Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 2: Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Wales is founder of Wikipedia. He has a new
Speaker 1: book out, The Seven Rules of Trust, a blueprint for
Speaker 1: building things that last. That book out tomorrow and lucky
Speaker 1: for us, he joins us right here in studio. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Nice to have you here with us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's like a spaceship.
Speaker 1: So call it the fishball, we call it home, this
Speaker 1: book about trust. When did you start writing it.
Speaker 3: It was a couple of years ago. I had had
Speaker 3: some ideas around this, and yeah, just just started. And
Speaker 3: it's obviously turned out to be quite timely, as we
Speaker 3: have a lot of issues around trust in society, and
Speaker 3: you know, I want to encourage people to let's get
Speaker 3: back to society of trust. You know.
Speaker 2: It's funny, Carolyn, I spent a lot of time talking
Speaker 2: about this ahead of the interview because Wikipedia sort of
Speaker 2: seems and look, it's had its challenges, it's had its controversies,
Speaker 2: but for things that are online, m it's kind of
Speaker 2: a weird utopia in.
Speaker 1: The sense that it's kind of remarkable.
Speaker 2: It's really remarkable. I mean, we know anonymous people online
Speaker 2: oftentimes are full of bitrial and hate. We can see
Speaker 2: that even when people use their names on social media platforms.
Speaker 2: We lock our doors when we leave the house. Why
Speaker 2: does trust work on Wikipedia? But kind of seems like
Speaker 2: nowhere else right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think for me, you know, one
Speaker 3: of the seven rules of trust that is most meaningful
Speaker 3: in that regard is purpose. Like Wikipedia has a very
Speaker 3: simple purpose, which is to build an encyclopedia, and we
Speaker 3: make all our decisions around that and the rules about
Speaker 3: participation and so forth. And that's very different from social media,
Speaker 3: where there isn't a clear purpose other than free speech
Speaker 3: and openness. And therefore that tux city really creeps in
Speaker 3: quite a lot. In social media. You know, people say
Speaker 3: outrageous things because they get rewarded for it. They get
Speaker 3: more followers, they get more engagement, and they algorithms love that.
Speaker 1: You talk about clickbait all the time.
Speaker 3: Clickbait all the time. And you know that's very different
Speaker 3: from the world of Wikipedia, where I mean, thank goodness,
Speaker 3: our headlines are so boring. There's no clickbait. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like the erical on Thomas Jefferson's called Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 3: you know, but it does what it says on the
Speaker 3: ten you know, that's that's a very British expression off ray.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, I mean I do think that that
Speaker 3: having a simple purpose is a part of what keeps
Speaker 3: us focused and keeps our community focused.
Speaker 1: How do you describe facts? How do you determine facts?
Speaker 4: And I am amazed in I mean, I've been doing
Speaker 4: this a few years and I felt like when I
Speaker 4: started it was very clear fact versus ficion in terms
Speaker 4: of reporting and doing stories, and I feel like there's
Speaker 4: a lot of gray area and I just feel like
Speaker 4: a fact is a fact. So how you guys determine
Speaker 4: what's a fact?
Speaker 1: An entry?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we're we're really old fashioned, Like what
Speaker 3: we look for are reliable sources. So we want, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of academic research or quality newspapers, quality magazines, quality books.
Speaker 3: Really old fashioned and you know, uh, the the idea
Speaker 3: that we should treat you know, the New England Journal
Speaker 3: of Medicine as the same as social media influence. Our
Speaker 3: line is obviously just wrong. Like you, you really want
Speaker 3: facts and that's what people want from Wikipedia they don't
Speaker 3: want sources matters. Sources really matter, Like having a good
Speaker 3: quality source is what it's all about.
Speaker 1: But why don't sources matter to everybody?
Speaker 4: And other people will say, Okay, I believe this source
Speaker 4: is reliable, so like you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 4: we're living in like different worlds.
Speaker 3: I think, I think, and I think that's a huge problem.
Speaker 3: I mean, I do think, you know, it's really important.
