Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to the nonprofit operator of Wikipedia alleging a pattern of liberal bias in articles on the collaborative encyclopedia.
āI write to request information about ideological bias on the Wikipedia platform and at the Wikimedia Foundation,ā Cruz wrote to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander in aĀ letter dated October 3. āWikipedia began with a noble concept: crowdsource human knowledge using verifiable sources and make it free to the public. Thatās what makes reports of Wikipediaās systemic bias especially troubling.ā
Citing research from the conservativeĀ Manhattan Institute, Cruz wrote that āresearchers have found that articles on the site often reflect a left-wing bias.ā Cruz alleged that ābias is particularly evident in WikipediaāsĀ reliable sources/perennial sourcesĀ listā because it describes āMSNBC and CNN as āgenerally reliableā sources, while listing Fox News as a āgenerally unreliableā source for politics and science. The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center gets a top rating, but the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, is a āblacklistedā and ādeprecatedā source that Wikipediaās editors have determined āpromotes disinformation.āā
Reality has a liberal bias