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Noble cause corruption

Noble cause corruption is corruption that occurs when people in power use illegal means to attain a result which appears to benefit the greater good. This form of corruption is caused by adherence to a teleological ethical system in which an achieved outcome is seen as of greater importance than the means through which it is achieved.

Where traditional corruption is defined by personal gain, noble cause corruption forms when someone is convinced of their righteousness and will do anything within their powers to achieve the desired result. Examples of noble cause corruption include police misconduct "committed in the name of good ends," neglect of due process through “a moral commitment to make the world a safer place to live", or unlawful spying on or torture of suspected terrorists.

Origin

In 1983, Carl Klockars used the film Dirty Harry as an example of the kinds of circumstances that seemed to justify what later became known as noble cause corruption. Within the story, three central actions are instances of noble cause corruption: illegal entry, torture, and murder. Klockars believed that this problem, which he dubbed 'the Dirty Harry problem', was a chief consideration of police work. He details how officers occasionally face problems in which they have to select between competing ethical codes. Often the choice is between legal means, which can allow dangerous offenders to go free, or extralegal means, which entails breaking the law to prevent truly dangerous offenders from committing additional crimes.

In 1989, the term "noble cause corruption" was coined by Edwin Delattre. Delattre was troubled that police officers might conceive of a goal or outcome that justified the use of questionable means, in particular, the use of force to obtain confessions. He argued that "some ways of acting were unacceptable no matter how noble the end." From Delattre's work, the noble cause has emerged as a problem for the utilitarian commitment to outcomes, because it permits a society to be protected through aggressive and illegal policing tactics.

The term has since been expanded to include actions by politicians as well, as evidenced by Seumas Miller's 2007 paper, Noble Cause Corruption in Politics, in which he defines the titular phrase as "actions that corrupt morally legitimate political institutions, but actions that are nevertheless motivated by good ends." In 2010 John DiJosph wrote about political noble cause corruption in his book Noble Cause Corruption, the Banality of Evil, and the Threat to American Democracy, arguing that, from the beginning of the Cold War onward, American politicians have engaged in noble cause corruption allowing for an erosion of the values for which America traditionally claims to stand.

Dirty Hands

Main article: Dirty Hands

Noble cause corruption is closely related with and often examplary of the problem of dirty hands, which questions whether politicians and other powerful actors can or should commit immoral acts for the supposed benefit of the greater good. The necessity of dirty hands has been argued by Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote that, "a wise mind will never censure any one for having employed any extraordinary means for the purpose of establishing a kingdom or constituting a republic.". This and related arguments for circumventing moral standards were categorized as "the problem of dirty hands" by Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1948 play Dirty Hands, in which Hoederer, a party leader, remarks, "I have dirty hands right up to the elbows. I’ve plunged them in filth and blood. Do you think you can govern innocently?”. The problem of dirty hands, however, differs from noble cause corruption because it does not necessarily consist of circumventing institutional regulations and is often used to refer to legal actions, such as police and military violence.

Motives

It has typically been argued that noble cause corruption can be explained through "individual utilitarianism," which occurs when persons commit an immoral act in order to benefit the majority of people. This however, is no longer seen as the primary motive in police departments. In their study, Noble Cause Corruption: Towards a Structured Research Approach, Robin Christiaan van Halderen & Emile Kolthoff demonstrate a variety of causes for noble cause corruption, including the normality of rule-breaking within certain units, a lack of procedural knowledge among officers, and demands from leaders that subordinates break rules. Other causes were illustrated by the Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service, which showed that police officers commited acts of noble cause corruption because of both a lack of trust in leadership and in the judicial system and the strongly-held belief that the system was unjustly opposed to police interests.

In Justice Without Trial, Jerome Herbert Skolnick writes that many police officers view illegal acts commited within the line of duty as existing in a separate moral class to those committed outside of it. The reason for this, he writes, is that, where criminal law regulates the behavior of persons engaged in criminal activity, criminal procedure regulates the behavior of police, and thus regulates officers' "freedom" to perform their role. This he argues, causes for an antagonistic attitude towards criminal procedure for many officers, leading them to break rules when they believe it will allow them to ulfill their duties.

