Is Wikipedia Biased?
Media Bias, Wikipedia Bias, AllSides Media Bias
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By Julie Mastrine
Is Wikipedia biased?
AllSides provides media bias ratings for over 800
sources and writers. Until 2021, we rated Wikipedia as
Center, but changed them to Not Rated because the
online encyclopedia does not fit neatly into AllSides’
media bias rating methodologies, which were developed
specifically for news sites.
However, it’s worth exploring numerous studies and
concerns that Wikipedia has a left-wing bias, including
from Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger.
The sheer volume of content on Wikipedia, as well as
its nature as an encyclopedia rather than a collection
of journalism and breaking news headlines, makes it
hard for us to assess Wikipedia as we typically do for
news outlets, but we thought it useful to explain the
most common claims of Wikipedia bias in this blog post.
You can vote on what you think the bias of Wikipedia is
here, or email us feedback.
AllSides uses Wikipedia frequently as a source on our
balanced topics pages, and it is the 13th most popular
website in the world, so Wikipedia’s bias is worth
discussing. Sanger has accused Wikipedia of bias, and
some have noted the site’s entries related to communism
and socialism fail to mention the crimes and genocides
committed under those regimes. Studies have found
Wikipedia employs left-wing bias in its word choice,
relies more on left-wing news sources for its
citations, and sanctions conservative editors at a 6
times higher rate. People typically point to five
studies that have found evidence of Wikipedia’s left-
wing bias; AllSides hasn’t found any claims of
conservative bias leveraged at Wikipedia; the
encyclopedia Conservapedia was created in response to
purported Wikipedia liberal bias.
Wikipedia aims to be an unbiased, neutral source.
However, Sanger has said Wikipedia’s neutral point of
view is “dead,” and that Wikipedia now “endorses the
utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid
what they call ‘false balance’. The notion that we
should avoid “false balance” is directly contradictory
to the original neutrality policy.”
At AllSides, a Center bias rating doesn’t mean neutral,
it just means a source doesn’t predictably display
conservative or liberal bias. A Center source may still
display bias in individual articles or omit
information. Still, we moved Wikipedia to Not Rated
because conducting our Editorial Reviews even for just
a few Wikipedia entries would make it hard for us to
provide an overall rating for something so massive.
So, is Wikipedia biased? We lay out a summary of the
claims of Wikipedia’s left-wing bias below.
5 Studies Find Wikipedia Bias
Five studies, including two from Harvard researchers,
have found a left-wing bias at Wikipedia:
A Harvard study found Wikipedia articles are more left-
wing than Encyclopedia Britannica.
Another paper from the same Harvard researchers found
left-wing editors are more active and partisan on the
site.
A 2018 analysis found top-cited news outlets on
Wikipedia are mainly left-wing.
Another analysis using AllSides Media Bias Ratings™
found that pages on American politicians cite mostly
left-wing news outlets.
American academics found conservative editors are 6
times more likely to be sanctioned in Wikipedia policy
enforcement.
Harvard researchers Greenstein and Zhu examined
articles covering U.S. politics on Wikipedia and
compared them to similar articles in Encyclopedia
Britannica. They looked at word choices more consistent
with left-wing and right-wing views respectively, and
found articles on Wikipedia tended to show greater
left-wing bias.
A subsequent study by the Harvard researchers and an
additional researcher examined the bias of active
Wikipedia editors; it found they tended to be more
left-wing and more partisan than their right-wing
counterparts.
One analysis used AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ to check
the bias of Wikipedia sourcing. It found that "articles
on American politicians tended to rely on left-wing
media. Based on AllSides ratings, 33,000 sources used
were left-wing with 44,000 being left-wing based on
MBFC (Media Bias/Fact Check) ratings. Right-wing
sources were shown to be more rarely used with such
sources being cited less than 10,000 times according to
either rating site. Centrist sources were used more
often and closer to the number of times left-wing
sources were used. Neither ratings site has rated all
of the outlets cited on Wikipedia, while some ratings
differ between the two sites."
Read more about all of these studies on AllSides’ page
on Wikipedia bias here.
Co-Founder Larry Sanger: Wikipedia is “Badly Biased"
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger conducted his own
bias analysis of the website, saying Wikipedia is
“badly biased.”
