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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."
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.
Tell me, why the hell should ISP's be responsible for the actions of their users? I don't see the telco getting visits from the FBI as soon as someone suspects them of providing service to "unwanted" elements.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
The strength of wikipedia lies in information about easily proved facts. Things get more complicated when we consider more controversial matters. Each reader has the responsibility for criticism when using sources like wikipedia. Errors always get published, in free or non-free encyclopedias. Eventually they will hit somebody. The difference is that in wikipedia you can correct other people's mistakes, whether they are intentional or not. In this particular case Seigenthaler is just making things worse by going public with the problem. After all, previous readers of the "fake" article should know that practically all available information about the Kennedy murders is just speculation. Now he's making the "fake" story known to many more people than it was.
Actually when the case is libel, he doesn't have to merely put up with it or change it. Having said that, I disagree with his claim that content hosts should be held responsible for what users (or customers) place on their content. If they're made aware of it, then I can see an argument being made, but to have to screen every single post/change/webpage would be infeasible.
I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable.
It goes on to talk about how he tried to contact bellsouth, and they wouldn't expose the user because there was no court order to. SO FUCKING WHAT! That's the way it should be. I'm glad every jackass who doesn't like me online can't contact my isp and find out who I am personally and my home address. That is, unless I do something illegal online and there is a court order. This isn't news. Shit has been going on like this for years. People need to realize the internet is not only beyond US borders, it is WAY beyond anyone's control.
So what's his solution? Government regulate the internet? That would be communist. John Seigenthaler is a dirty communist who hates america. I bet he is friends with Castro. He needs to go back to icy Moscow. You know what? There's nothing he can do about it because it's the internet. That's the price he pays for being a public figure. If you can't handle it then you never should have chosen to be a public figure. That's the great thing about the internet. My post will likely be outted for being untrue and the truth be spread. You can't control the world so EVERY person tells the truth about you all the time. All you can do is make the facts available and can be verified so the truth will prevail. Welcome to America, communist.
In any case, no amount of indignant editorials or feet-stamping make anyone else responsible for changing the article.
I knew someone was going to say that.
No. My local newspaper purports to be accurate and non-libelous. Wikipedia does not. The difference (almost) is between something in a newspaper, and something scribbled on a bathroom wall.
Meanwhile, you have the right to commit libel, as I have the right to sue you for it, if I can prove that you said it. Seigenthaler has the same option. What he is advocating is prior restraint.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Mr. Seigenthaler has committed the terrible act of jumping from a perfectly ordinary valid grievance (Wikipedia has a questionable entry about him) to a completely bizarre and horribly dangerous generalization about information in general (people who provide connectivity should be liable for the actions of their customers).
Ok, Seigenthaler (can I call you Ziggy?), let's see you sue my ISP.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I was going to say... Freedomforum.org states that:
Free speech
The First Amendment says that people have the right to speak freely without government interference.
The Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center presents several programs addressing aspects of free speech, including Freedom Sings and First Amendment on Campus.
Free press
The First Amendment gives the press the right to publish news, information and opinions without government interference. This also means people have the right to publish their own newspapers, newsletters, magazines, etc.
The Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center provides a program for newspaper editors and other staff through a partnership with the American Press Institute.
Conspicuously absent from the first amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.") is any mention of libel or such. In fact, the first amendment which he claims to defend is extremely specific in saying that Congress is not allowed to make any law that abridges the freedom of speech or of the press in any way (some will point out that congress doesn't stop people from publishing libellous documents, just punishes them afterwards... personally I consider that if a man tells me "if you say this you'll be fined $1000", he is abridging my freedome of speech, but this particular argument is, I suppose, off-topic).
While I sympathise with Mr Seigenthaler about the crap that ended up attached to his name on Wikipedia, I don't sympathize with this sort of dual approach to freedom.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Not only is he failing to use the eraser, he's also claiming the store that sold the chalk is responsible.
Internet forums are not like newspapers of old. There isn't an editor or a publisher who stands behind data being presented. It's raw vox populi in all its glory and ugliness. It's natural that falsehood and libel make their way into something like the Wikipedia, because any spiteful and unscrupulous person can, for some time, carry out a program of defamation.
...we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research -- but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them.
Naturally, anything of this nature that you read of the Wikipedia must be treated with extreme suspicion. That's a good habit to get into anyway, because it turns out the conventional media isn't necessarily better. They can do character assasination under the guise of innuendo and formulae carefully crafted to keep them out of legal trouble. Just think of the signature Fox technique for this. If they wanted out to get Mr. Seigenthaler, they'd simply keep saying as they go to commercial break, "Coming up, was John Seigenthaler part of a Kennedy assasination conspiracy?" They don't have to do anything; maybe they'll have a lame and completely unmemorable two minute discussion. The important thing is that they've drummed the following the following phrase into the public consciousness "Kennedy assasniation conspiracy", then associated his name with it.
