Kenneth Frazier: Control of Narrative Extends to the Internet

By

Jeffrey Simons

“The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.”

-- Tom Clancy

According to the current version of Ken Frazier’s Wikipedia page:

“On March 14, 2013, at a sub-committee meeting of the Penn State Board of Trustees, Frazier uttered what was considered to be a racially-insensitive remark at a candidate running for the Board of Trustees who criticized the Freeh narrative.  Frazier apologized for his remarks several days later.”

The exchange was caught on tape by CDT reporter Mike Dawson and posted to youtube:

Frazier’s apology came in the form of a Centre Daily Times letter on 3/17/13, and once again we were all asked to put this behind us and move on. 

However, the story behind Ken Frazier’s Wikipedia page is a little more revealing, one that undermines the sincerity of his apology and shows how he is still trying to control the narrative, even when it comes to public information about himself.

Wikipedia is a web based encyclopedic resource, created and maintained entirely by a community of registered volunteer users.  Pages can be created, edited, re-edited, or updated by any number of public users at any time.  There is a group of moderators who can lock pages to prevent further updates and temporarily ban users if the edits violate the rules governing the users.

(For a full account of the following actions, please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kenneth_Frazier&offset=&limit=500&action=history)

On the morning of March 17, 2013 – before Frazier’s apology had run in the CDT – a user with the screen name “BroadSt Bully” restored a paragraph that had been deleted 2 days before describing Frazier’s role in hiring Louis Freeh and firing Joe Paterno.  BroadSt Bully also added a paragraph about the racially insensitive comment made by Frazier 3 days earlier:

On March 14, 2013, at a sub-committee meeting of the Penn State Board of Trustees, Frazier uttered a racist and bigoted remark at a candidate running for the Board of Trustees who criticized the Freeh narrative.

BroadSt Bully also removed the qualifier “blue ribbon” which described the Special Investigative Task Force (“commission”).

12 hours later, a user identified only by his IP address 67.165.19.29 removed both of those paragraphs.  This IP address traces back to a Comcast user in Doylestown, PA.

3 hours later, a user in the Netherlands (possibly an administrator) restored the paragraphs with the qualifying edit note: 

“The previous edit deleted balancing material that provides criticism of the figure in question. Wikipedia articles are not "fluff pieces" that say only positive things” 

Approximately 14 hours later (11:54 18 March 2013), the previous user once again deleted these 2 paragraphs.  40 minutes later, they were restored by an admin in Connecticut.

Merck Corporate Works on the Cover-up

An hour later a user identified by the IP address 155.91.28.231 once again removed those paragraphs.  However, this IP address traced back to a corporate ISP:  Merck.

General IP Information

Top of Form

IP:	155.91.28.231
Decimal:	2606439655
Hostname:	155.91.28.231
ISP:	Merck and Co.
Organization:	Merck and Co.
Services:	Suspected network sharing device
Type:	Corporate
Assignment:	Static IP
Blacklist:

Bottom of Form

Geolocation Information

Country:	United States
State/Region:	New Jersey
City:	Old Bridge
Latitude:	40.3958  (40° 23′ 44.88″ N)
Longitude:	-74.3255  (74° 19′ 31.80″ W)
Area Code:	732
Postal Code:	08857

And then the internet sparks began to fly.  Over the next 3 hours, users would attempt to restore those 2 paragraphs, only to be deleted within minutes by the Merck user.

At 14:03 user “Cornmd” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:15 the Merck IP address deletes them.

At 14:16 user “Ubiquity” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:21 the Merck IP address deletes them. 

At 14:22 user “BroadSt Bully” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:22 the Merck IP address deletes them. 

User “Arctic Kangaroo” tries to restore the paragraphs and within minutes, the Merck IP address deletes them.  Arctic Kangaroo restores the content at 14:25, at which point the content is temporarily removed for discussion by “Edgar181” at 14:31.

At 14:39 BroadSt Bully restores the content with the edit note:  “Re-added sourced material. User's IP address traces to Merck, who is Frazier's employer”

At 14:57 BroadSt Bully adds titles to the 2 paragraphs “Jerry Sandusky sex scandal” and “Racially insensitive outburst."  

At 15:30 the Merck user deletes them.  Over the next 2 hours, the Merck user makes 5 more attempts to delete content, and add flattering career highlights for Ken Frazier, until an admin warns him that he is violating 4 different Wikipedia terms of service.  

Five minutes later, the Wikipedia admins lock down edits of the Wikipedia page.  

Two hours later, the Merck user is blocked for one month from editing ANY web pages. 

This was not the first time this user was blocked by Wikipedia.  Here is the discipline history of 155.91.28.231 which warranted the one month penalty for “disruptive editing”:

21:53, 18 March 2013 Ronhjones (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 1 month (Disruptive editing)

  22:21, 10 July 2012 Materialscientist (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 1 week (Copyright violations)

  20:11, 7 November 2008 RoySmith (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only) with an expiry time of 24 hours (Repeated reversion of text to Yak shaving contrary to prior AFD decision)

  22:13, 25 January 2006 Hall Monitor (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) with an expiry time of 48 hours (massive content removal)

  21:00, 1 December 2005 Brian0918 (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) with an expiry time of 24 hours (vandalisms) 

Previous edit on Freeh Report entry on Frazier's wiki page

Interesting to note Ken Frazier’s Wikipedia page had a previous edit disputed.  

On October 21, 2012, a user named “Callancc” described the Freeh report as being accepted “without review, but was reported to be riddled with conjecture, research with gaping holes, and unsubstantiated conclusions.”  It was revised on November 5, 2012 by an IP address from Boston University to say the Freeh report was accepted “and used as the basis for the NCAA sanctions against Penn State.” With the edit note:

“The last sentence was ridiculously partisan, clearly there only to attempt to discredit the Freeh report which was widely seen as fair and thoroughly done.”)

The Merck user created an account on Wikipedia on October 10, 2005 and spent most of his early time updating the Wikipedia pages of Ann Coulter and Ron Dellums (a long time member of the House of Representatives from California, who became the Mayor of Oakland in 2007).

Controlling the PSU Narrative

Ken Frazier’s comments to Bill Cluck had been widely circulated among the Penn State community the day he made them, but they never reached a global audience until they were posted in Wikipedia.  

There is a dogged determination from this Merck user to remove this content from Wikipedia.  In addition, the Merck IT team has been hard at work over the weekend to bury any negative articles circulating about Frazier on the internet and pumping up his bio and other positive articles as they appear in google searches.

Once again, it appears that Frazier is trying to control the narrative by controlling the information available to the public.  

Which begs the question, what audience is he really trying to control?