Following CNN’s blackmail controversy, left-wing Wikipedia editors had the Wikipedia article on the incident removed and its contents buried at the bottom of a page on CNN controversies.

Editors then proceeded to gut this article of roughly a third of its content about controversies at the network in the latest example of liberal bias at the online encyclopedia.

Roughly an hour after the article on CNN’s recent blackmail scandal was originally created, editor NorthBySouthBaranof started a discussion on having the article made into a redirect to a CNN controversies article with a small section about the incident. Baranof was previously one of the anti-GamerGate editors banned from edits about the ethics in games journalism controversy due to his aggressive agenda-driven editing.

Over the course of the discussion, 23 regular editors on the site expressed support for the move. Although a majority of editors supporting the move in the discussion have some history of editing in favor of progressive positions, most notable are a group of five (MrX, Volunteer Marek, Objective3000, Sagecandor, and ValarianB) who also participated in a discussion on deleting the article about President Trump sharing classified information on ISIS terrorist activities with Russia.

The article “Donald Trump’s disclosure of classified information to Russia” was created by editor Casprings, who has created several denigrating articles on Republicans such as “Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012” an article cobbled together from various controversies involving Republican candidates talking about abortion in cases of rape and listed as one of Wikipedia’s “good” articles. Casprings also created the article “Political impact of Hurricane Sandy” that initially focused almost entirely on comments then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney made about federal spending on disaster relief.

Discussions about these articles are focused on a policy stating Wikipedia “is not a newspaper”, which says:

“As Wikipedia is not a paper source, editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events. However, not all verifiable events are suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia.”

This policy is commonly invoked with articles on crimes and other routine events that rarely see significant lasting coverage. Events of some significance related to topics already covered by Wikipedia’s articles are typically only covered in existing articles absent sufficient coverage in reliable sources.

Both the CNN controversy article and the “disclosure of classified information” article could be argued as unsuitable for their own articles per this “not news” policy, but these five editors all voted for keeping the latter article, brushing aside any mention of the policy. Only one other editor participated in both discussions, Saturnalia0, and was also the only one to take a consistent “not news” position on both pages.

Consequently, the “disclosure of classified information” discussion was closed with the independent article kept and the “CNN blackmail controversy” discussion was closed with the independent article redirected to an article on controversies involving the network. This “CNN controversies” article was over 90,000 bytes in size at the time.

Right after the discussion started, MrX and Volunteer Marek in a sweeping series of edits each taking about 30 minutes removed approximately 12,500 bytes and 25,000 bytes respectively or nearly a third of the entire article. The extensive removals were first noticed on the WikiInAction reddit community and while some appear consistent with Wikipedia’s standards on only including material that can be backed by reliable sources, many were not.

Such removals by MrX included a paragraph about a CNN host’s comments appearing to praise a gunman who attacked Dallas police for which she later apologized. A section on Kathy Griffin’s fake Trump beheading photos, which led to her termination as co-host of CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast, was also edited by MrX to remove mention of the President noting the images upset his 11-year-old son Barron. Criticism Griffin received from Chelsea Clinton and CNN’s own Jake Tapper was also removed.

Volunteer Marek removed an incident where a CNN producer joked about Trump’s plane crashing and a section about CNN’s Jack Cafferty making inflammatory remarks regarding China that led to protests outside their offices. As the Cafferty material cited Reuters, this removal was apparently due to it citing the International Business Times, whose reliability was inconclusively challenged six years earlier partly over a perceived conservative slant to the outlet. More recent discussions have generally favored its use as a source.

One of the more egregious removals concerned a controversy involving then-CNN correspondent Candy Crowley’s questionable challenge of a claim by Mitt Romney about Obama’s response to the Benghazi attacks during the 2012 presidential debates. Marek removed it due to one of the sources being The Daily Caller, which many editors argue is unreliable, but the section twice cites ABC News. Given the pace of these extensive deletions it is unlikely either editor checked for additional sourcing beyond that cited in the article.

Both editors also targeted the section about the blackmail controversy. One added a tag stating the three-paragraph section was excessively detailed. Another removed mention of the CNN Blackmail hashtag trending on Twitter, labeled those calling it blackmail “alt-right”, and removed material noting a Vox reporter had similar concerns about the threatening nature of the CNN piece.

Another editor renamed the section to “Redditor non-identification controversy” to remove mention of blackmail. Following a brief dispute it was changed to simply “Redditor controversy” claiming sources did not give the blackmail concerns any credence. The resulting section mostly contained criticism of CNN “protecting” the reddit user from public scrutiny.

It was not the only CNN controversy this year buried in this manner. An article on the undercover CNN videos released by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas was nominated for deletion by NorthBySouthBaranof citing the same “not news” policy. Many of the same editors pushing for getting rid of the blackmail controversy article appeared here as well. Only one adopted a different position, suggesting the article only be kept until an article existed for Project Veritas. Unlike the blackmail controversy, when material about the videos was added to the “CNN controversies” article it was removed by Objective3000 claiming it was “Not a CNN controversy.”

When an editor contested the exclusion of the O’Keefe material in early August and tried to restore material gutted from the article, the same editors not only rejected his position, but doubled down. Nearly 5,000 bytes of additional material was removed , including material that criticized CNN downplaying suppression of Bahraini Arab Spring protests, though Saturnalia0 restored some of this material. One editor, backed by Objective3000, removed the trimmed Kathy Griffin section altogether stating it wasn’t a CNN controversy. The editor who objected to these deletions has since been banned after contesting unsourced negative material about Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

Incidents such as this highlight growing concerns about political bias on Wikipedia, most recently at articles related to Antifa. As reported in Wired, recent studies suggested that the online encyclopedia has a discernible liberal bias in its article content and community. One response has been for right-leaning figures to pursue alternatives such as Conservapedia or InfoGalactic.

Should such biased editing on Wikipedia continue without impediment, then the search for viable alternatives for views not fairly represented on the site will only continue.

(Disclosure: The author has been involved in disputes with several of the parties mentioned in the article)