Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident

In May 2005, an unregistered editor posted a hoax article onto Wikipedia about journalist John Seigenthaler. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

After the hoax was discovered and corrected later in September, Seigenthaler, a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, wrote in USA Today that the article was "Internet character assassination".

The incident raised questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other websites with user-generated content that lack the legal accountability of traditional newspapers and published materials. In a December 13, 2005, interview, co-founder Jimmy Wales expressed his support for Wikipedia policy allowing articles to be edited by unregistered users, but announced plans to roll back their article creation privileges as part of a vandalism-control strategy. The incident ultimately led Wikipedia to introduce stricter referencing requirements for biographies of living people.

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