A container ship in Baltimore struck a support column for the Francis Scott Key Bridge, triggering a collapse around 1:30 a.m. March 26.
Speculation over the disaster’s cause started within hours — as emergency responders searched for people, some of whom remain unaccounted for. Some social media users turned to Wikipedia to assign blame.
“Check out what it says on Wikipedia about the Key Bridge collapse…” one X user wrote in a post shared at 3:23 a.m. The post included a screenshot of what appeared to be a Wikipedia page that read: “After the US abstained from the ceasefire resolution for Gaza, the Israelis deployed their Talmudic network to take down the bridge.”
(Screenshot from X.)
Federal and Maryland state officials said they do not think the container ship’s crash into the bridge’s support column was intentional.
“There is no specific or credible information to suggest there are ties to terrorism in this incident,” said William J. DelBagno, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office, during a March 26 press conference.
Gov. Wes Moore, D-Md., shared the same sentiment earlier in the briefing.
Video shows the catastrophic bridge collapse in #Baltimore overnight. Rescuers are still searching for multiple people in the water.
Source: CNN via | pic.twitter.com/e2fcFLj4iJ
— WLKY (@WLKY) March 26, 2024
In a press conference at about 1 p.m., President Joe Biden said the incident was “a terrible accident.”
“At this time, we have no other indication, no other reason to believe there is any intentional act here,” Biden said. “Personnel on board the ship were able to alert the Maryland Department of Transportation that they’d lost control of their vessel … as a result, local authorities were able to close the bridge to traffic before the bridge was struck, which undoubtedly saved lives.”
He said officials estimate eight people were unaccounted for, though he cautioned the number might change as the search-and-rescue mission continues. Two people were rescued, one without injuries and another in critical condition, Biden said.
“Our prayers are with everyone involved in this terrible accident, all the families, especially those waiting for news of their loved ones right now,” he said.
We checked the Wikipedia pages for the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the new page for the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, and as of 2 p.m. March 26 neither included a sentence linking Israel to the bridge collapse.
Wikipedia is written by volunteers dubbed “Wikipedians.”
“Anyone — including you — can become a Wikipedian by boldly making changes when they find something that can be added or improved,” reads the organization’s page explaining the volunteer system.
English Wikipedia has more than 45 million users with registered usernames who could contribute to pages, though only about 124,000 people have edited pages in the past 30 days, according to Wikipedia’s statistics.
Users sometimes make malicious changes to pages under the website’s cloak of anonymity. Wikipedia calls this vandalism, which it prohibits, and defines it as “editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project’s purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia.”
Most Wikipedia vandalism is “done by anonymous users,” and repeated incidents can result in a user being blocked, according to a Wikipedia page on vandalism accounts.
We contacted Wikipedia and the Israel Defense Forces and received no responses.
We rate the claim that an edited Wikipedia entry provides proof that “Israelis deployed Talmudic network to take out” the Baltimore bridge Pants on Fire!
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