Draft:Wikipedia:Onesidesism

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This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community.

On Wikipedia, some sources are deemed reliable for a given claim, while others are deemed otherwise; this is a natural byproduct of the desire to improve the website. Perhaps as a secondary byproduct of this desire, Wikipedians have compiled a list of sources deemed unreliable. For one reason or another, however, many such sources are of a conservative bias. This has led to criticism of what might be termed onesidedness or onesidesism, the systemic, erroneous suppression of legitimate dissent. It is the counterpart of bothsidesism, the erroneous allowance of illegitimate dissent, and it is equally pernicious, if not more so. Both are the product of false consensus.

On [Date], the New York Post, a conservative news outlet, released a story alleging that a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of then-President Joseph Biden, contained, amongst other things, child sexual abuse material (CSAM).^[1] Liberal outlets responded by dismissing the allegations as Russian disinformation.^[2] Additionally, social media companies suppressed the story.^[3][4] This was after FBI investigators handling Hunter Biden's laptop had concluded in 2019 "that the laptop was genuinely his and did not seem to have been tampered with or manipulated";^[3][5] federal prosecutors also later used the laptop, alongside testimony from an FBI agent involved in authenticating and investigating it, in a criminal case against Hunter Biden.^[6]

Shortly after the initial story broke, however, Wikipedia's version of the story on the page for Hunter Biden read as follows:

In 2020, Russian disinformation was presented in the guise of investigative reporting from the New York Post that led to increased media attention on the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory.^[7]

This having been an opinion rather than a fact, the above example is suboptimal, but the next revision an hour later was not much better:

The article is unsubstantiated and some have raised concerns it could be part of a disinformation campaign.^[8]

Here, the implication is that the article is likely false, which is better, but not by much; the article then uses weasel words to bolster the remark with the follow-up that "some have raised concerns [that] it could be part of a disinformation campaign".

Not too long thereafter, however, the article read thus:

[Hunter] and his father have been the subjects of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories pushed by Donald Trump and his allies concerning Biden business dealings and anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.^[9]

There is no mention whatsoever of the laptop in this revision, and the direct implication is that it has been thoroughly deboonked and is no more meritorious than the flat Earth theory. An edit war ensued, and the text continued to erroneously assert that the story was false at least as recently as [Date],^[10] before re-framing debunked as unevidenced.^[11]

• The consensus has since changed.

In light of the heavy social media suppression of the laptop story, a Pew Research Center poll found that roughly 69% of Americans believed that legitimate news and information was "probably or definitely" being removed.^{[citation needed]} Some^[who?] even began to believe that this was the product of a conspiracy.

• Blindsiding (only one side covers certain stories sometimes) (see Ground News)
• People encouraging misinformation because their legitimate views had been suppressed as if it were misinformation
• "It's not happening" --> "That's a right-wing conspiracy theory" --> "It's happening and it's good"

• Wikipedia:False consensus