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Conversations with Coleman

Who Decides What’s True on Wikipedia?

Conversations with Coleman

The Free Press

Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.82K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2026

⏱️ 62 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ashley Rindsberg has spent years investigating how ideological bias corrupts institutions that present themselves as neutral arbiters of truth. His book The Gray Lady Winked exposed how The New York Times got major stories wrong across decades of reporting. Now he turns his attention to Wikipedia, the internet’s default encyclopedia and one of the most influential sources of information in the world. Rindsberg finds that while Wikipedia remains a reliable resource for most topics, its most politically charged articles have been quietly captured by a small group of anonymous editors working to push a coherent ideological agenda. He and Coleman dig into how these editors operate, how a handful of people can dominate entire topic areas, and why almost nobody can stop them. They also get into the specific case of Wikipedia’s Israel-Palestine coverage, where a group of around 40 dedicated editors have made over a million edits across thousands of articles. And they discuss why all of this matters far beyond Wikipedia itself, as the encyclopedia’s biases are absorbed by Google, fed into AI systems, and baked into the information infrastructure and AI systems that will increasingly decide what counts as true. The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:26.8

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0:29.8

Welcome to another episode of conversations with Coleman.

0:33.1

My guest today is Ashley Rinsberg.

0:36.0

Ashley is the senior editor at Pirate Wires, a new media company.

0:40.1

He's also the author of Tel Aviv Stories and The Grey Lady Winked, which we talked about

0:45.3

last time he came on the show a few years ago.

0:48.0

Today we talked about the threats to objectivity in journalism.

0:51.4

In particular, we talk about how Wikipedia has evolved from an unbiased source

0:56.3

of information to a source controlled by small clicks of self-interested admins. We also talk

1:02.0

about alternatives to Wikipedia like Grogapedia. We talk about the implications of Wikipedia

1:08.1

bias on LLMs and the future of information, and much more.

1:12.9

So without further ado, Ashley Rinsberg.

1:22.1

One thing I care about a lot is craftsmanship.

1:25.0

What it means to actually care about how something is made

1:27.4

and whether

1:27.9

that ethic still has a place in a world that mostly optimizes for cheap and fast. Today's sponsor

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