There have been many discussions why public relations professionals should stay off Wikipedia. Some agree, like Todd Defren here, and some don’t, like Shannon Paul here.

I believe a PR rep has no business editing a Wikipedia article. Now, I’ve got a lot more support with some news from today. According to an post from Mashable today, Wikipedia will now show up in Google News. That’s right, Wikipedia is sort of becoming a media outlet. I believe they won’t be the ones to break the news, but they sure will be a trusted source of information for those seeking more about a recent event, such as the Air France crash. Now, people have the power to change the news. I trust ethical practitioners, but I think this could be abused.

With that knowledge, do you think a PR person should edit a Wikipedia page? Here’s an example to show you what I mean. From watching 30 Rock, I can pull this example out fairly quickly. Say a company in upstate New York, which happens to be on a river, dumps some toxins in the river and causes the children to turn orange. As the story breaks, the unethical PR team for that company immediately edits the Wikipedia page and removes blame from the company. This is a bad thing.

I’m not trying to say all PR pros would do this. I believe there are a lot of honest an ethical PR teams out there, but there’s aways one bag egg in the bunch.

Todd recommends in his post to engage in discussion for the page you’re trying to correct. I’m sure there are a lot of “facts” on Wikipedia pages that are inaccurate, so it’s an important duty for the PR practitioner to promote the facts. It’s also important to separate facts from perceptions, and when your company is not popular, chances are you have more problems than not being able to edit Wikipedia.

Those are my thoughts. What do you think? Am I off-target on this one?

Photo by crunchytoast on Flickr.