Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is urging the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to look into whether the government has influenced the encyclopedia site.
“Hi @ElonMusk. Wikipedia co-founder here,” he wrote on X late last month. “May I ask you to determine what branches of the U.S. government—if any!—have employees paid to edit, monitor, update, lobby, etc., Wikipedia?”
“Such operations should be defunded, if any. If there are none, we’d like to know. Agree?”
Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002 and has “been a critic since 2004,” he wrote. He added, “Yes it’s biased, I’ve said so for a long time.”
A recent 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.
The online encyclopedia 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.”
Wikipedia’s 2023-2024 budget report revealed that more than $50 million of its $177 million budget was allocated to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
