- By John Delorian
- (General Dispatch) – Media sources including CNN reported the death of former Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani, who died on Tuesday, but they were wrong to broadcast the position he held, attributing him as the first Secretary General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
- Arab News referred that the misinformation was since the creation of Arab wikipedia since 2005, until 2019 that an editor quoted a message from Yamani on the website of the Ministry of Energy, Industry and Minerals.
- Yamani died at the age of 90 who served as Saudi Arabia’s oil minister for 25 years, was a protagonist in the 1973 oil embargo when the West aided the people of Israel in an Arab-Israeli conflict.
- The official website of the oil cartel reports that the Secretary General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is Mohammad Saleh Joukhdar. Numerous media outlets spread the erroneous information, having to correct later what they had done.
- Wikipedia has had complications with the information, the fact of creating a false information and quoting it from another source to affirm it, this has been called “citogenesis”. It is now debatable what information can be extracted from the website.
- The other non-English versions of Wikipedia have been vulnerable, the main problem is that the media cite each other creating a cycle of false information.
- One of the biggest incidents was Wikipedia Scotland which was mostly edited by a teenager who did not speak Scottish.
- Despite having a history of such incidents, it remains one of the most supported sites in the university and technology sector. It is suspected through investigations that the site has left-wing positions, which has been harshly criticized.
Adittional Information:
Breitbart: Arab Media Spreads Wikipedia Hoax Claim About Late Saudi Oil Minister
