US State Department abuses Wikipedia

The government organ's apparatchiks like to keep an eye on the people's encyclopedia and tend to edit out references they don't like.

And it evidently has no qualms about sourcing public information data from Wikipedia.

According to this site, it looks like the State Department couldn't be bothered even re-writing an entry on Cameroon and just cut and pasted it here.

"The earliest inhabitants of Cameroon were probably the Baka (Pygmies). They still inhabit the forests of the south and east provinces", says the first paragraph of the Wikipedia.

"The earliest inhabitants of Cameroon were probably the Baka (Pygmies). They still inhabit the forests of the south and east provinces", says the first paragraph of the State Department.

The love affair that those in government have with Wikipedia has been growing so much that Wikipedia has tightened its submission guidelines and set up alerts so that its operators know when Capitol Hill staffers edit online profiles.

This week, Secretary of State Cathy Cox's campaign manager Morton Brilliant altered an online encyclopedia entry to include a reference to rival opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor's son being arrested for DUI after an accident that killed his passenger. Brilliant was forced to resign.

Perhaps the State Department was simply apeing Arab organ Aljazeera, which lifted this feature on Hamas from the mighty Wiki, rather than re-writing it. µ