Wikipedia is simultaneously indispensable and indefensible.

Indispensable because you can get a quick and dirty summary of some topic about which you have neither the time nor the inclination to do a deep dive. It also is a good place to start when you need to find source articles for many of the claims made in the Wikipedia article. The footnotes can be very useful as a place to start.

Indefensible because the articles are often biased, and on controversial topics there are sometimes editing wars where competing narratives are promoted by partisans. Inserts and deletions can happen all the time and you might find different spins on the same topic if you check at different times.

In other words, Wikipedia can be useful, but unreliable as a source of facts. We all use it and feel guilty about it.

A great example of the problem was pointed out by Ian Miles Chong just now.

Most of Earth: “The MSM is biased.”
Wikipedia: “Cite MSM source to confirm this claim.” 🤣🤣

Wikipedia has a non-trivial left-wing bias.@jimmy_wales, what are your thoughts?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 6, 2022

The MSM has declared the Twitter Files to be a big nothingburger, because of course they did. They and their favorite candidate benefited from the manipulation and censorship of the truth, and even participated in a coverup that spanned years (in the case of CBS, which finally admitted the laptop is legitimate).

The only reason the MSM is doing even that is because Hunter Biden may be indicted based upon information taken from the laptop, and it would be mighty embarrassing to have the FBI using the laptop as evidence while they continued to insist it was Russian disinformation.

Besides, the coverup had accomplished the goal.

Wikipedia editors are going along with the MSM dismissal of one of the biggest scoops of the decade: Matt Taibbi’s slow drip revelations of how the managers at Twitter conspired to suppress a legitimate news story in order to help out Joe Biden’s campaign. The FBI is implicated, the MSM did their part by promoting the false story that the laptop was Russian disinformation, all while the Biden campaign simply ignored the story.

Hunter Biden didn’t even bother to dispute that the laptop was his. Why would he? The media did his spinning for him.

Wikipedia editors perhaps feel left out. It didn’t get enough play as a member of the disinformation conspiracy, so they are considering doing their part to cover up this disgusting episode.

The claim that the story isn’t of any note is bizarre. The Twitter Files revelations have been widely discussed and debated, and even the MSM has been forced to cover the controversy, if not exactly the revelations themselves. They have put effort into downplaying the news, which is noteworthy in itself.

If you look at Journalist Twitter there is a concerted effort to discredit Taibbi and downplay the significance of the revelations. Hard to say nobody cares when such effort is being put into discrediting the story.

Yet that is what they are going with.

We at Hot Air have covered this story extensively, because it matters a lot. Social media is where the vast majority of Americans get their news these days, for good or ill. Even the MSM mavens admit that Twitter is an indispensable tool for their work when used properly. Twitter drives traffic, and is where the meaning of stories is debated.

Twitter may be a sewer, but there are a lot of diamonds under the muck. They know that. The Atlantic even did a story to that effect recently, as did Wired. Journalism and Twitter are joined at the hip, for good and ill.

So denying the obvious is a pretty bizarre thing to do. When The Atlantic admits that Twitter is where the MSM goes to shape the Narrative, it is pretty bizarre to have the editors of the world’s encyclopedia claim that suppressing the news means absolutely nothing.

Perhaps if Wikipedia was banned for containing misinformation–which it often does, at least until it gets corrected by yet another editor, they might change their tune.

But they know that would ever happen. So they are indifferent to the truth. They, too, are in the business of shaping the Narrative.

P.S. My Twitter handle is @davidstrom Just in case you want to follow me.