Outside of policing, John DiJoseph writes that politicians often find themselves succeptible to noble cause corruption as a result of "weakness of will," which he defines as a lack of self-control. DiJoesph writes that, while weakness of will is typically focused towards a vice, in the case of nobly corrupt politicians, the object of weakness is one's passion for a noble cause, such as a love of their country. He argues that, when politicians demonstrate this kind of weakness of will, they are drawn away from "balanced patriotism," which is constrained by moral laws and the knowledge of right from wrong. Instead they find themselves drawn towards an "egotistic" form of patriotism, predicated on an unflinching dedication towards serving the interests of one's country, which can lead politicians to overestimate foreign threats and then engage in corrupt actions in order to stop them.

Examples

In policing

In Police Ethics it is argued that some of the best officers are often the most susceptible to noble cause corruption. According to professional policing literature, noble cause corruption includes "planting or fabricating evidence, lying or the fabrication and manipulation of facts on reports or through testimony in court, and generally abusing police authority to make a charge stick."

According to Robert Reiner, a professor at the London School of Economics, stops based on statistical discrimination are also a form of noble cause corruption.

Mollen Commission

Main article: Mollen Commission

In June of 1992, former Mayor of New York City David Dinkins appointed judge Milton Mollen to investigate "“the nature and extent of corruption in the Department; evaluate the departments procedures for preventing and detecting that corruption; and recommend changes and improvements to those procedures.” The commission separated police corruption into three categories: corruption for profit, corruption for power, and corruption for "street" law-enorcement purposes, with the latter category concerning examples of noble cause corruption. Within the NYPD, noble cause corruption was most commonly commited through perjury and the falsification of documents. Criminal justice scholar Phillip Matthew Stinson writes that these offenses are "not motivated by greed, but rather by a perverted sense of justice that tolerates and even encourages falsification to achieve otherwise legitimate law enforcement ends."

Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service

Main article: Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service

The Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Force examined levels of police corruption in New South Wales between 1994 and 1997, uncovering high incidences of organized protection, evidence falsification, fraud, neglect by officers, and assault of suspects. Within the NSW Police Force time noble cause corruption occurred through a three step process of police harrassment prior to arrest, the waiving of the necessary judge's caution during interrogation, and the sharing of information amongst witnesses prior to trial.

Luna v. Massachusetts

On February 17, 1988, officers from the Boston Police Department executed a search warrant at the home of Albert Lewin. As they entered the premises, Lewin shot and killed Officer Sherman Griffiths. Lewin was charged with murder, but charges were later dismissed when it was discovered that the affidavit for search warrant filed by Detective Carlos A. Luna was based upon false information and a fictitious informant. Luna was indicted for perjury, conspiracy and filing false police reports while all of the charges against Lewin, including the murder of a police officer, were dismissed. The case outlines consequences of noble cause motivations when officers ignore the Constitution and fabricate evidence in the pursuit of justice.

In Politics

While noble cause corruption traditionally refers to policing, recent years have seen a growing acknowledgement of its presence in politics. In Noble Cause Corruption in Politics, Seumas Miller cites scholars such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Max Weber, and Michael Walzer, who believed that there was an extent to which engaging in corrupt practices for the sake of the common good was a defining part of a leaders role as well as examples of noble cause corruption in modern politics. This examples are expounded upon by John DiJoseph in his book, Noble Cause Corruption, the Banality of Evil and the Threat to American Democracy, 1950-2008, in which he gives examples of instances where American political leaders have engaged in noble cause corruption.

Assassination of Pablo Escobar

On December 2nd, 1993, Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist, Pablo Escobar was assasinated on the roof of his refuge in Medellín, Colombia. To ensure that they would be able to locate and assassinate Escobar, the Colombian Search Bloc had allied themselves with Los Pepes, a vigilante organization which counted numerous criminals among its members and who, in capturing Escobar, used violent means such as the murders of his associates and family members and the destruction of his estates.

In the US government

In Noble Cause Corruption, the Banality of Evil and the Threat to American Democracy, 1950-2008, political scientist John DiJoseph writes about a percieved cultural shift in which American politicians at all levels of government decided that, to protect and defend American democracy, it was necessary to engage in actions which ran contrary to democratic ideals. Examples of these actions include both foreign policy initiatives, such as of knowingly promoting corrupt regimes and the unconstitutional torture of suspected terrorists, as well as domestic abuses of power, such as the Watergate scandal and Operation CHAOS.

