Congressional aides attempt to rewrite history

[alonzomourning23]

This is only reported by 3 sites. The eagle tribune from north andover, MA (conveniently ignores the republicans doing this), newsmax and indymedia.

Congressional aides have been tampering with the biographies of elected officials on the encyclopedia Web site Wikipedia to such an extent that three times Wikipedia has blocked the entire House computer network from accessing the site.

Wikipedia bills itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” That editing has often taken the form of enhancing some bios and sabotaging others, the Washington, D.C., publication Roll Call reports on its "Heard on the Hill” column.

When the site’s operators find posted information that is scurrilous or wrong, they remove it. But Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls the more than 1,000 changes made by House staffers "vandalism.”
In one example of tampering, aides to Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., removed references to the congressman’s broken term-limits pledge, according to Roll Call.

A story in a local newspaper prompted Meehan to write an editorial blaming an intern in his office for "updating his biography.”


In other cases there has been no way to know for certain who did the tampering, since Wikipedia can trace changes only to the House Internet protocol address, not to any specific House office.

So Wikipedia simply lists the vandalism offenses in one section of the site.

In the case of Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., someone removed references in his bio "to possible ties to Jack Abramoff and many other ... politically damaging items.”
The vandal who tampered with the bio of Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, is accused of "removing unflattering quotes.”

Those quotes were about him wanting to "nuke” Syria, according to Roll Call.

Wales said the good thing about this "bipartisan scandal” is that "we get some press attention and they look like idiots.”

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/31/113032.shtml

That last line is priceless.

 

[elprincipe]

Not rewriting history; rewriting Wikipedia. To which I say: big ing deal -- it's Wikipedia.

 

[Trancendental]

Information is power. Articles like this are awesome - I hope wikipedia never becomes beholden to corporate investors and owners like the newspapers.

 

[alonzomourning23]

[quote name='elprincipe']Not rewriting history; rewriting Wikipedia. To which I say: big ing deal -- it's Wikipedia.[/QUOTE]

But you can't deny that many people rely on it for info.

 

[elprincipe]

[quote name='alonzomourning23']But you can't deny that many people rely on it for info.[/QUOTE]

No, just like I can't deny people are stupid, evidenced by this unrelated but fun fact:

Despite the daily bombardment of news from the Middle East, Central Asia, and other world trouble spots, roughly 85 percent of young Americans could not find Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map, according to a new study.

http://geosurvey.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/highlights.html

 

[kakomu]

If I relied on the daily news for information about Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan, I wouldn't be able to find them on a map either. I've yet to see a news story that actually shows the locations on a world map.

 

[Mike23]

People always try to rewrite history to make themselves look better. History is written by winners, eh?

Also:

Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci (April 13, 1808–October 18, 1896) was an Italian inventor. In Italy, he is generally recognized as the inventor of the telephone. Until recently, the rest of the world widely attributed this to Alexander Graham Bell, but the matter was thrown into controversy when, in June 2002, the United States House of Representatives passed a symbolic bill officially recognizing Meucci for his contributions to the invention of the telephone.

They passed nothing but a bill of bologna.

 

[elprincipe]

[quote name='capitalist_mao']If I relied on the daily news for information about Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan, I wouldn't be able to find them on a map either. I've yet to see a news story that actually shows the locations on a world map.[/QUOTE]

And I've yet to see the major newspapers and TV channels devote more time to real news than to drunk girls in Aruba, celebrity trials and runaway brides...*sigh*

 

[kakomu]

[quote name='elprincipe']And I've yet to see the major newspapers and TV channels devote more time to real news than to drunk girls in Aruba, celebrity trials and runaway brides...*sigh*[/QUOTE]
What's your definition of real news?

If it's all recent events, it most certainly is news. Politics isn't all there is to news, and a lot of people would rather have some news that affects them (because, regardless of what people here think, a large tanker filled with Egyptians and Saudi Arabians really does not affect the average person.)

 

[elprincipe]

[quote name='capitalist_mao']What's your definition of real news?

If it's all recent events, it most certainly is news. Politics isn't all there is to news, and a lot of people would rather have some news that affects them (because, regardless of what people here think, a large tanker filled with Egyptians and Saudi Arabians really does not affect the average person.)[/QUOTE]

Real news is important news, not something trumped up by the press in order to get ratings boosts from people who aren't interested in real news because all they care about is who won at the Oscars or which celebrity is divorcing which or what new movie is coming out this summer. All the things I described are not real news, but stories that are unremarkable other than the fact they are made into huge "news" events by the press.

And yes, I realize politics isn't the be all and end all of news, but just take a look at the coverage of the Iraq situation in the past few months to see the media ignoring something in favor of fluff.