United States Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia

Some edits to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia by staff of the United States Congress have created controversy, notably in early to mid-2006. Several such instances, such as those involving Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns, and Joe Biden, received significant media attention. Others, such as those involving Gil Gutknecht, were reported but received less widespread coverage.

Biographical information on various politicians was edited by their own staff to remove undesirable information (including pejorative statements quoted, or broken campaign promises), add favorable information or "glowing" tributes, add negative information to opponents' biographies, or replace the article in part or whole by staff-authored biographies.

Background

On January 27, 2006, The Sun of Lowell, Massachusetts, published an article entitled "Rewriting history under the dome", which revealed the editing by Congressional staff members of Congressman Marty Meehan's Wikipedia entry.

Matt Vogel, Meehan's chief of staff, said that he had authorized an intern in July to replace existing Wikipedia content with a staff-written biography of the lawmaker.

Further investigation by Wikipedia editors discovered well over a thousand edits by IP addresses allocated to the US House of Representatives and Senate. Most of the edits were considered to show good faith by Wikipedia editors. A minority of edits were considered improper. At least one of the addresses involved was blocked from further editing.

Yesterday's story, "Rewriting history under the dome," accurately reported that in July of 2005 an intern in my office responsible for updating my biography also updated my online Wikipedia entry. I did not know that this change was being made at the time and was only made aware of it yesterday when informed that The Sun had inquired about it. Though the actual time spent on this issue amounted to 11 minutes, according to server logs, I do not consider it time well spent or approve of it in any way. ... It was a waste of energy and an error in judgment on the part of my staff to have allowed any time to be spent on updating my Wikipedia entry. I thank The Sun for bringing it to my attention.

— Congressman Marty Meehan, Lowell Sun

Incidents

Norm Coleman

Later in January 2006, Senator Norm Coleman's chief of staff, Erich Mische, "confirmed that the senator's staff had done so...the editing was done to correct inaccuracies and delete information".

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said, "It appears to be a major rewrite of the article to make it more favorable."

Mische stated: "What's to stop someone from writing in that Norm Coleman was 7 feet 10 inches, with green hair and one eye smack dab in the middle of his head? That's about as silly as this gets ... When you put 'edia' in there, it makes it sound as if this is a benign, objective piece of information."

Joe Biden

The Wikipedia investigation found that Biden staffers had removed and modified descriptions of incidents of alleged plagiarism and had recast discussion of a possible Biden 2008 presidential candidacy in a more favorable light. In February 2006, The Washington Post quoted Biden spokesperson Norm Kurz as saying that the changes that were "made to Biden's site by this office were designed to make it more fair and accurate."

Gil Gutknecht

On August 16, 2006, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reported that the office of Representative Gil Gutknecht tried twice—on July 24 and August 14, 2006—to remove a 128-word section in the Wikipedia article on him, replacing it with a more flattering 315-word entry from his official congressional biography. Most of the removed text was about the 12-year term-limit Gutknecht imposed on himself in 1995 (Gutknecht ran for re-election in 2006, breaking his promise and was subsequently defeated, though not specifically as a result of this pledge). A spokesman for Gutknecht did not dispute that his office tried to change his Wikipedia entry, but questioned the reliability of the encyclopedia.

Gutknecht's office used the account "Gutknecht01" for the first edits on July 24; that account was then notified (via its talk page) of Wikipedia policies against self-editing. For the second set of edits on August 16, his office used an anonymous Congressional IP address.

U.S. Rep. David Davis and Tennessee Rep. Matthew Hill

In August 2007, U.S. Rep. David Davis's press secretary Timothy Hill at first denied and later acknowledged during a second press interview with the Knoxville News Sentinel that he had in June 2007 used a congressional office computer and resources to delete blocks of information (termed as "blanking vandalism") about his employer and his brother Tennessee Representative Matthew Hill from biographies on Wikipedia. "Part of the information he tried to remove concerned political contributions to both his brother and Davis by former King Pharmaceuticals CEO John Gregory, as well as other ties to the Gregory family."

U.S. Rep Mike Pence

In August 2011, a Huffington Post article brought to light that Indiana Congressman Mike Pence had been editing his own Wikipedia page to make the Congressman look more flattering. Pence's office declined to comment on the matter.

Edward Snowden

On August 2, 2013, an editor linked to the U.S. Senate with the IP 156.33.241.5 edited the Wikipedia page of whistleblower Edward Snowden to change his description from "dissident" to "traitor". On August 5, 2014, an editor linked to the U.S. House of Representatives with the IP 143.231.249.138 edited the Wikipedia page of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, to describe Edward Snowden as an "American traitor."

Laverne Cox

On August 21, 2014, an editor using an IP address linked to the U.S. House of Representatives edited the page on the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black to describe actress Laverne Cox as a "real man pretending to be a woman."

Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture

On December 9 and 10, 2014, an anonymous user using an IP address registered to the U.S. Senate edited the article on the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, removing a sentence characterizing the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" as "torture."

CongressEdits

Main article: CongressEdits

CongressEdits (or @congressedits) is an automated Twitter account created in 2014 that tweets changes to Wikipedia articles that originate from IP addresses belonging to the United States Congress. The changes are presumed to be made by the staffs of US elected representatives and senators. Previous to this, the best information about what congressional staffers were editing was found in the articles U.S. Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Congressional staffer edits, which are manually updated.

Proponents

In August 2014, the Cato Institute suggested that Congressional staffers should spend spare time editing Wikipedia. A panel hosted by the institute endorsed the idea so that congressional staffers could use their time to write neutral and informative articles about proposed legislation to better educate the public. Experts on the panel considered the two main obstacles to doing this as being skepticism towards Wikipedia and the history of biased editing from Congressional staffers. The Cato Institute suggested one way to overcome these issues would be for the staffers to create user accounts and userpages disclosing their connections with Congress.

External links

• David Mehegan Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world The Boston Globe, February 12, 2006