PR Firm denies election Wiki-cheat Mag claims
Weber Shandwick PR has laughed off press reports that its staff had been found to have altered entries on the online encyclopaedic website Wikipedia.
Weber Shandwick is a member of the Association of Professional Political Consultants, and specialists at Parliamentary lobbying and campaigns, however, the company had been named by a London-based PR magazine as one of a number of firms that had been tracked by specialist software which identified the source of alterations to entries on the site.
The title claimed Weber Shandwick staff had altered entries relating to the Scottish Council Elections.
An earlier report in the Scotland on Sunday had criticised staff at the Law Society of Scotland for repeatedly deleting references to complaints in the page relating to the Law Society itself. Monitoring software had tracked the edits to Law Society computers.
Later that week, Law Society President John MacKinnon resigned from his 12 month tenure with immediate effect citing pressures of work.
Murray MacDonald director of public affairs told The Drum that he was fully aware of the edits made by Weber Shandwick, pointing out that this was the raison d’etre of the Wikipedia website.
MacDonald said that Weber Shandwick had run the Scotland Votes website during the election, which provided information on candidates. The additions to the Scottish Council Elections page consisted only of the addition of that information, he claimed, and the inclusion of a hyperlink, which had been done with his full knowledge.
“It is purely a factual piece of information to add into it, providing stats and figures about previous election results. It is exactly what people are meant to do with Wikipedia.”
“It is a storm in a teacup. It is only right that people use Wikipedia for what it is meant to do. A company editing wikipedia is not a bad thing,” he added.