Last week, the Center for Media and Democracy, an organization that monitors and challenges the public relations industry, launched a new project aimed at exposing how corporations and PR firms edit Wikipedia to remove critical information. In the first week of the project, researchers working on the project found that Grand Rapids area corporation Amway/Alticor edited Amway’s wikipedia page to remove information critical of Amway’s attempt to silence criticism of the company on the Internet. According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch page on Alticor, on July 26, 2005 someone using a computer at an Internet address tracing back to Amway/Quixtar “removed references to their company’s practice of “Google bombing,” which is an attempt to drown out sites reporting deceptive practices and negative opinions.”
Since the start of the project, there have been a series of edits uncovered including Chevron deleting an article from Wikipedia on “biodiesel,” military contractor Raytheon removing information about their spying on competitors, electronic voting machine company Diebold removing information critical of their voting machines, and the PR firm Hill & Knowlton removing information critical of their clients.
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