1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

Main article: 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

In 1954, the Central Intelligence Agency, acting in accordance with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, carried out PBFortune, a covert operation to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz the democratically elected president of Guatemala, and replace him with Colonel Castillo Armas, on the grounds that the left-wing Arbenz government would have threat to American democracy by incorporating Guatemala into the Soviet Bloc. Throughout the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations, the US government armed and trained Guatemala's army, indirectly leading to the deaths of many Guatemalan civilians. Even in the heavily publicized murder of human rights activist Rosario Godoy, her 18-year-old brother, and two-year-old son by the military on April 4th, 1985, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliot Abrams claimed that the deaths had been caused by an accident.

Watergate scandal

Main article: Watergate scandal

On June 17, 1971, five men affiliated with then President Richard M. Nixon's reelection committee were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to photograph confidential documents and replace eavesdropping devices installed during an earlier break-in. While this act was subsequently downplayed by White House officials as a simple burglary, pon further investigation, Washington Post journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, uncovered connections with numerous other illegal activities, including the physical assault and wiretapping of political opponents, firebombing of think tanks, and the theft of memos, implicating many high-level Nixon officials. On July 13, 1973, White House aide, Alex Butterfield informed staffers of the Senate investigative committee about the system used to tape record Nixon's Oval Office conversations. At the request of the Supreme Court on July 24, 1974, Nixon was forced to turn over various tapes, among which contained the colloquially known "smoking gun," in which Nixon had attempted to convince the CIA to block the FBI inquiry into the Watergate burglary.

Operation CHAOS

Main article: Operation CHAOS

In 1967, determined to find a connection between American peace movement protesters in and communist governments in Soviet Union and Vietnam, then President Lyndon B. Johnson used the CIA to create a computer database containing the names of 300,000 American citizens and organizations while at the same time forming covert alliances with local police departments. Acting on CIA reports of an anti-American "Negro training camp" in Cuba, Johnson then ordered CIA director Richard Helms to "carefully look at who leaves this country, where they go, and why they are going." These operations were continued under the Nixon Administration, who consolidated them into Operation CHAOS. Throughout the course of this operation, the US government used techniques such as physical surveillance, wiretapping, and the employment of liaisons to monitor the activities of Americans traveling abroad.

Detention and torture of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay

Main article: Guantanamo Bay detention camp

Despite this going against the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits "crual and unusual punishment," the U.S. government has frequently used torture tactics in the interrogation of suspected terrorists. The most widely-publicized case of American torture of terrorist suspects has been the situation at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, where inmates have been held indefinitely without trial and where several inmates have reported being severely tortured. These instances have been described by Amnesty International as a "human rights scandal" in a number of reports.

In popular culture

In the 2013 documentary film We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, journalist James Ball suggests that Julian Assange has developed noble cause corruption, arguing that he is "unable to recognize when he does things that he would deplore in others." This argument was reinforced by Alex Gibney, director, producer, and writer of We Steal Secrets, who, in an op-ed for The New York Times, titled "Can We Trust Julian Assange and WikiLeaks," described Assange's previous breaches of protocol, including gathering the social security numbers and credit card data of private individuals during the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak, and releasing the names of 100 Afghani informants during the Afghan War documents leak. "For many of those who know him well," Gibney writes, "Mr. Assange is afflicted by what the police call 'noble cause corruption,' a belief that noble ends justify reckless or immoral means."

The police drama trope of the "loose cannon" police officer as popularized by characters such as Harry Callahan in the film Dirty Harry, John McClane in Die Hard, and Martin Riggs of Lethal Weapon, can be seen as a prominent representation of noble cause corruption in American media. The loose cannon is often portrayed as an anti-hero, who subverts police procedure in order to ultimately achieve success at their job.

The American crime drama mystery series, Dexter provides an example of noble cause corruption, through its use of the protagonist, Dexter Morgan, a forensic technician for the fictional Miami Metro Police Department, who leads a secret double life as a murderer who kills serial killers. Here, his actions are portrayed as positive, as he acts according to a moral compass, only killing those who he feels deserve this treatment.

Opinions on noble cause corruption

In Rethinking Noble Cause Corruption, philosopher John Kleinig writes that the use of the term "noble cause corruption" operates under a similar mechanism to the designation of certain lies as "white lies." In both cases, the designations intend to lend an air of respectability to their subjects, however, unlike white lies, noble cause corruption is generally viewed unfavorably and does not encourage sympathy for its perpetrators. Furthermore, Seumas Miller writes that, even when justifiable, noble cause corruption is performed to restore political rules and normality, demonstrating that it is not be a needed charicteristic of leadership. Still, others have defended the practice, such as Greek philosopher Plato, who, in The Republic, in which philosopher kings use of "noble lies" to advance the greater good of the city.

