Rewriting History at the New Old Lady of Tara Street

Max McGuinness on a bit of self-editing at the Irish Times

You may have heard about Wikiscanner, a website developed by computer geek Virgil Griffith which allows you to trace  edits and contributions to the eponymous online encyclopedia back to their source. In this way, Griffith discovered that someone at the voting machine producer Diebold had deleted  criticisms of the company's products from its wikipedia page as well as references to the CEO's support for George W. Bush.

We've also learned that employees of the extremely self-regarding New York Times (official motto: "All the news that's fit to print.") have been responsible for repeatedly inserting the word "penis" into Condoleeza Rice's wikipedia entry.

Sure enough, Saturday's Irish Times included an article detailing the wikipedia exploits of a number of Irish institutions such as the Central Bank(where a very active John Banville and Derek Mahon fan is at work), AIB and Bank of Ireland with the notable exception of...The Irish Times.

For, according to wikiscanner, there have been a total of 34 wikipedia edits made by users in the Irish Times network since 2003. A number of these concern the Irish Times's own wikipedia entry which could be seen as a breach of wikipedia guidelines that discourage users editing entries where they might be perceived as having a conflict of interest. However, there is little to raise eyebrows about these edits since they are limited to the correction of minor factual errors or replacing the odd comma or two.

Of more interest are 4 edits which were made to the wikipedia entry for the then Irish Times economics editor Marc Coleman by somebody within the Irish Times network at the end of last year. The user(or users) notably removed or rephrased a number of references to Coleman's career as a conservative activist within Fine Gael prior to his becoming a journalist.

For example, the following passage was deleted from Coleman's wikipedia entry on 25 October:

"He was a member of Fine Gael in the 1980s and 1990s, campaigning within the party on a range of issues taking a conservative stance. Himself the child of separated parents, Coleman campaigned strongly against the 1986 divorce referendum. "

This was replaced by:

"Within Fine Gael he took a conservative position on taxation and economic policies, establishing the ''Christian Democratic Initiative'' , the inaugural meeting of which was addressed by former foreign minister Peter Barry."

One of the edits included the addition of a reference to an article in this magazine by former Irish Times staffer Harry Browne which cited Coleman's recruitment by the Irish Times as evidence of the paper's rightward shift since the appointment of Geraldine Kennedy as editor. References to Coleman's alleged enthusiasm for karate were also removed on 25 October.

Someone in the Irish Times also decided back in 2003, when wikipedia was in its infancy, that the entry on the former Minister for Justice Seán Doherty did not give the paper sufficient credit for revealing the fact that Doherty had ordered the tapping of Madam editor's phone back in the Eighties.

So some Irish Times scribe replaced this pithy fact:

"After Doherty left office it was discovered that he ordered the tapping of two journalists home telephones."

with this much longer piece of self-congratulation:

"After Doherty left office it was revealed in The Irish Times that he ordered the tapping of two journalists(sic) home telephones. The newspaper also disclosed that he had ben(sic) interfering in the workings of the police, the Garda Siochana(sic), and the administration of justice for both politican(sic) and personal reasons."

They don't call it "the newspaper of record" for nothing, you know.

Comments

[Tom Fielding]

Fine piece of detective work.

[Cian]

I had spotted some of this, although not quite as much. I was trying to find entries by other newspaper before writing about the Times (still might do such). Anyway, well done on the ground work.

34 edits is quite low, others may be covered by IP blockers or simply when any users in the Times registered.