I think an important thing to learn from the Wikipedia is the degree to which people should or should not be trusted. Clearly this incident shows how one should approach information in the Wikipedia with caution. However, to pick one or two incidents and use it as a representative of the whole is foolish indeed. It misses more than 50% of the data. Consider the following statement by Mr. Seigenthaler:
He says this as if it is other than it should be.
The same kind of arguments about the depredations of wicked individuals have been made in favor of censorship of the press and in favor of aristocratic rule. If people are allowed to print what they want, some of them will print libel and heresy. If people are allowed to rule, then the vote low minded persons will count as much as virtuous people. The problem with this train of thought is that it misses so much. It misses the shortcomings of the alternatives: the possibility that it might be the censors who have a libelous agenda, or the possibility that the aristocrats are the bigoted and low minded persons.
It also dismisses out of hand that virtue and decency may be more common in the general population than proponents of elitism will have you believe.
I am by nature a cynic about human nature, but if you need a counter example showing the preponderance of decency in the general population, I can think of no greater one than the Wikipedia. We all know the spiteful have less to do and thus more time to pursue their work than the fair minded. It takes ten, possibly a hundred or more decent people to balance one nasty one with an agenda. Given this, you would expect the Wikipedia, given its rules of governance, to be an utter cesspool. But it's not. Quite the contrary, it is nearly always very balanced, at least in articles with many people are watching. Clearly in the case of obscure figures such as Seigenthaler, there are few people watching. About the only thing it is safe to take from such an article is that he was somehow associated with the Kennedys.
When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people."
Then how much worse to spread an evil opinion about people in general?
The lesson of democracy and free speech is that there is always somebody somewhere who is breaking open the pillow and spreading the feathers around, and it's futile to try prevent it. But is possible to get them all, or mostly back. You just need lots of help.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It's interesting that the history of this article goes back to 9/2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Sei genthaler_Sr.&action=history&limit=50&offset=20051 201030737 but the last entry is the one that removes the controversial information, which is what you'd like to read...
www.christopherlewis.com
Would preventing anonymous contributions solve the problem? What is the benefit of allowing anonymity in this particular context? (just asking, don't flame :-) )
So, to reply en masse...
I'm very happy to see the standard knee-jerk "change the article!" defense of wikipedia in full effect. The problem with that is that you're not allowed to change articles about yourself, so even this ridiculous charge is meritless. I also think there's a fundamental problem with the way people are looking at this. For one second, put aside your self-righteous indignation and think about the position the guy's in. You worked with a guy, were his friend, and knew his brother. Next, remember what effect these assasinations had on the country at large, not even just those who knew the brothers. We had people suing for infliction of extreme emotional distress just because they SAW President Kennedy getting shot. Now, imagine someone claiming that you were involved in the death of your friend and his brother, AND that you were in collusion with a foreign power, and sticking it on a website, where everyone could see it. Sure, it might not be libel, but it's pretty close, and warrants better discussion than "he should just change the article! The magic of wiki!"
Next, the utility of wikipedia. I'm sorry, I don't see it. First of all, there's a huge credibility problem, because they don't take responsibility for anything. This isn't something new, every other month we see a collection of things gone horribly wrong, and every time we get a push to fix the symptoms, but never the cause. Sure, the new certification procedures will have some bite, but not nearly enough. They don't have enough staff, they don't have researchers to double-check things, so anything that looks plausible will likely get through. Witness the article by John Dean a couple of months ago, which claimed that he ghost-wrote his books. Not only did he not, as he explained, the article got the number of book he had written incorrect. How are subtle but very important problems like that going to be addressed, when they're being reviewed by someone with too much on his plate and no solid expertise on the subject? If it can happen to someone as important as John Dean, why can't it happen to really anyone?
I've also seen a lot of comparisons to the so-called "Main-stream Media." While I'll agree that the media has a lot of problems, this comparison is completely bogus. Firstly, the media actually has accountability, in the form of a large group of people who get very angry when things do go wrong. Witness Rathergate, Jason Blair, et al. Secondly, in most cases (high-profile reporters are often exceptions), reporters are under pressure to get things right to both keep the editor off their backs (yes, editors do fact-check!) and to not get fired, which is what happens to (most) reporters when they go off the reservation. Perfect? No. But a lot better than the monkeys-at-typewriters approach so in vogue with the internet nowadays. As a friend said: The best is the enemy of the better.
