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John Seigenthaler Sr. Criticises Wikipedia
EsonLinji writes "John Seigenthaler Sr, a former assistant to Robert Kennedy, has written a commentary in USA Today expressing outrage at a libelous biography that appeared on Wikipedia that suggested he was involved with the assasination of JFK and spent more than a decade in Russia. His commentary also takes aim at internet providers and the laws that allow them to act as common carriers without liability for the actions of their users."
no link to the article?
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
From something I read somewhere:
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Isn't it a bit ironic that Wikipedia (supposedly a reliable encyclopedia) has less advanced moderation than Slashdot (famously unreliable)? Perhaps it's time they got a bit more structure.
... That includes obscure topics like video games that you might not care about.
Actually, a new feature called article validation is about to go live on wikipedia. See the article from this week's signpost. The feature will hopefully help adress some of the issues being raised in this story.
I do also notice that Wikipedia has a lot of entries for stuff that might not otherwise be considered important enough to be in an encyclopedia - open source software that is not yet out of beta, cars in video games etc.
Yeah, so? Jimmy Wales:"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
Libel isn't protected under the first amendment.
I don't believe he made anyone aware of it, either,
;)). From my impression of the article, Jimbo was more then helpful and the writer appreciated it and didn't hold him personally responsible. However he does want to make Jimbo legally responsible in the future, which is quite odd considering how much of a positive response he got from him (I guess Bellsouth's response left a very sour taste in his mouth).
Actually he called up Jimbo and it was changed (that's what happens when you RTFA
First Amendment rights are not absolute. Libel and slander are two exceptions to the rule and could apply here. One of the greatest failings of the internet is that it allows people to write libelous comments with little fear of legal action. Technology isn't the Great Equalizer, it's the Great Enabler, nothing more. It allows people to avoid personal responsibility for their comments. If it were truly equalizing, the damage caused by libel could be just as easily reversed by rebutting the comments. Unfortunately people fit into this great technology equation somewhere and things aren't that simple anymore. The original libelous comments have already formed an opinion in people's minds and a simple rebuttal will not sway our opinions easily. Throw in information overload and people are far too willing (and I mean all people, not just technophobes) to believe comments in the internet without doing any research into the allegations and determining for themselves who's right and who's wrong.
The law makes a clear distinction between First Ammendment rights and libel. He is suggesting that this is a libelous and damaging article.
I have to admit that I was expecting more than a couple of sentences of offending text in wikipedia though. Either one of those sentences could be passed off as misinformation though. Even if he found the author, I think it would be hard to prove that it is libel.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
I was going to point out the role that anonymous pamphleteers played in kindling the American Revolutionary War, which I think we're safe in assuming John Seigenthaler Sr still recognizes as a good thing. But in researching references, I found someone who had already articulated this argument better than I could hope to:
(Full article by Ken Anderson, Editor of the Magic City Morning Star, is here; it points out how many of the founding fathers 'posted anonymously')
It's too bad John Seigenthaler Sr. has his feelings hurt by what is an obviously untrue story about him. I'm a little suprised that someone with what appears to be both polititcs and journalism in his background is so easily perturbed such ludicrous accusations; both professions generally involve thicker skins than that. he's welcome to his opinion about the wisdom of allowing anonymity - but fortunately (in my opinion!), reality differs.
New York Times v. Sullivan is a good precedent here.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times, stating that "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open".
This is the only time Siegenthaler mentions libel in the article, which is significant because it means Siegenthaler did not call the statements libelous. The /. summary assumes not only that he made this charge, but that it is a true charge, stating that the editorial was "expressing outrage at a libelous biography".
In fact, Siegenthaler would have a hard time proving libel, because in the American system, in order to be libellous, a statement has to be damaging to the reputation, and it has to be untrue. (It also has to be either knowingly untrue, or made with malicious disregard for the truth.) Of the two statements Siegenthaler cites, one is that he spent a decade in Russia. I'll assume that Siegenthaler can document that that is not true, and at the height of the Cold War, spending time in Russia would cause some kinds of people to look at you with suspicion. But here in 2005, well after the Cold War, is it really that damaging to the reputation?
That leaves the second statement, which was also seriously misrepresented in the article summary. The summary claims that the Wikipedia article "suggested [Siegenthaler] was involved with the assasination of JFK". But here's the actual statement as reprinted in the editorial:
Let me change hats here for a second and tell you what's wrong with this statement from the Wikipedian point of view: it's too damn vague. He was thought by whom? On what basis? What specific role was he alleged to have played? What attempts to prove the alleged involvement were made, which resulted in "nothingHowever, just as art does not have to be good art to deserve the legal protections afforded to art, the fact that this is a sloppy and vague statement does not change the fact that in order to be libellous, it has to be untrue. If someone actually did think that Siegenthaler was involved in the assassinations, it is not an untrue statement. There's people who think that Bill Clinton assassinated Vince Foster. Those people are simpletons and morons, generally, and many of them are the same kinds of assholes who were responsible for Foster's death, targeting him in the press for no better reason than that he was a friend of Clinton and thus considered a Washington combatant to be neutralized. But it is still a fact that many people think, even after Ken Starr concluded that Foster's death was suicide, that it was murder on Clinton's orders.
Now, for having said that someone out there thinks that, am I going to be missummarized on Slashdot, reported as "Anonymous Coward committed libel by suggesting that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster"? Whether he appreciates the irony or not, Siegenthaler is doing exactly what he rails against his anonymous detractor for doing. The statements against Siegenthaler do not state that Siegenthaler was ever credibly believed by anyone to be involved in any assassination. But they could lead a careless reader to jump to that conclusion. In turn, Siegenthaler did not actually call the statements against him libellous, and as we have seen, he probably couldn't. But thanks to his clever construction, he got the Slashdot editors to say it for him.