Prevention

Police officers such as August Vollmer and O. W. Wilson have championed the use of a bureaucratic "professional model," in which a well-trained police force obediently follows rules and procedures, as a deterrent to noble cause corruption. The argument here is that, by coordinating tasks, officers are given less freedom to engage in corrupt practices. Another approach taken towards remediating the issue has been the peacekeeping approach advanced by Egon Bittner, who argued for an extension of officers peacekeeping capacities to prevent the escalation and excessive punishment of civil disturbances. Both of these initiatives have been disputed by Carl Klockars, however who argues that greater bureaucratization will not get rid of noble cause corruption but will instead cause its motives to become more career-based. Similarly, he argues that, even where peacekeeping abilities are lengthened, this will do little to change the police biases which often motivate noble cause corruption.

In recent years, attention has been payed to the use of training to prevent noble cause corruption. Thomas Martinelli writes that, when police protocol is not adhered to, the police mandate to protect and serve all citizens is ignored, creating conditions or noble cause corruption to occur. Regularly conducted ethics training, he argues, allows police departments to promote "democratic policing strategies" while defending against costly police misconduct lawsuits. Dr. Bruce Bayley writes that, of incoming police acadamy cadets, one third demonstrate teleological ethical beliefs, and that, to reform this, it is important for academy instructors and veteran officers to emphasize the importance of following departmental policies and procedures through remembering the acronym "Always Act Professionally."

Among U.S. politicians, DiJoseph writes of the need for a "realist foreign policy" in order to combat noble cause corruption. This policy, he writes would consist of "realistic" aid to US-allied nations, which focuses on helping ordinary citizens, rather than on instituting an American-style democracy. As an example, DiJoseph holds up U.S. involvement in Japan after World War II, during which General Macarthur worked with Emperor Hirohito while ackowledging Japan's individuality and helping in the formation of a British Parliamentary Style democracy.

DiJoseph also suggests that American policy allow autonomy for intelligence analysts, citing the publicized "dysfunctional relationship" between the Bush administration (2000) and the CIA, which allowed for intelligence to become politicized and misused in justifying decisions. At the same time however, DiJoseph argues for the presence of policy makers in regulating covert operations, citing the ways in which operatives such as William J. Donovan were key in escalating Cold War hysteria, and thus created an atmosphere conducive to noble cause corruption.

See also

• Corruption
• Police corruption
• Police misconduct
• Dirty Hands

Week 9: Draft of Article

Here is the draft of what I am changing for the wikipedia entry on Noble cause corruption. Note that the section of "In policing" prior to "motives" is taken directly from the Wiki article, as are the first two references from "In popular culture." I would never try to pass these off as my own work, and have only included them to improve the flow of this draft. Anyway, to whoever is reading this, I hope you find this information interesting and educational, and to the other students in INTD 497 thank you for peer-reviewing my work!

Week 8 Assignment: Finalizing Topic and Sources

I have chosen to focus on noble cause corruption. I believe that this article both covers an important subject and could be significantly improved. For example, there is a lack of examples provided regarding past instances of noble cause corruption, possibly due to the deletion of 17,000 bytes of information in 2015. As such, I think that there can be more examples added, particularly from outside the field of police work. I also think that there should be new section on different viewpoints regarding whether or not it can be ethical to engage in noble cause corruption, as well as on causes of and potential or enacted efforts at combatting noble cause corruption.

Bibliography

Cooper, Jonathon A. “Noble Cause Corruption as a Consequence of Role Conflict in the Police Organisation.” Policing and Society, vol. 22, no. 2, June 2012, pp. 169–184. Taylor & Francis, doi:10.1080/10439463.2011.605132. – In this article, Jonathon Cooper draws on the Katz and Kahn's ideas of role theory and role conflict to create a framework for researching the "under examined and thus far atheoretically understood phenomenon" of noble cause corruption.

DiJoseph, John. Noble Cause Corruption, the Banality of Evil, and the Threat to American Democracy, 1950-2008. University Press of America, 2010. – In his book, John DiJoseph, an adjunct professor in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Loyola University, Maryland writes about the tendency of American politicians from the 1950s onwards towards taking an ends-justifying-the means approach, believing it necessary to defend democracy by partaking in actions contrary to the values the US government claims to stand or (e.g. torture o suspected terrorists). This source is particularly significant as an instance which demonstrates (extensively I might add) that noble cause corruption is not only a problem among police officers but also government officials.

