Stuart Corner
Saturday, 14 June 2008 17:47
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
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
