‘Wikipedia is just as biased as the BBC’ Research finds platform associates ‘more negative’ words with right-wing public figures

A new study has accused Wikipedia of having a left wing bias with a tendency to associate those ideologically right-wing more negatively.

Academic researcher David Rozado used AI software to analyse the sentiment behind political statements in Wikipedia articles on public figures.

The study used a wide range of English language articles from US senators and Supreme Court justices to every British MP and political leaders across the Western world.

On average the English-language edition was more likely to associate people on the right more negatively, with emotions such as “anger” and “disgust”, than those on the Left, which were more commonly associated with “joy.”

Toby Young, the director of the Free Speech Union told The Telegraph: “My own Wikipedia entry looks like it’s been written by [left-wing commentator] Owen Jones…I used to check it from time to time and painstakingly remove all the inaccuracies that had been introduced since the last time I’d looked, but I’ve now given up.

“The evidence that Wikipedia has a left-wing bias is compelling, and it’s something [co-founder] Jimmy Wales needs to rectify if he wants Wikipedia to retain its current audience. It’s a question of trust and, at the moment, conservatives just don’t trust Wikipedia.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted he’s “not surprised” by the results, adding: “I have always thought of Wikipedia as if it were the BBC, often useful but not impartial.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “There’s an inherent liberal bias in all of these sites. Whether it’s old-fashioned stuff like Wikipedia or newer sites like ChatGPT, it all has a huge bias, and that’s why it’s an absolute joy that Elon Musk’s bought X to give it a bit of balance.”

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It is not the first time the website has been questioned about its impartiality. In 2018 a Harvard study found Wikipedia articles were more biased towards democratic views than republicans on topics within US politics than they were in Encyclopædia Britannica.

There has been widespread discussion been made of the website’s perceived support of Biden, both in playing down his son Hunter’s controversies and heavy-editing across the website to downplay whether the US was indeed going in a recession under his watch.

Wikipedia’s own co-founder, Larry Sanger, who has accused the site of being taken over by left-leaning volunteers.

Last year, he told The Telegraph: “Wikipedia has, just like academia, tended to drive away people on the right,” he says, “because conservatives tend to self-select out of communities that are deeply hostile to them.”

Wikipedia’s other co-founder, Jimmy Wales, who is chief executive of its parent company, the Wikimedia Foundation, has insisted the website is not “woke” and its “not true” to suggest it has become a standard bearer for left-wing causes.

There have also been questions about the legitimacy of Rozado’s most recent report.

A piece published in the Signpost, Wikipedia’s community-edited weekly online newspaper, notes that Rozado’s study has neither been peer reviewed nor featured in an academic publication.

Instead, it was published on the conservative right-wing think tank The Manhattan Institute, which Tilman Bayer, the report’s author and an editor since 2003, suggests didn’t find the results “too objectionable.”

GB News has approached Wikipedia for a comment.