Finally, I see a lot of stuff about how wikipedia is good for quick-fire information, that the things are usually verifiable, and that it covers topic in a good basic way. My question to that is: How does that vary from an internet search? If you're going back to other sources to verify, why not just start at the sources? If they're being cited in a basic article about the subject, they most likely are treating the subject in the same basic way the wiki article is. Plus, if you search the internet, you get ALL the information, not just cherry-picked bits. If we're purporting that you should decide on the wiki based on the validity of the sources, you should be in a similar position to weed out the chaff. So in the end you get more information, the same level of error-checking, and no filter.
So, why is this the great golden god of the internet? It's not particularly useful for its stated purpose, it's shown to often be inaccurate, and any criticism of it leads to a large number of people ignoring the problem and simply chanting "change the article." If we want a collaborative information project, this is just about the exact wron
> "Change it yourself" is like saying "if skinheads painted Nazi slogans on your house
> wall, just repaint it". Is that really OK and is all that should be done? Nobody
> should be pursued for this?
I think you came up with a bad analogy. What you describe is vandalism. No one vandalized anything in this case.
It would be more like if I had a wall and people started putting up graffiti. If someone put up something you didn't like (truth or lie, valid or invalid, helpful or harmful), I could reasonably say, "paint over it".
It's still not a perfect analogy. Let's say it's the same situation, but I decided to use my wall as part of an art experiment, and I put a notice that invited anyone to write whatever they wanted on my wall.
Now, if an anonymous contributer wrote a lie about someone, that person might reasonably want to pursue the writer, and he should be able to. If a supermarket across the street caught the writer on their security camera, he should be able to compel them to provide him with the information he requires. I believe he could file a lawsuit and subpoena their evidence. However, my responsibility wouldn't extend beyond removing the offending information when asked. It also might be reasonable to hand a paintbrush to the libeled person, and let him know he can write the retraction if he wants to.
If he files a lawsuit, he can subpoena the ISP's records, identify the poster, and get whatever justice the law allows. If a newspaper printed the libel, he would have to file a lawsuit against the newspaper. Is there a reason it should be made *easier* on the internet?
The real issue here is people still actually believe what they read on the internet, and they shouldn't.
Still, I think posting anonymously is a fairly chickenshit thing to do. One nice thing about slashdot is it is accepted that anonymous posting implies cowardice.
Yeah, except if your neighbor is so dang busy they don't even have time to make their own house look respectable again, I might consider moving away from them!
Well, this could easily happen with our house. The south side of the house is easily visible from one of the two streets. (We're on a corner lot so everything is visible from a street). But we normally approach the house from the north, and the entrances are on the east and west sides. We look out the south-facing windows every day, but we can go for weeks without seeing the south side of the house. If someone were to paint something there, we might not notice it for weeks, especially in winter.
So should we be held responsible for something that someone paints on the south side of our house?
This isn't entirely a theoretical question. We live only a couple blocks from a major Jewish college (Brandeis), so if there were a flareup of anti-Semitism hereabouts, slogans on houses in our neighborhood are quite conceivable. It hasn't ever happened, but history gives us no assurance that it won't.
I'd hope that my neighbors would have the decency to just point it out to us, and of course we'd fix it. I'd also expect the neighborhood to go on the watch for similar events, and try to bring the culprits to the attention of the local police.
But I certainly hope that I wouldn't be prosecuted for not noticing the vandalism and fixing it immediately after it happens.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This is why the English have laws against naming people accused of sex crimes prior to conviction, it avoids prematurely destroying their reputation.
This is the same as Fox News' "some people say..." tactic. Despite Seigenthalers' outrage and subsequent legal thrashing about and op/ed salvo, there is little to be done about it whether Wikipedia or Fox said it. What separates Wikipedia from Fox is that while the former finds this an aberration in their service, the latter sees it as a useful tool. There is a difference and it's unfortunate that Seigenthaler hasn't picked up on it. Perhaps he has picked up on it but his anger has made him ignore it. I say this because he has chosen to deal with Wikipedia the way you would deal with Fox when he should have quietly and without legal recourse simply had the statement removed.
Finally, I would like to say that I side with Seigenthaler on the removal of this statement, but feel that his reaction to it was inapropriate. Wikipedia was already in the process of addressing this issue while the trend at Fox is in the opposite direction. Not all sources of information are alike.
