, and even caught, tweaking the Wikipedia entries of opposing candidates. In Georgia, the campaign manager for a gubernatorial candidate resigned after it emerged that he had altered an opponent's biography by adding a scandalous (but true) story about the opponent's son, who had crashed a car while drunk, killing a passenger.

It seems that the mudslinging has reached an all-time high. Not only are candidates willing to resort to unabashed ugliness via hateful television advertisements, as is most likely expected, but some will go so far as to alter an online encyclopedia's entry of their opposition! Paumgarten calls this a "Wikipedia war," citing the particularly dirty contest between Tom Kean Jr. and Bob Menendez, both candidates in the Senate race in New Jersey.

If a curious voter had looked up Menendez last Wednesday, he would have come across the observation "He funny looking." Last Friday morning, there was nothing on the Menendez page at all but, for a few minutes, the word "fetus." As for Kean, users have had to undo Bart Simpsonesque reports that the challenger "resides in Flat Butt, Nebraska, with his husband, Joe."

Wikipedia is continually updated, and posts like these are usually removed or altered relatively quickly. But perhaps by then, the damage has already been done. Right now, for example, the Wikipedia page for Bob Menendez includes a section entitled "Recent allegations of past ethics violations." This practice of what I will call e-mudslinging seems to be yet another testament to the ever-evolving political culture born out of the obsession with online.

Some of it is even quite comical, though people associated with the campaigns that have fallen victim would surely disagree. I laughed at the ridiculous posts mentioned above, but some of the tweaking has been more subtle. The article continues:

Others have been more substantial, such as the addition, removal, restoration, and subsequent wrangling over a section in the Menendez entry that was called "charges of corruption." (The candidates have been quarrelling over whether a federal probe into a New Jersey nonprofit community organization constitutes a criminal investigation of Me-nendez. The fact that it does not has not stopped Kean from making the claim.) As usual, many of the expurgations have been of vulgarities and pranks—"vandalism," in the argot.

An October 31 Newhouse News Service article also discussed Wikipedia as problematic in the political realm. J. Scott Orr writes,

The online editing attacks swiftly undone by others were carried out anonymously, perhaps the work of political saboteurs or bored college kids who get a kick out of posting the "f-word" on an otherwise serious biography.

Still, the malicious posts point up the hazards voters face when they enter the still-untamed world of online politics.

Seeking political information on the Internet is like turning on the kitchen spigot for a drink and unleashing a fire-hose flow of water mixed with toxic waste. As the political potential of the Internet continues to expand exponentially, voters are left to sift through the mountains of pre-spun videos, partisan blogs, misleading advertisements and downright bogus postings in search of their personal political truths.

Wikipedia is not only problematic with regard to politics. Virtually any Joe Schmoe with disposable time can edit the contents of a Wikipedia entry, whether the motives be malicious or genuine. The problem lies in readers going to Wikipedia as a source for valid information. Unfortunately, because it is presented as an online encyclopedia, many readers take the content found there as fact. If I so desired, for example, I could get online and edit a Wikipedia entry to push my own agenda, be it political or not. Even worse, it would be extremely easy for someone to post plagiarized material to the site. An AP article that ran Friday discussed problems with Wikipedia and instances of plagiarism.

The site's founder, Jimmy Wales, acknowledged that plagiarized passages do occasionally slip in but he dismissed Brandt's findings as exaggerated.

Wikipedia allows anyone to post, edit and even delete items regardless of expertise and leaves it to other users to catch factual errors and other problems, including plagiarism.

Although plagiarism and copyright infringement are common among sites with user-generated content, Brandt said Wikipedia must be held to a higher standard, a point with which Wales agreed.

The article went on to say that while plagiarism is possible, Wikipedia is against it, and site administrators constantly work to remedy problems that may arise by reviewing controversial posts. At any rate, I think that a website that appears, at least cosmetically, to be a legitimate source for information should be held to a high standard. Unfortunately in this case, Wikipedia isn't looking so great. That'll teach you not to judge a book (err, website?) by it's cover (homepage?)... Oh forget it.