Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident

Common card · No. 340197

On May 26, 2005, an unregistered editor created a hoax article on the English Wikipedia about journalist John Seigenthaler. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy. After the hoax was discovered and corrected later in September, Seigenthaler, a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, wrote an article in USA Today describing the Wikipedia page as an "Internet character assassination". The editor who created the hoax was later identified and admitted that he had done so as a joke. The incident raised questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other websites with user-generated content that lack the legal accountability of traditional newspapers and published materials, and damaged the site's credibility and reputation for many years. In a December 13, 2005, interview, co-founder Jimmy Wales expressed his support for Wikipedia policy allowing articles to be edited by...

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