I doubt most of you have ever met Mr. Seigenthaler but I have. He's personal friends with my brother and his wife and I've met him socially on a few occasions. He's a completely gentile man who is one of the most respective citizens in Nashville, regardless if you agree or not with his politics.
Seigenthaler has worked his entire career at the pinnacle of traditional journalism, both in Nashville as the longtime editor-in-chief of the Tennessean newspaper and editorial page director for USA Today for nearly a decade. He was brought back to USA Today in the past year to investigate allegations of reporters fabricating events in stories (which he proved). His Freedom Forum project is also highly respected for the work it does. And his son is someone most of us have seen on TV as the weekend anchor for NBC Nightly News and he regularly fills in for Brian Williams during the week.
So you can imagine someone of his journalistic credentials is smeared not only in Wikipedia but also in two other places, he's likely not going to take that lying down. Especially when he was a close personal friend of the guy the "article" implies he had a hand in murdering. I'd be pissed too. And whoever did this hatchet job certainly underestimates the resources that he has at his disposal to find out who did this. Libel is not protected by the First Amendment, period. Reading back the text of the First Amendment ignores 200+ years of constitutional case law on this subject. I've seen responses to this Slashdot article that say "well, it's Wikipedia...he should just edit it himself" or "well, you can't prove libel for things that might be in dispute". Horsehockey.
First, he wasn't participating in the Wikipedia process and doesn't feel he should intervene to set the record straight because if there was a real editing process, it likely would have never seen the light of day. Virtually ever single newspaper and newsroom in the country would do a fact check before publishing a bio on him. Wikipedia as a concept has proven to be interesting and very useful and is an interesting read on many topics. But its Achilles' Heel is that fact that anyone can edit an article anonymously and that makes it susceptible to libelous edits like this. Journalism is just about good editing as well as reporting and research. Wikipedia has a few editorial controls but a lot of junk can get in and stay there before anyone notices the fraud.
In the end, I think the whole brouhaha will be good for Wikipedia in general because it will cause the project to pay closer attention to some of these edits. The anonymous nature of the reporting process will undoubtedly come under close scrutiny. The fact that the online community is talking about journalism and wiki in the 21st century is a good thing. And maybe Mr. Seigenthaler will actually be able to confront his accuser in a court of law.
You _really_ think that's how the resolution process works on Wikipedia? Especially on these matters where someone has a particular axe to grind?
I'm afraid that I've personally seen a few very similar problems on Wikipedia -- character assassination of relatively obscure old (or dead) men. Coincidentally (and I don't want to suggest that a pattern exists) these libels were of a similar strain: accusations or intimations that people affiliated with either the Democratic Party or with the "left" were Soviet collaborators.
When you say "ask for evidence" that's all good and well. Problem is, the only "evidence" that exists in historical matters are primary sources. Few people have the resources to dig back to primary sources, even when such sources exist or are accessible to normal people. At some point, reliable secondary sources are necessary. Wikipedia is a source that has _no_ credibility without verification from another source -- which means it ought to be skipped altogether.
You can't just label content as anonymous or not and expect that to be sufficient.
- Users will need to know that you actively intend for them to trust anonymous content less than non-anonymous content, but
- Users will need to know that even though you have now created two classes of content, and anonymous content is explicitly not to be trusted, non-anonymous content is still not guaranteed. One is to be trusted less than the other, but neither are to be trusted. Named content can very much still be wrong, can it not? It's a murky distinction, you'll just confuse people with it.
- The offensive material will still be present, and just as hard to regulate. You can vaguely help things by making anonymous content invisible by default, hoping that users are lazy and that anyone who cares enough to look at the anonymous content will also know better than to trust it blindly. But the libel is still happening, and those smeared by it have just as much right to be unhappy about it, and they'll complain that it's available even if invisible by default.
So really, it comes down to a social problem, not a technological one. People are still too willing to trust anonymous content. A technological solution on Wikipedia doesn't come close to solving the general problem on the internet -- people are just far too trusting.
The parent comment is a lie from the start. Wikipedia set out to be, and still claims to be a kind of encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are sources of facts. To claim otherwise is just weasel wording defend the indefensible.
By claiming to be a kind of encyclopedia, Wikipedia attracts users who don't know about the subject matter they're looking up. That is why users consult it. People don't read it to be entertained by it's errors and lies. People read it to find out information, and are reading it because they don't know enough to see the falsehoods of an article. This is what makes Wikipedia less than worthless; it makes it dangerous and dishonest.
Finally, someone like Mr. Sigenthaler shouldn't be required to constantly recheck the article to prevent some anonymous libeler from replacing the poison pen article.