Is Mark Udall Trying to Airbrush the Facts on Wikipedia?

Update (8/23): In the interest of fairness and accuracy, it is important to note that the description of the action in the quoted selection as "eliminated" is incorrect. As clarified on Politicker CO, the actions of the Udall staffer were to dispute the neutrality of the Wikipedia passage that connected the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) ads with Udall's wife, Maggie Fox - not to delete the passages. This fact essentially nullifies the significance of this particular post, except to remind readers of the relevant LCV connection.

Over at The Colorado Index, a watcher has done some valuable firsthand research and found that Mark Udall's paid "online communications director" Michael Ditto is tampering with Wikipedia entries to airbrush certain relevant facts:

Unsurprisingly, he doesn't want Wikipedia readers to know about the close connection between Maggie Fox, Mark Udall's wife, and the League of Conservation Voters. He has eliminated references to that connection twice.

"I tagged this section as disputed because it's not relevant that LCV does business with an organization that used to be headed by Mark Udall's wife." [Quote from Ditto]

LCV never mentioned Bob Schaffer in the six years he was out of office, but in 2008 he comes up third on their dirty dozen list and LCV's connection with Mark Udall's wife isn't relevant? No one will buy that when they understand that a Mark Udall staffer wrote it while trying to hide his identity.

In fact, at least through June, the League of Conservation Voters overwhelmingly spent money to attack Bob Schaffer and barely scratched anyone else on their so-called "dirty dozen list." A watcher also could have mentioned that LCV incurred $180,000 in fines for campaign violations after the 2006 election.

That Mark Udall is paying a staffer in an attempt to hide this information from the public should be concerning, and worthy of at least a little MSM attention.

Wikipedia on Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer

One of the more interesting features of Wikipedia is that it is possible to track weekly visits to any given article.

This week, for example, the Mark Udall article has been visited 2837 times while the Bob Schaffer article has been visited 1797 times in the last 29 days.

A quick look at the two Wikipedia articles suggests that work needs to be done. Someone appears to have photoshopped Bob Schaffer's congressional photo to make it black and white. It seems very unlikely that Congress would be using black and white film or digital photography as late as 2002.

While Bob Schaffer's article mentions Mark Udall, Mark Udall's article does not mention Bob Schaffer. This alone might account for the statistics difference above.

Because it is too easy for both sides to manipulate the statistics, we won't be mentioning them again.

Permanently Forfeiting the High Ground

PlagiarismNowAction, aka ProgressNowAction is at it again. Alan Franklin, the "author" who apparently lifted three paragraphs from Wikipedia and only slightly modified a fourth and then had the gall to claim that what he wrote was the result of "months of research" has written (or maybe copied) a challenge to Bob Schaffer.

He titles it "Bob Schaffer, the hideout candidate." The election is almost 13 months away. Even if Schaffer started issuing position papers, no one would pay attention except for PlagiarismNowAction.

We, on the other hand, have some questions that deserve answers now:

Hey Alan, am I getting your name right? Do you want to explain again how the Wikipedia editor actually copied your work from an email? When I asked for the email, you couldn't, or wouldn't, provide it. Do you want to explain how it is possible to duplicate the "months of research" in 30 minutes of Google searches? Dan Haley quoted your web site as only needing to be right half the time. Does that apply to original writing too? Curious minds want to know.

I love publicly reminding you about this stuff because you have no answers that make sense. You will never again have the high ground on any subject. Posture to your heart's content.

Mark Udall Can Sleep Well

Recall that we always refer to a certain left wing blog as PlagiarismNowAction because it appeared to have lifted whole paragraphs from Wikipedia without giving credit. The author (if you can call someone who appears to have copied the work of others an "author") of that piece now has a celebratory hit piece out on Bob Schaffer.

Before we quote it, recall that the editor of the editorial page of the Denver Post has been quoted as saying that PlagiarismNowAction once wrote that it only had to be right half of the time. They need to flip the coin again because this isn't one of those times when they are right.

With those standards in mind, we quote from Bob Schaffer: boldly full of crap by Alan Franklin:

Stick out your manly chest and just make the stuff up, Bob. Hell yar!

The problem, as Ben DeGrow has effectively documented, is that the folks making the stuff up are Media Matters and PlagiarismNowAction. Benjamin Disraeli observed that there are three kinds of lies, lies, damn lies, and statistics. Media Matters knows how to abuse statistics and works hard to convince its readers that black is white and white is black.

Given his history, we want to give Alan Franklin the benefit of the doubt. We're not sure that he is bright enough to know how badly these statistics are mangled. He is likely just an unwitting, statistically challenged victim of Media Matters. Read his post and determine for yourself if it seems like the product of the brightest bulb in the room.

Mark Udall can sleep well tonight, knowing that these clowns are watching his back.