Halderen, Robin Christiaan Van, and Emile Kolthoff. “Noble Cause Corruption Revisited: Toward a Structured Research Approach.” Public Integrity, vol. 19, no. 3, 12 Oct. 2016, pp. 274–293. Taylor & Francis, doi:10.1080/10999922.2016.1230689. – Here, Robin Christiaan Van Halderen and Emile Kolthoff write about the primary motifs for a police officer to engage in noble cause corruption, namely "organizational crime, state crime, and unethical pro-organizational behavior."

Kleinig, John. “Rethinking Noble Cause Corruption.” International Journal of Police Science and Management, vol. 4, no. 4, 24 July 2002, pp. 287–314. – This article by John Kleinig gives a useful and detailed overview of the basics of what there is to know about noble cause corruption, including the origin of its name, the different ways it is often viewed, and hypothetical scenarios in which noble cause corruption may occur.

Lawrence, Alyssa. “A Deconstruction of Dexter: An Analysis of Noble Cause Corruption Within a Crime Drama.” Encompass, Eastern Kentucky University, Student Scholarship at Encompass, Jan. 2013. – In her thesis, Alyssa Lawrence analyzes the use of noble cause corruption in the TV show "Dexter." This work is included here, as it would be a useful addition to the "In popular culture" section of the Noble cause corruption wikipedia article.

Merrington, Shannon, et al. “An Exploratory Study of Noble Cause Corruption: the Wood Royal Commission, New South Wales, Australia, 1994-1997.” International Journal of Management and Administrative Sciences, vol. 2, no. 4, Jan. 2014, pp. 18–29. – In this article, researchers from the University of Queensland use the Wood Royal Commission, which occurred in New South Wales, Australia in the mid-1990s to study noble cause corruption, coming to the significant finding that officers involved "suffered from a failure of leadership and from a lack of inclusion," a perception supported by the victimization of the police within society. To combat noble cause corruption, the authors suggest "strong leadership, better equipment and long-term incentives are suggested to minimise this type of behaviour within the police organization."

Miller S. Noble Cause Corruption in Politics. In: Primoratz, Igor. Politics and Morality. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2007. – In this chapter from Igor Primoratz' book, Seumas Miller analyzes the incidence of noble cause corruption in politics, analyzing where and how to allocate blame in instances where it occurs and giving examples of past instances o noble cause corruption in politics.

Miller, Seumas. Noble Cause Corruption in Policing. In: Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Policing -- Philosophical and Ethical Issues. Springer International Publishing, 2016. – Here Seumas Miller writes about the phenomenon of noble cause corruption in policing, arguing that, while wrong generally speaking, may be justified in some cases.

Talk Page

Please note that I have included my suggestions in Talk:Noble cause corruption.

Article Proposals - Feb 24th 2017

Noble cause corruption

Simply put, this article is not long enough. As corruption is already an important subject, it would stand to reason that cases in which corruption may have positive effects would be given more focus than an article consisting of only three sections and in which the first example used is the Clint Eastwood ilm Dirty Harry. The article is at a shortage for examples, and the section "origins" only goes as far back as 1983 (the year Dirty Harry was released) when I assume there must be older references to beneficial forms of corruption (patronage in low-income communities and Tammany Hall come to mind). This shortage may, however, be related to the deletion of 17,000 bytes of information created by a banned user in 2015, only some of which has been restored.

Russian anti-corruption campaign

This is another article which is not long enough. Given the reputation Russia has long occupied as having a government plagued by corruption and given the many results that come up upon doing a quick google search of the anti-corruption campaign, it is clear that there is a lot of information which could potentially merit, but does not yet occupy a place in this Wikipedia entry. Contrarily, the article is sparse, and the "background" section of the entry consists of only one sentence and a quote from Dmitry Medvedev about how "Corruption in our country has become rampant. It has become commonplace and characterises the life of the Russian society" ("characterizes" was spelled with an "s" in the article). Furthermore, the article has a non-existent talk page and occupies a start-class rating despite being rated as high-importance to WikiProject Russia

Wayomenomics

This article, seemingly having been written recently, is both incredibly short as well as difficult to read. Unfortunately, there is no talk page yet, so the first edits to be made to the article would be the creation o one as well as the correction of some sentences which are written awkwardly and/or begin with lower-case letters. Furthermore, this article includes a direct quote in the first sentence, where it would be better to reword the words of the author rom whom the quote came. Finally, the article consists of only one paragraph, so it would be better to bulk up the article and include more information about the topic from independent sources such as The Ghana Guardian .

