Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Claims No Ban on Right-Leaning Sources, Describes One Anyway
19th December 2025
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales denied that the online encyclopedia has banned right-leaning sources, only to reference an example of that practice in the same discussion.
In a Wednesday interview with The Verge, Wales responded to growing accusations of bias and Wikipedia’s ban on sources such as Breitbart. His answer? An admission disguised as a denial: “We don’t completely ban sources. We may deprecate them and say, ‘Well, it’s not preferred as a source. We’d rather have something better.’”
Wales then went on to further minimize the impact of Wikipedia’s effective blacklist by suggesting that the list merely elevates sources like The New England Journal of Medicine over sources like Breitbart.
In reality, Wikipedia’s own “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” list proves that the platform does blacklist media organizations, including Breitbart, The Heritage Foundation and Project Veritas. Other right-leaning outlets are effectively sidelined through deprecations and usage restrictions, most of which are not imposed on left-leaning sources.
The Media Research Center has repeatedly exposed the severity and real-world impact of this blacklist, which goes far beyond prioritizing peer-reviewed journals over right-of-center news organizations.