A study from Media Research Center Free Speech America found that Wikipedia has effectively blacklisted conservative media groups. The groups blacklisted include Breitbart, The Daily Caller, Daily Mail, Newsmax, OANN, and the Media Research Center.
Wikipedia utilizes a “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” page that prohibits the use of several media sources. According to Wikipedia, the sources are not “reliable.”
“Such a blockade has resulted in a disparate balance that disturbingly disadvantages right-leaning media: Wikipedia effectively blocks 100 percent of right-leaning media sources – the ones more likely to give fair treatment to the majority in Congress as well as to incoming officials to the Trump administration,” MRC wrote. “On the contrary, only 16 percent of left-wing media sources fail to win Wikipedia’s stamp of approval.”
The “Reliable sources/Perennial sources,” considered a blacklist by MRC, allows Wikipedia editors to list “reliable” sources. Once the editors reach a conclusion as to the reliability of a source, it is given a label. An outlet that is not part of the “generally reliable” label is “effectively blacklisted and deemed guilty by lack of association,” MRC explained.
Sources that are effectively “blacklisted” are blocked from being cited, “deprecated” sources are “generally prohibited,” and users are urged to avoid “generally unreliable” sources.
MRC Vice President Dan Schneider said of the backlist, “There used to be a joke about how Wikipedia could not be relied on by historians and academics. Wikipedia has now become the joke.”
“Its radical editors and staff reveal their contempt for conservatives in almost everything they inject into descriptions. It was never something people could rely on for accurate information. It is now only reliable for pushing a radical narrative,” he said, adding that “Wikipedia is obviously designed to indoctrinate Americans into despising anything good and decent about mainstream conservatives.”
