Jewish Writer Used a Researcher to Invent an Obama Wikipedia Scandal

[MikeWB]

I'm all for exposing ZIOPEDIA but this is bullshit. This Aaron Klein is playing some twisted game and is doing more harm than good. I wonder what his motives are.

Update: Writer Used a Researcher to Invent an Obama Wikipedia Scandal
By Owen Thomas, 6:30 PM on Tue Mar 10 2009, 2,024 views
Aaron Klein, the WorldNetDaily writer who invented a scandal about Wikipedia censoring an article about Barack Obama, demanded we retract that claim because, in fact, he had someone else do the work for him.

According to Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for the extreme-right-wing website, he is not "Jerusalem21," the Wikipedia user whose rejected edits to the Obama article formed the centerpiece of Klein's reporting. Wired and other publications raised questions about Jerusalem21's identity when a blogger noted that Jerusalem21's sole contributions to the free online compendium were edits to the Obama page and Klein's own Wikipedia article.

"I am not 'Jerusalem21,' but I do know the Wikipedia user (he works with me and does research for me), and I worked with him on this story," Klein writes, adding that he "personally" oversaw "Jerusalem21"'s edits. In other words, Klein masterminded the creation of the supposed scandal he wrote about.

Klein doesn't see things quite that way. He claims our article was "defamatory." But the truth cannot defame. Klein himself freely admits that he was intimately involved in the creation of the supposed news event he wrote about. Here's Klein having his say:

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Mr. Thomas —
I demand an immediate retraction of your Gawker article today, which is defamatory. (http://gawker.com/5167585/right+wing-wr ... ia-scandal)

Your headline states as fact, "Right-Wing Writer Invents His Own Obama Wikipedia Scandal." You then quote from Wired.com, which, you relate, stated that one Wikipedia user cited in my article is "almost certainly Klein himself." "Almost certainly" is not enough to justify your very certain, defamatory title.

First, I am not "Jerusalem21," but I do know the Wikipedia user (he works with me and does research for me), and I worked with him on this story, which focused on investigating allegations I had received from others of Wikipedia scrubbing Obama's page. I wanted to personally oversee whether indeed criticism of Obama was being deleted. For your information, often investigative journalists engage in exactly this kind of testing – like seeing if they can bypass mandatory disclosures while donating to a candidate (several newspapers did this prior to the November election), or if they can register a dog to vote in Illinois. Thus, even if I had personally edited Obama's page as a test to investigate allegations of scrubbing, this is entirely legitimate journalistic practice.

Second and more importantly, your article is entirely misleading; it paints a picture that my piece from yesterday was reliant simply upon "Jerusalem21" being barred from entering information on Wikipedia that is critical of Obama, suggesting the controversy was both "invented" and based on that one account.

But my article from yesterday notes that "multiple times, Wikipedia users who wrote about the eligibility issues had their entries deleted almost immediately."

The article further notes that WND monitored Obama's Wikipedia page for one month and observed as criticism on all kinds of issues (Ayers, Wright, etc) was scrubbed. This can easily be confirmed independently by simply going through the tens of thousands of attempted edits to Obama's Wikipedia page and seeing how a large number of critical edits are erased, including edits seemingly backed up with third-party media references.

Further, WND published a follow-up today noting many users were still being blocked from attempting to add key issues to Obama's Wikipedia page and other pages, quoting some users. See: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php? ... geId=91257. Indeed, WND has been flooded the past two days with e-mails from readers with their own "Wikipedia stories" of how they were barred from entering what they claim is legitimate, backed-up criticism on Obama's Wikipedia page.

My article from yesterday noted what is clearly a major trend at Wikipedia and is a very legitimate piece. I demand your Gawker article be immediately corrected. The title must be changed, the false accusations about "Jerusalem21" must be updated and the article should note the wider trend on Wikipedia outlined above, instead of wrongly claiming the controversy is limited to one user. Do not simply and misleadingly update your article just by stating that I know "Jerusalem21" and leaving in the defamatory portrayal that I somehow invented a controversy, when indeed there is indisputably a much wider, documented trend.

Sincerely,
Aaron Klein
Jerusalem bureau chief, WorldNetDaily.com

Oh, this guy is a piece of work! Check this shit out from his Ziopedia page:

Aaron Klein is an American author. He is a Middle East correspondent and head of the Jerusalem bureau for WorldNetDaily  and a columnist for The Jewish Press. His WND articles have been republished on Ynetnews and in The New York Sun. Klein has been a guest on cable news channel Fox News.

1 Galloway controversy
2 Schmoozing With Terrorists
3 Student career
4 Criticism of Wikipedia
5 References
Galloway controversy

During a June 2007 interview, after an argument over whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, British politician George Galloway evicted Klein and Rusty Humphries from his office and turned them over to Parliament police, claiming the two had breached security by falsely presenting themselves as reporters.


Schmoozing With Terrorists

Klein's book, based on his interviews with terrorists, was released in September 2007 with the title, Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew!

The book includes Klein's described meetings with a recruited Palestinian suicide bomber; interviews with Muhammed Abdel-El, the head of a Popular Resistance Committee, and Hamas leader Sheikh Yasser Hamad; confrontations with the Muslim desecrators of Jewish and Christian holy sites; a section in which terror leaders are petitioned to describe what life in the U.S. would be like under the rule of Islam; a chapter on Christian persecution in the Middle East; and a chapter claiming the U.S. funds terrorism.


Student career

At Yeshiva University in New York City, Klein edited the undergraduate bimonthly student newspaper, The Commentator. Articles published in The Commentator regarding events such as use of an eight million dollar gift to the school and the removal of a secretary, written while Klein was a co-editor in chief, allegedly caused the the school administration to remove some issues from circulation. This prompted the paper's editorial board to threaten to sue the University. Yeshiva University later signed a contract in which it agreed to discontinue the practice and reimburse The Commentator for the confiscated issues.

Criticism of Wikipedia

In a March 2009 article, his story criticizing Wikipedia for what he called its "preferential treatment" of the article on Barack Obama was picked up by other the Independent, Daily Telegraph, Drudge Report and Fox News. Klein said that editors "scrubbed" the article of material critical of the president and banned users who attempted to add such material; Angela Starling, a spokesperson for Wikipedia, denied that the US president had received preferential treatment.

According to Klein, he had a colleague add content to the article and collaborated with him for the story after the content was removed.