No-show job

This article is very short and, other than the mention in one sentence of its use in Boston and Chicago, is focused solely on the use of "no-show jobs" as a means of performing corruption in New York. However, a google search of this term yields results mentioning the use of no-show jobs in other areas, particularly New Jersey and Western New York State. It would be beneficial to expand on the cases in Boston and Chicago as well as those in New Jersey and Western New York

Neopatrimonialism

This article is not poorly written, however, there are some issues which could be improved upon. Firstly, there are no citations or the introduction, something which should be improved upon and which I have brought up in the talk page. Secondly, with the exception of one sentence on Bangladesh, the article focuses exclusively on neopatrimonialism in Africa. This can be expected given that it is a relatively recent concept most commonly used when talking about African politics. Despite this, however, google searches of "neopatrimonialism in Latin America," "neopatrimonialism in Asia," etc. do yield numerous results from independent sources which I believe warrant inclusion in the article.

Which articles I feel I could tackle

I feel that I could realistically tackle the articles for Neopatrimonialism, Noble cause corruption, and Russian anti-corruption campaign. All topics are, undeniably, notable enough to merit not only a place within Wikipedia but also further expansion of topics covered, namely cases of neopatrimonialism outside of Africa, further investigation of the history and examples of noble cause corruption, and more general information regarding Russia's anti-corruption campaign.

Article Critique: Transparency International Wikipedia Page

1. Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

• I felt distracted by the mention of the dis-accreditation of the United States in the last sentence of the first paragraph. This seems like something that would warrant its own section at the end of the article. Other than this, however, everything is relevant to the topic of the article and information is placed within the appropriate context.

2. Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

• This article does not seem to have a bias for or against Transparency International. I initially thought that the act that the article has separate sections for many of TI’s scandals and controversies and not for their initiatives to be evidence of a slight bias against TI. However, I quickly realized that the article had embedded links or these initiatives, meaning that both the positives and negatives on Transparency International are represented fairly.

3. Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

• This article does not mention many viewpoints to begin with, focusing largely on the structure and history of, as well as controversies involving Transparency International. As such there is not much mention of viewpoints either in avor of or against transparency international apart from quotes rom TI insiders, who have described that the organization as, “very corporate oriented, very inside the beltway oriented,” and “not as pure as people think.” These quortes are, however, presented within the context of the controversies to which they refer and thus do not represent any kind of over or underrepresentation of certain viewpoints

4. Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

• In all cases where a source is cited, the links both work and lead to an independent source supporting the claims made in the article.

5.     Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?

• Not all facts are referenced. For example, in the section on Transparency International’s role, the article quotes the organization’s mission statement without citing from where this information was procured.

6. Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

• Regarding Transparency International’s funding, the article cites TI’s 2012 annual report, where it would make more sense to cite their 2016 annual report (CITE)

7. Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?

• In the talk page, one author wrote an entry titled, “Again, a possible effort by TI to control Wikipedia’s coverage o them.” Three authors contributed to this section, recalling different cases where they felt portions of the article had been written to portray TI in a positive light. On this Annawright wrote, “I just edited a section which was crude and obviously written to defend TI. What a thankless task.” Wickifrank then later wrote that he had to remove a research tag rom the funding section since the section quoted a source (TI) and then linked to other Wikipedia entries. “Apparently,” he wrote, “someone does not like the lights shining too brightly.”
• Also interesting, was a section from 2006, titled, “Transparency International frightening bloggers?” in which Jmabel shared the link to a blog in which one person described the situation of a fellow blogger, who, after making a blog post about her friend’s suspicious firing from Transparency International, was threatened by a TI lawyer, who threatened to sue the blogger unless she removed her post. This, however, did not make it into the Wikipedia article due to a lack of writing on this subject outside of a couple blog posts.

8. How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

• This article is rated as C-class and is of importance to WikiProject Organizations, WikiProject Politics, and WikiProject Globalization.

9. How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

• The Wikipedia article for Transparency International displays many continuities with the class discussion o this organization. Most significant is the way in which this article describes instances in which Transparency International has itself engaged in corrupt behavior. This is a subject which we have often discussed, largely more so in the context of Professor Balán’s personal experience doing anti-corruption work than in the context of readings. Most striking is that the article mentions the case discussed in class in which Transparency International was found to be taking money from Siemens, an organization notorious or bribing corruption officials.