Some observers who have long watched and carefully documented US government involvement in major social media platforms as well as Wikipedia itself have commented, “the CIA Is running Wikipedia, Wow, what a shocker. Sanger asserted during Greenwald’s show, “We do have evidence that, as early as 2008, that CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia,” before posing: “Do you think that they stopped doing that back then?”
Sanger explained that the intelligence agencies “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 community, learn the Wikipedia game, and then push what they want to say with their own people.”
“A great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online,” he added, and then specified: “on websites like Wikipedia.” For that reason along with others explored in the interview, Sanger calls it “the most biased encyclopedia” in history.
He described that US intelligence manipulation of the immensely large platform and repository of information had been going on for more than a decade (Wikipedia was founded and appeared online in 2001).
In particular, Greenwald brought up Wikipedia’s entry for the topic Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory, and pointed out that “there is a mountain of evidence showing that Hunter Biden was paid $80,000 a month by Burisma executives.” It is an established fact that Burisma executives were “getting a lot in value in the way of access to Joe Biden, the most important US official on Ukraine,” Greenwald said. “And yet, according to the Wikipedia article, this evidence doesn’t exist, it’s just a complete conspiracy theory.”
“Remember, this is supposed to be an ideology-free, neutral encyclopedia”, Greenwald then quipped sarcastically.
Below is a section of the Sanger interview transcript wherein Greenwald lambasts Wikipedia’s treatment of the whole Biden-Ukraine scandal:
“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.”
The two also agreed that Covid entries were heavily subject to propaganda and skewed information:
“Let me tell you a fact,” Greenwald said. “The view of the leading scientists in the US Department of Energy as well as the FBI is that the most likely explanation for how the Covid pandemic emerged is through the research that was being funded by the United States and conducted in the Wuhan lab. You would have no idea that was true – on one of the most important questions of the last decade: Where the Covid pandemic came from.”
“Every word (on Wikipedia) is designed to suggest that only right-wing conspiracy theorists would invest any plausibility in the theory that the virus came from a (lab) leak and not from a naturally occurring event, even though the top virologists in the world wrote to Dr. Fauci at the start of the pandemic and were adamant that the evidence was consistent with manipulation in a lab.”
“If you asked Joy Reid to comment on the Covid pandemic, that’s exactly what she would tell you. And that’s true of almost every entry. It shocked me when I started looking at (Wikipedia) over the last six months, how blatant it has become.”
The problems that @ggreenwald identifies with @wikipedia extend to its ridiculous defamation of scientists skeptical of lockdowns. Take a look at the shameful pages of two excellent scientists, @VPrasadMDMPH and John Ioannidis. Wikipedia editors politicize science. https://t.co/20P5NQ4DrD
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) August 3, 2023
Sanger explained that prior to a decade ago, Wikipedia “used to be kind of anti-establishment” but then it seemed to be hijacked. “Between 2005 and 2012 or so, there was this very definite shift to Wikipedia becoming an establishment mouthpiece. It was amazing. I never would’ve guessed that in 2001,” the site’s co-founder concluded.