Cornered!
Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.

Blog

Technology news and Jobs arrow Cornered! arrow Wikipedia founder says legitimate criticism of Sol Trujillo was not removed
Wikipedia founder says legitimate criticism of Sol Trujillo was not removed PDF E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Saturday, 14 June 2008
After I posted the story “Telstra heavies Wikipedia to protect CEO’s image”  I received an email from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, saying: “Your story about Simon (sic) Trujillo / Telstra is erroneous to the point of irresponsibility.”

He went on to say: “Both Mr Trujillo and Wikipedia are the victims of a vicious attack from an anonymous IP number. The complaint to us was in NO WAY an attempt to squelch legitimate criticism, and the Wikimedia Foundation has taken NO ACTION to do so.”

I accept his word on this, but I do not accept that was my story erroneous. I believe it accurately reported verifiable facts. However, it also contained some speculation which, as Wales says, had no basis in fact.

I speculated that the letter threatening litigation “may explain why [Sol Trujillo’s] entry today is bereft of any reference to the many critical articles about him published in the early days of his Telstra leadership.” This was in the introduction and was repeated later on “Nevertheless, Telstra’s threats seem to have had the desired effect: Sol Trujillo’s entry is now very bland, and an earlier section, on controversies, has been removed entirely [which it had].”

I concluded: “Today, there are references to a few newspaper articles published shortly after Trujillo became CEO of Telstra, but none to any of the many critical articles published at that time. So whatever means Telstra has used to pull Wikipedia into line, it seems to have been successful and to have gone well beyond the removal of defamatory statements.”

Wales suggests that media reports like mine might be the reason this section has been removed.

“Why did the community remove the criticism section? Most likely because of misleading media reports similar to yours which suggested that there could be a pending legal fight over that section - which is completely and totally false.”

However, as I said in the original article, none of this material was defamatory, it merely referenced other material in the public domain.

CONTINUED



 
< Next story in category   Previous story in the category >
iTWire user statistics Visitors last 30 days
Suscribers
904,266
13,751
#1 independent technology news advertise here
  •   *  
  • Search
  • AdvSeach
  • Login
  • Events
  • FreeStuff
Subscribe to our free e-newsletter
Cornered! - Telecoms blog
Cornered! is a blog on all things tele-communication from the perspective of one who has observed, analysed commented and reported on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition).