Congressional edits

Last week's press roundup noted the beginnings of media coverage on editing of Wikipedia by Congressional staffers (see related story). The attention continued this week, with many mainstream media and numerous blogs focusing on Wikipedia's decision to block editing from Capitol Hill computers for a week.

On February 1, the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts published "Wikipedia bars Congress from editing entries" by Evan Lehmann, the original Sun reporter who broke the Marty Meehan whitewash story.

The Washington Post published a well-balanced story on their front page on February 3, entitled "On Capitol Hill, Playing WikiPolitics". The article revealed that the questionable edits coming from Meehan's office were the work of a summer intern. It was also one of the few to correctly note the scale of the issue (a few thousand bad edits -- most juvenile pranks rather than Orwellian rewriting of history -- out of the 4.7 million edits made to Wikipedia in December).

Other notable stories included:

• "Website bans Congress staff over alterations", The Scotsman
• "Wikipedia Bans Access from Capitol Hill Computers", National Public Radio (US)
• "Wikipedia locks out congress staff", The Washington Times (syndicated UPI story)
• "Politicians notice Wikipedia", and "Congress caught making false entries in Wikipedia", News.com
• "Wikipedia Bans Congress", Web Pro News

Articles

• "Reputations taking hits on Web site", The Argus
• "Wikipedia and the Credibility of Online Information", Global Politician
• "In defence of Wikipedia", NOW Toronto
• "How accurate is Wikipedia's content?", Economic Times (India)

Citations in the news

Despite a previously reported internal memo from New York Times business editor Larry Ingrassia warning against use of Wikipedia, the article on mark to market accounting was endorsed as "a pretty good explanation" by the paper Saturday, in a story from Dan Mitchell. The story incorrectly referred to Wikipedia as wikipedia.com instead of wikipedia.org.