Wikipedia:Smear campaigns

Smear campaigns are attempts by writers and broadcasters to portray people and organizations falsely, and by these misrepresentations to sway public opinion. It is not the policy of Wikipedia to aid these attempts or to thwart them. However, articles may of course describe these campaigns, just as they would describe any other public relations effort. The same guidelines covering articles on political campaigns should prevail, but this project page may be needed for cases when no particular candidate is running for office.

Examples of smears

• In that book, Fumento assured his readers that there was no possibility of heterosexual spread of AIDS here in the United States. [1]

If true, this would imply that Michael Fumento is either woefully ignorant or deliberately lying. Either conclusion would discredit him completely as a source of information on AIDS transmission.

But is this what Fumento actually said? His 1987 article cites statistics revealing that 2 to 4 percent of AIDS patients were heterosexual.

• Practically all heterosexually transmitted AIDS cases are found in steadily monogamous or virtually monogamous relationships with IV drug users or, much less commonly, with bisexuals, since only such a relationship can expose one frequently to infection. [2]

It seems Fumento is not denying heterosexual transmission but reacting to an exaggeration of the risk.

How to describe smears

Since Wikipedia is supposed to remain neutral in disputes, and it is exceedingly rare that a smear campaign would ever admit that it distorted or misquoted someone's views, we must tread carefully here. We cannot actually come out and say, "It was a smear." But we can quote a reliable source, as follows:

• Anna J. Ektif, a researcher with the Real Big Thinktank at Mississippi State University, said that Fumento's remarks had been distorted. Ektif says that Radio Liberty ignored Fumento's report of several hundred American heterosexual AIDS cases.
• Ken D. Date, then running for governor of Nebraska, said his opponent had misquoted him both in a debate and in campaign literature. "I never said Medicare was an evil, unfair system. Rather, I said that we are in danger of running out of money to fund it."

Note that in both these cases, Wikipedia itself does not assert that there was a smear, or even that someone's remarks had been twisted. We merely report the claims of misrepresentation without comment.