[WikiEN-l] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress

[Ken Arromdee]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, David Goodman wrote:
> It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any
> source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take
> most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for
> support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the
> integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the
> sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable,
> but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can
> work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample
> scope for the expression of bias.   The cruder forms of this technique
> are of course widespread in politics--they tend not to work well in
> Wikipedia, but slightly more sophisticated use of the method can be
> quite successful unless the opposition is equally determined.

This works both ways, though.

You describe how an attempt to introduce bias can be painted as a genuine
fix.  But it also works the other way: a genuine fix can be painted as an
attempt to introduce bias.  And it's basically the same method: selectively
quoting, finding weaknesses in the sources (this time the sources used by
the fixer instead of the sources used by the article), etc.

I know the Koch brothers are unpopular among a vocal segment of the
political spectrum, and especially on the Internet.  This means we should
be very careful when claiming that they are trying to introduce bias, when
they only claim to be fixing imbalance--the fact that they are so widely
hated means that
1) there are many people highly motivated to write misrepresentations and
unbalanced articles, making this concern legitimate
2) the claims that they are "really" trying to introduce bias may themselves
be introduced by people with bias, using the exact same techniques against
them that they claim are being used for them.

I'm reminded of the CAMERA incident.  If there's anyone with a bigger target
painted on them than the Koch brothers, it's Israel.  And Wikipedia basically
listened to a pro-Palestinian group and completely accepted their spin about
CAMERA.