House Republicans launch an investigation against Wikipedia for alleged bias in its articles

The House Oversight Committee, under Republican leadership, opened an investigation targeting the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, to probe alleged coordinated attempts to alter articles and promote political bias on the platform.

Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), along with Nancy Mace (R-SC), who heads the cybersecurity and technology subcommittee, sent a letter to Maryana Iskander, the foundation's executive director, requesting documents, communications, and details of instances of manipulation on the platform.

Investigation of foreign operations

According to the communication sent, the lawmakers want to examine whether foreign actors or those linked to federally funded academic institutions have engaged in campaigns to introduce bias into Wikipedia articles. The panel's interest focuses on cases in which volunteers on the platform have allegedly broken its own editorial rules to manipulate sensitive topics related to politics, international conflict, and security.

Comer and Mace cited previous research that already warned about such campaigns. They mentioned, for example, a report by the Anti-Defamation League that identified a coordinated strategy to distort articles about Israel and Palestine with an anti-Israel bias. They also pointed to an Atlantic Council report that documented the activity of pro-Russian editors on Wikipedia who reportedly promoted pro-Kremlin and anti-Ukrainian narratives. According to the committee, that kind of bias not only affects readers, but can also influence artificial intelligence systems that are trained on data from the encyclopedia.

What information Congress requested

The request includes details about the tools Wikipedia uses to detect malicious edits, the accounts that have been reviewed for manipulation, and any evidence of state coordination in those activities. The lawmakers stressed that the purpose is to determine whether the foundation responds effectively and transparently to repeated patterns of manipulation in areas of high public interest.