"The days of Wikipedia's robust commitment to
neutrality are long gone," co-founder Larry Sanger told
Fox News in Feb. 2021. "Wikipedia's ideological and
religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a
resource that continues to be treated by many as an
unbiased reference work."
“Wikipedia can be counted on to cover not just
political figures, but political issues as well from a
liberal-left point of view,” Sanger writes. “No
conservative would write, in an abortion article, “When
properly done, abortion is one of the safest procedures
in medicine,” a claim that is questionable on its face,
considering what an invasive, psychologically
distressing, and sometimes lengthy procedure it can be
even when done according to modern medical practices.”
Sanger cites numerous other entries that he says
display bias, including President Barack Obama’s
article, saying it mentions none of his
administration’s scandals, but scandals on President
Trump’s page are extensively documented. Sanger also
says Hillary Clinton’s page is “glowing”; he says
Wikipedia’s entry on drug legalization is dubbed “drug
liberalization” and “has only a little information
about any potential hazards of drug legalization
policies; it mostly serves as a brief for legalization,
followed by a catalog of drug policies worldwide”; he
notes Wikipedia’s LGBT adoption article “includes
several talking points in favor of LGBT adoption
rights, but omits any arguments against”; he notes
instances of bias in articles on Jesus Christ, stating
that "Wikipedia’s claims are tendentious if not false,
and represent a point of view that many if not most
Christians would rightly dispute."
Sanger also addresses claims that Wikipedia is “biased
in favor of science,” saying the problem is that
“scientists sometimes do not agree on which theories
are and are not scientific … when certain people seem
unified on a certain view of a scientific controversy,
then that is the view that is taken for granted as the
Establishment one, and often aggressively asserted, by
Wikipedia.”
He points to the articles on global warming, MMR
vaccine and alternative medicine as examples, noting
that they all “endorse definite positions that
scientific minorities reject. Another example is how
Wikipedia treats various topics in alternative medicine
—often dismissively, and frequently labeled as
“pseudoscience” in Wikipedia’s own voice.”
Read Sanger’s full analysis here.
Claims Wikipedia Favors Left-Rated News Sites
John Stossel (Lean Right bias) accused Wikipedia in
April 2022 of favoring media outlets that AllSides
rates as being on the left.
Stossel wrote that "there’s not a single right-leaning
media outlet Wiki labels ‘reliable’ about politics, but
Vox, Slate, The Nation, Mother Jones, CNN, MSNBC get
approval."
Wikipedia does label some right-rated outlets, such as
the Daily Caller (Right bias), as unreliable.
Wikipedia's Daily Caller page mentions several examples
of the outlet failing fact-checks. Conversely,
Wikipedia's page for the New York Times (Lean Left
bias) fails to mention some high-profile examples of
the paper failing fact-checks, such as when it reported
without evidence that the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot mob
had bludgeoned a police officer to death with a fire
extingusher.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales responded to Stossel in
an email, saying the idea "that ‘only globalist,
progressive mainstream sources’ are permitted is "just
100% false."
Claims Wikipedia Whitewashes Communist Regimes
Update Jan. 4, 2023: The claims made below were true at
the time this blog was originally published in 2021.
Two years later, an AllSides Jan. 2023 review of the
Wikipedia page for "communism" found that its
introduction now links to sections about "excess
mortality" under Joseph Stalin and within communist
states. "Prison labor" is mentioned on the page once,
in the "China'" section. Famines are mentioned
throughout, the Holodomor is mentioned twice, and
"genocide" is mentioned multiple times. The article now
contains links to full articles on "Mass Killings under
communist regimes" , The Great Leap Forward, The
Cultural Revolution, and Holodomor. The introduction on
the communism page does not mention the tens of
millions of deaths, labor camps, prison labor, torture
or starvation under these regimes, which could amount
to bias by placement. At the very end of this section,
Wikipedia states, "Mao's government was responsible for
vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40
to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution,
prison labour, and mass executions."
The "socialism" page does not mention genocide or
famine under such regimes in the introduction; it does
not mention forced labor or labor camps under socialist
regimes. The page focuses on economic, political, and
social theory. "Famine" is mentioned halfway down the
page in the "Russian Revolution" section. Wikipedia
states, "In the period before World War II, Soviet
Union experienced two major famines." (Wikipedia has
added the question of undue weight to this mention.)
