Editting the Truth Away

Courtesy of Instapundit, I found this interesting piece on New Editor. It seems that members of the staff of that great reformer Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Ma.) (of Shays-Meehan fame) up to and including his chief of staff didn’t like some information in his wikipedia biography, so they deleted it and replaced it with the official biography.

Wikipedia has caught this and explains what Meehan’s staff deleted:

The changes endorsed by Meehan’s Chief of Staff included removing mentions of the campaign money controversy involving Meehan, and Meehan’s broken term-limit promise. Also deleted was a reference to the size of Meehan’s campaign account, the largest of any House member at $4.8 million, according to the latest data available from the Federal Election Commission.

Somewhat hypocritical for Mr. Campaign Finance Reform, don’t you think? More importantly, this does raise a serious problem with Wikipedia. Wikipedia is unreliable because it can be changed by anyone at anytime for any reason. If ever people begin to rely on Wikipedia for information, an Orwellian nightmare is possible where the past is changed to suit the needs of the present.

That’s what Meehan’s staff did. The sad thing is that there wasn’t any real political fear involved in this. Meehan won re-election in 2004 with 67% of the vote and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If such acts of deception will be perpetrated using Wikipedia by people who have no worries about re-election, what will happen where the stakes are much higher.

Meehan, Wikipedia

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