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| Reference Material |
| (The following article first appeared in the South China Morning Post, of Hong Kong, and was emailed to us by the author) History re-edited By: ALAN ROBLES December 08, 2005 Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is under fire for falsely identifying an American journalist as a suspect in the murders of former president John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. Any visitor to the Wikipedia site could, until very recently, freely create and edit entries in a spirit of community scholarship. I have used the site as a technical source, but realized its limitations recently when I saw its article on Ferdinand Marcos. I nearly swallowed my vocal chords. You may have heard of Casper, the Friendly Ghost. How about Ferdie, the Cuddly Despot? The dictator, the entry said, was "controversial" but "his term was characterized by economic prosperity ... as well as peace and political stability". The article omitted all the good parts: the murderous military dictatorship, the looting of billions of dollars, the destruction of national institutions. It did not say that Switzerland has so far returned more than US$680 million of Marcos' loot. Zipping through "alleged human-rights violations", "allegedly fraudulent" elections, "alleged systematic vote tampering" and "supposed" looting of billions, the entry rhapsodized that "perhaps [Marcos'] greatest feat was restraint in unleashing the military's force at the masses during the Edsa [people-power] revolution, thus sacrificing his post and averting bloodshed". I could almost hear soft violin music. Actually, reports say Marcos put on a show of gentleness for the Americans, who weren't fooled: they overheard him secretly radioing his generals to pound Edsa. The Wiki contributor provided two links, one to a site providing straightforward biographical data, the other to the "Marcos Presidential Centre" - which mentions no terror or torture. I exercised my right as a Wiki user and edited the entry. But when I inspected the site a few hours later, I found my corrections had been deleted and the original restored. This started a two-day war that saw me and the mysterious contributor editing each other. Anybody who read the entry during that time would have blinked at how paragraphs appeared, disappeared and reappeared within minutes. I finally had an acerbic message exchange with the poster, who seems to have based his "facts" on what he read in two books. For now, my corrections have stayed but I'm bothered that, for at least two years, the entry was read by people who used it as a reference. The same contributor has also written about Marcos' children and some cronies, so I've broken out a stack of books, documents and newsclips. There's some Wiki whitewash that needs removing. |