Speaker 3: I mean one of the problems that we've seen is
Speaker 3: that a lot of them, in response to the changing
Speaker 3: and very difficult financial model for journalism, they've chased after
Speaker 3: a really partisan audiences and so you know, sometimes you
Speaker 3: read something and you're like, yeah, that was that was interesting,
Speaker 3: that was good, but I'm not sure I got both
Speaker 3: sides of the story there. I live in the UK
Speaker 3: and we have a just an example, two quality newspapers,
Speaker 3: the Guardian and the Telegraph, left leaning, right leaning. They're
Speaker 3: both great newspapers. But I often read one and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: but and then I go read the other and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you probably should have been somewhere in the middle both
Speaker 3: of you, and it would have been I think a
Speaker 3: better story had you said, well, you know, we got
Speaker 3: one side of the story, but we actually had to
Speaker 3: go out and find somebody to tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit out the other side. You know, you can't be
Speaker 3: too like the moon is made of rocks or is
Speaker 3: it cheese? Who knows? I don't mean that, but I
Speaker 3: mean seriously hopefully geez. But but you know, like seriously
Speaker 3: thinking about like who are we talking to and are
Speaker 3: we are we getting to the bottom of.
Speaker 2: This with media trust in media here in the United
Speaker 2: States declining and having declined over the last few years.
Speaker 2: In your view, is there something that we can do better,
Speaker 2: that the media can do better, that it can borrow
Speaker 2: from what has worked at Wikipedia, what has worked with
Speaker 2: the trust, the methods of trust that you've studied, that
Speaker 2: can make us build trust again with our audiences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, well, the good news is that the
Speaker 3: financial press, like Bloomberg, is still among the most trusted.
Speaker 3: And I think that's because by the mandate of what
Speaker 3: you're trying to do informing business people and investors, you
Speaker 3: kind of have to be like ruthlessly objective. You're not
Speaker 3: chasing after partisan audiences and things like that.
Speaker 2: But I do think we do up data.
Speaker 3: Big data. Data is important. Transparency, I think, you know, realistically.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that Wikipedia does that's
Speaker 3: kind of odd is we'll have a you know, at
Speaker 3: the top of a page, the neutrality of this article
Speaker 3: has been disputed.
Speaker 2: And we've all seen it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've all seen it. And I always say, you know,
Speaker 3: I kind of wish sometimes the New York Times would
Speaker 3: put a banner up just saying, you know, we had
Speaker 3: a big fight in the newsroom. We weren't quite sure,
Speaker 3: so like this but yeah, yeah, but here's a little
Speaker 3: bit of their inside thinking, like we did want to
Speaker 3: report this, We're not sure we've got the full story yet,
Speaker 3: because that pretending to be perfection all the time. People
Speaker 3: see through that and they know, of course, and I
Speaker 3: think they're willing to say, yeah, like, actually, journalism is
Speaker 3: quite hard, you know, so a little more transparency is
Speaker 3: always good.
Speaker 1: Do you get pressure a lot from companies, politicians, individuals
Speaker 1: to like change an entry?
Speaker 3: No, not really, I mean people, you know, I meet
Speaker 3: a lot of people, and people often are like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, my wikiped the entry, what about this? What
Speaker 3: about that? Much like yeah, send us an email, like
Speaker 3: you know, we'll have somebody look at that. That's all
Speaker 3: fine in general.
Speaker 2: No, and actually we're but you really just say, just
Speaker 2: send in an email and then I'm not going to
Speaker 2: do anything about it.
Speaker 3: Kind of yeah, okay, but no. Sometimes people have a
Speaker 3: legitimate point. They're like, oh, well, you know I did
Speaker 3: this thing and it was in the press, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, well maybe we just overlooked it, and
Speaker 3: that's that's great, But you know, they at a deeper level.
Speaker 3: One of the things that's really important is, you know,
Speaker 3: we aren't funded by governments, we aren't funded by sort
Speaker 3: of major donors. We're funded by people giving their twenty
Speaker 3: dollars and that makes a big difference for our intellectual independence.
Speaker 3: We're not worried like if we've got something negative about whatever,
Speaker 3: then we might lose our donation.
Speaker 2: How is how is the fundraising going? Because I feel
Speaker 2: like I've gotten a lot of messages from you throughout
Speaker 2: the year. Throughout the year, from Jimmy Wills ye on Wikipedia,
Speaker 2: we've all seen it.
Speaker 1: Is it going okay? Is funding going okay?
Speaker 3: It's okay. Yeah, we've we've been you know, we're stable.
Speaker 3: We're very cautious with money, so we always try to
Speaker 3: build our reserves and so on, and then you know. Recently,
Speaker 3: I don't know, Elon tweeted defund Wikipedia. I think we
Speaker 3: were at five million dollars that day.
Speaker 2: So you can text us on, I know you guys
Speaker 2: have been in touch you and say, tweet about us
Speaker 2: again to the.
Speaker 3: End of the year. Well you have. That's to raise money.