Wednesday, May 14, 2008

May 14 ‘Media Critique’: “Exposed - Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wikipedia”

Except HonestReporting manage to expose nothing.

This is really just a reaction to the self-inflicted black-eye that the other main pro-Israeli media advocacy group, CAMERA, managed to give itself.

If you haven’t heard about this, Electronic Intifada exposed a CAMERA-sponsored group that was trying to secretly infiltrate Wikipedia with the express purpose of becoming Administrators, who would then have voting rights on contentious issues relating to content. And of course, the plan was to exercise this right to ensure content was more to their pro-Israel tastes.

All very underhanded and totally against Wikipedia rules.

And according to HRs understanding of balance, a negative story about pro-Israel meddling at Wikipedia, requires the same on the other side of the fence, no matter how flimsy the attempt. The best HR can come up with is a pretty poor effort in damage control from NGO Monitor. They try to suggest that 2 publicly known groups, a Yahoo group and, even more desperately, an officially recognized and acceptable WikiProject group, where equivalent manifestations of the same problem from pro-Palestine groups.

Complete rubbish.

The Palestine groups are quite honest and up-front. The CAMERA effort was secretive (though eventually uncovered) and deeply dishonest. The group expressly discussed ways to disguise their real agenda until they became administrators and could exert their pro-Israel influence on content.

I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if there were similar elements from HR exercising their intolerance and prejudices at Wikipedia.