A false wikipedia biography by john seigenthaler and family
Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident
The Wikipedia biography controversy, also known as the Seigenthaler incident,[1] was a set of events that began in May Anonymous Wikipedia editors posted a hoax article in Wikipedia about John Seigenthaler.
The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the deaths of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Hoax
[change | change source]The thenyear-old Seigenthaler, who was a friend of Robert Kennedy, described the Wikipedia article about him as "Internet character assassination".[2]
The author of the hoax article was later identified as Brian Chase.[3] On May 26, , Chase added a new article that contained, in its entirety, the following text:
John Seigenthaler Sr.
was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early s.
A false wikipedia biography by john seigenthaler On May 26, , a biographical article about John Seigenthaler was created by an anonymous Wikipedia editor that contained, in its entirety, the following text: [5]. John Seigenthaler was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the ealry [] 's.For a short time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.
John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in , and returned to the United States in
He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter.
The hoax was not discovered and corrected until September Afterwards, Seigenthaler wrote about his experience in USA Today. The incident raised questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other websites with user-generated content that lack the legal accountability of traditional newspapers and published materials.[4]
Aftermath
[change | change source]In a December 13 interview,[5] co-founder Jimmy Wales expressed his support for Wikipedia policy allowing articles to be edited by anonymous users – describing the participation of editors in China and Iran in terms of privacy issues – but announced plans to roll back their article creation privileges as part of a vandalism-control strategy: "we've decided that we want to slow downso starting in January we're preventing unregistered users from creating new pages, because so often those have to be deleted".[5]
References
[change | change source]- ↑Cohen, Noam (August 24, ).
"Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People". The New York Times.
A false wikipedia biography by john seigenthaler and wife On Tuesday, USA Today published a column by its former editorial page editor, John Seigenthaler Sr., who told of finding "A false Wikipedia 'biography'", specifically his own. The piece recounted his efforts to have the falsehoods removed and his inability to trace the person responsible.Retrieved April 7,
- ↑Seigenthaler, John (November 29, ). "A false Wikipedia 'biography'". USA Today. Retrieved October 27,
- ↑"The wiki principle".
A false wikipedia biography by john seigenthaler youtube
In May , an unregistered editor created a hoax Wikipedia article about journalist John Seigenthaler. [1] The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy.Economist. April 20,
- ↑"The State of the News Media " The Project for Excellence in Journalism. Retrieved on September 14,
- ↑ Helm, Burt. "Wikipedia: "A Work in Progress"".Wikipedia biography template The false statement in Seigenthaler's Wikipedia article read: [40] John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early s. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby.
BusinessWeek Online. Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved October 16,