Wikipedia is being systematically used for propaganda.

"WS" wrote to me:

Hi,
 
Saw an interview Keith Olberman did with the editor of Wired.com  It was about how variow comanies and government agencies changed a Wikipedia entry to eliminate things about themselves that they didn't like.  Very informative. 

The good news is that someone figured out how to track the emails of those who biased the Wikipedia entries. The trails led back to big business and government sources.
 
See also written details of the same.

For an interactive experience with Wikipedia around CAM and spiritual healing, see my recent blog entry.

 
WHEE-MD Observations

Living in Canada, and having lived for 10 years in England, I've acquired a strong distrust for the US media. The news available outside the US is much more inclined to suggest remedies for social and ecological problems that go counter to the interests of US business and government.

This is not to say the media elsewhere are free of biases or outside influences, but this is much more of a problem in the US. Advertising money (and who knows what other pressures) corrupts the impartiality of the media so that the information provided to the US public is largely composed of big business and governmental propaganda.

Wikipedia is supposedly a collection of viewpoints that reflects the collective truth of participants. When it becomes a tool for promotion of vested interests, it becomes corrupted.

This is, in the end, a clear lesson in how propaganda is deliberately generated and foised on the public.

Now that this propaganda game has been exposed, we can trust that it will continue but will have the email sources disguised to prevent identification of the real sources.