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Media Views Electronic Intifada: A Pro-Israel Group's Plan to Rewrite History on Wikipedia (4/21/08)
Captured emails from workers and supporters of the anti-Palestinian media organization CAMERA show the pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.
Though hardly the first time the populist media site has come under attack, CAMERA's emails are particularly insidious in that "stealth and misrepresentation are presented as the keys to success."
FAIR does not endorse every opinion expressed or vouch for facts presented here, except by ourselves. Send link suggestions to jnaureckas@fair.org.
Seal of the United States Department of Justice 
''Wikinews'' has learned that a United States Department of Justice (DOJ) IP Address has been blocked on ''Wikipedia'' after making edits to an article which were considered "vandalism". In two separate instances, the IP address from the DOJ removed information from the Wikipedia article about the organization Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), regarding an attempt by the organization to secretly gain influence on the site. The IP address has been confirmed by ''Wikinews'' to be registered and used by the DOJ located in Washington, D.C.

On April 21, Electronic Intifada published a report based on leaked emails written between CAMERA and ''Wikipedia'' contributors who are allegedly planning to gain influence on the online encyclopedia. Information about CAMERA's campaign to influence Wikipedia was first added to the site's article about the organization on April 21 by user 'Bangpound', who cited the Electronic Intifada article. 

According to the edit history on the ''Wikipedia'' article CAMERA, the entire subsection relating to this controversy was removed by the IP address 149.101.1.130, which is hosted by 'wdcsun30.usdoj.gov' and is used by the DOJ. The IP address removed information regarding CAMERA's plan to "cooperate with prominent Wikipedia editors to promote a Zionist viewpoint and oppose pro-Arab viewpoints on Wikipedia" at least two separate times, on April 24 and April 25.

The IP address belonging to the DOJ also made edits identified as vandalism to the Wikipedia articles Tracy Jordan, Roger Ebert, and James E. Akins. After several warnings on the IP address's "talk page", the IP address was blocked for four days for "repeated vandalism." Several hours prior to the DOJ edits, an IP address also from Washington D.C., 71.178.102.65, removed the same information. ''Wikinews'' can confirm the IP address is located in Washington D.C. and belongs to Verizon.


Wikipedia administrators were kept apprised in an ongoing discussion about the incident at Wikipedia's Administrators' noticeboard. "The Justice employee is attempting to scrub any mention of CAMERA's activities to influence Wikipedia (now double-sourced) as seen here in this edit," said Wikipedia editor Lawrence Cohen, in an initial post to the Administrators' noticeboard.

Founded in 1982, CAMERA is a pro-Israel media-monitoring and research non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts. On April 21 the Electronic Intifada, a not-for-profit online publication which covers the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective, published an article describing efforts by CAMERA to secretly influence Wikipedia articles. According to the article, Electronic Intifada obtained a series of emails between CAMERA and members of Wikipedia, attempting to game the encyclopedia and influence articles on the site related to Israel.


Electronic Intifada quoted a March 13 email from Gilead Ini, a Senior Research Analyst at CAMERA, who enlisted volunteers to make sure articles about Israel on Wikipedia were "free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context". In a follow-up email from March 17, Ini emphasized secrecy, telling the email list members not to "forward it to members of the news media", and wrote that "There is no need to advertise the fact that we have these group discussions." The media criticism organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting criticized the CAMERA emails, calling them "particularly insidious" because "stealth and misrepresentation are presented as the keys to success."

Later discussions in the series of emails obtained by Electronic Intifada included advice on how to get members of CAMERA elected as Wikipedia administrators, in order to gain influence. Wikipedia user 'Zeq' posted to the list: "One or more of you who want to take this route should stay away from any Israel realted sic articles for one month until they sic interact in a positive way with 100 wikipedia sic editors who would be used later to vote you as an administrator."

After the IP address belonging to the DOJ was blocked, Wikipedia editors informed the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications committee about the incident. Both ''Wikinews'' and Wikipedia are projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. In addition to the DOJ IP address, several Wikipedia users determined to be cooperating with the CAMERA campaign to influence Wikipedia had also previously been blocked by Wikipedia administrators.

''Wikinews'' requested a statement from the Department of Justice on the edits to Wikipedia, but as of this article's publication had not received a response.