This is the first time the page mentions deaths other
than those of individual political figures.
Fox News (rated Lean Right by AllSides) ran a story in
Feb. 2021 stating that Wikipedia’s two main pages for
"Socialism" and "Communism" “span a massive 28,000
words, and yet they contain no discussion of the
genocides committed by socialist and communist regimes,
in which tens of millions of people were murdered and
starved.”
"The omission of large-scale mass murder, slave labor,
and man-made famines is negligent and deeply
misleading," economics professor Bryan Caplan, who has
studied the history of communism, told Fox News.
Caplan said the pages focus on “flattering claims” of
the regimes, noting that Wikipedia’s Socialism page
says: "The Soviet era saw some of the most significant
technological achievements of the 20th century” while
ignoring the Holodomor, a man-made famine in which
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin commandeered the food
from regions like Ukraine and Kazakhstan, leaving
millions to starve to death (and even resort to
cannibalism) as the Soviet Union exported grain to
foreign countries.
Fox says the socialism page mentions China’s Communist
history, but “only begins its description in 1976,
after Mao Zedong’s reign of terror had already killed
tens of millions.” The article fails to mention Mao’s
communist programs such as his "Great Leap Forward,” in
which private farming was abolished, leading to mass
famine that killed tens of millions. Nor does it
mention Mao’s Cultural Revolution, in which millions of
young people formed the paramilitary Red Guards, which
according to New World Encyclopedia “begun vandalizing
bookstores, libraries, churches, temples, and
monuments; and breaking into private homes to destroy
old books, Western-style clothing, paintings, and art
objects. Red Guards attacked intellectuals,
professionals, and anyone who had contact with the
West, or represented traditional Chinese culture or
religion. Hundreds of thousands were beaten, tortured,
or sent to hard labor camps.”
Wikipedia Criticized for Neutrality Policies that Omit
Information
Wikipedia says that it does not present certain
minority views or claims in order to “avoid a false
balance.” This new policy has been criticized by
Sanger, who says it means Wikipedia is no longer
neutral. Wikipedia states that it seeks to avoid
legitimizing certain information and will omit it. In
this way, Wikipedia adheres to an elite bias or perhaps
a majority-belief bias.
Wikipedia’s policy states, “Giving “equal validity” can
create a false balance” (emphasis ours):
While it is important to account for all significant
viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not
state or imply that every minority view or
extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with
commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they
were of equal validity. There are many such beliefs in
the world, some popular and some little-known: claims
that the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar
possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo moon landings
were a hoax, and similar ones. Conspiracy theories,
pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but
currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized
through comparison to accepted academic scholarship. We
do not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia
writers, for or against; we merely omit this
information where including it would unduly legitimize
it, and otherwise include and describe these ideas in
their proper context with respect to established
scholarship and the beliefs of the wider world.
Some Say Wikipedia’s Policies May Be Justified
While we could not find a response from Wikipedia
themselves about claims of bias (email us if we missed
it), a left-leaning member of the AllSides team points
out that some likely believe Wikipedia’s content
policies as justified, pointing to a 2020 study from
researchers at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and
University of Illinois at Chicago that “argue[s] that
Wikipedia has become and remains one of the few places
on the internet dedicated to combating fake news” and
states that “analysis and review of Wikipedia’s
community policies and the procedures resulting from
these policies demonstrate the encyclopedia’s unique
capacity to protect against problematic information.”
Tell Us What You Think About Wikipedia’s Bias
Determining the bias of an entire encyclopedia is
tricky for us at AllSides, as we are better equipped to
determine the bias of news outlets. Yet because
Wikipedia is such an important source that is
increasingly seen as authoritative, we want to know
what you think. Have we missed any arguments that
Wikipedia has a right bias, or any pushback to the
claims or studies presented above? You can vote on what
you think the bias of Wikipedia is here, or email us
feedback.
Julie Mastrine is the Director of Marketing at
AllSides. She has a Lean Right bias.
This piece was reviewed by Managing Editor Henry A.
Brechter (Center bias) and CEO John Gable (Lean Right)
and Daily News Specialist Joseph Ratliff (Lean Left
bias).
Media Bias, Wikipedia Bias, AllSides Media Bias
Ratings
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