The Wikipedia is again in the firing field. The incumbent US public prosecutor for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, has accused the operators of being receptive to “foreign influence” and endangering national security.
National security endangered?
In a letter, Martin calls for the non -profit organization according to a report of the Washington Post on, comprehensive information about your editorial processes, security precautions and protective mechanisms.
He suspects that Wikipedia is being used in order to falsify historical events and biographical information of US leaders and thus endanger national security interests. In his letter, which was initially made public by the Free Press, Martin explains that the masking of propaganda under the guise of educational content contradicts the actual mission of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The background is a broader campaign by Trump-related actors against institutions, media and platforms, to which they subordinate a liberal list.
The Wikimedia Foundation as a Wikipedia sponsoring organization reacted on Friday with a general explanation, in which it emphasizes that Wikipedia content is created by almost 260,000 volunteers and checked in accordance with strict neutrality guidelines. The aim is to make knowledge as correct, fair and impartial as possible.
It has system
The criticism of Wikipedia is part of a growing opposition to certain circles of online platforms. The right-wing extremist Tesla boss Elon Musk is now one of the sharper critics of encyclopedia. In October 2023 he jokingly offered a billion dollar donation – but on the condition that Wikipedia was renamed “Dickipedia”. Wikipedia expert Molly White sees Martin’s push as part of a strategy to put pressure on unpleasant independent sources of information with legal means.
Journalist Stephen Harrison suspected that Martin is apparently a kind of “America-First” version of Wikipedia. Ed Martin himself recently came under criticism after it became known that he used to appear regularly in Russian state broadcasters and that the Russian troop movement on the Ukrainian border had been down in 2022.
