


Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday requested information from Wikipedia regarding mounting unease that the internet’s leading online encyclopedia is manipulating narratives to promote left-wing viewpoints.
“Wikipedia began with a noble concept: crowdsource human knowledge using verifiable sources and make it free to the public,” the senator wrote in a letter to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander. “That’s what makes reports of Wikipedia’s systemic bias especially troubling.”
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Among other requests, Cruz urged Iskander to release data about the online giant’s content creation and editorial policy, how ideological bias is addressed, how it determines categorization on its reliable sources list, and how editors are removed or banned, according to the Hill.
Cruz’s appeal comes as free speech advocates have raised concerns that Wikipedia has abandoned neutrality standards, instead censoring information or narratives that break with left-wing ideology.
The Texas senator cited Wikipedia’s reliable sources list as a key example of bias this week. CNN, MSNBC, and the Southern Poverty Law Center are considered “generally reliable,” while Fox News is considered “generally unreliable” on politics and science, and the Heritage Foundation is “deprecated” and sits on the site’s “spam blacklist.”
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Two Republican-led congressional committees in August opened an investigation into Wikipedia, which is placed by some experts as the seventh most-visited website in the world. Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) triggered the inquiry over allegations that Wikipedia could be operating at the behest of foreign entities, including by disseminating antisemitic and anti-Israel narratives. David Sachs, who advises the White House on artificial intelligence, has also cited bias allegations as the basis of concerns that Wikipedia is being used as a training source for AI models.
In the wake of such concerns, and reports from Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger that 85% of the site’s most influential accounts are anonymous, X owner Elon Musk revealed last month that his AI company is working on a Wikipedia alternative.