Wikipedia, an encyclopedia that anyone can edit and update, sounds useful in theory. But, then when you realize that it’s far from impartial, blacklisting any sources that go against official narratives, the cracks start to show.
And while it’s hard for someone to correct wrong or biased information against them, if you know how and have the power, it’s relatively easy to get your history scrubbed and rewritten in your favor.
That’s what’s happened with Jeff Zients, a top aide in the Biden camp set to become the person to head a potential Biden administration’s COVID-19 response.
Zients “fell in love” with the culture at Bain & Company, a management consulting firm brought back from Turmoil by Senator Mitt Romney back in the ‘90s. Maybe that section was removed because more left-wing readers would not want someone even remotely associated with Romney in the Biden administration.
Perhaps the most damaging piece of information previously on his Wikipedia page was the part that noted a chief executive on former president Obama’s Job’s Council thought that Zients, then a top aide in the Obama administration, was a Republican.
According to Politico, Zients or someone close to him hired Saguaro Strategies, a consultancy firm for progressive political parties, to edit his Wikipedia page. The idea was to present him as a progressive individual for the benefit a section of the left, which is focused on ideological purity.
The sentimental comment about Bain & Company was replaced with a short bio of the company as a “management consulting firm that provides advice to public, private, and non-profit organizations,” Politico found.
There was a section on his role in the Trans-Pacific Partnership; a trade agreement met by heavy criticism by some. Initially, the firm tried to downplay his role in the agreement. Later someone decided to remove the whole section.
Another change was on the part that mentioned that Zients worked at Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The consultancy firm thought it wise to say that Zients ditched Facebook “over differences with company leadership over governance and its policies around political discourse.” Zients has never publicly given a reason for leaving Facebook. However, considering the recent uproar against social media companies, one could understand why they would want to distance him from Facebook.
WestExec Advisors, a company founded by Anthony Blinken, who might become the next Secretary of State, removed information linking it to China from its website.
