John Seigenthaler, a retired journalist and Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s is making no bones about how he feels about Wikipedia, the online, free encyclopedia.

Seigenthaler maintains in an editorial on USA Today (of which he is a former page editor) that his biography in Wikipedia wrongly included a paragraph which stated, "For a brief time, he (Seigenthaler) was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." The biography went on to say, "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984. He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter."

The same text was found on Reference.com and Answers.com and whose executives maintain that their computers are programmed to copy data as it appears on Wikipedia, and don't check whether it is false or factual.

Seigenthaler goes on to say that at his request executives of the three websites removed the false content about him but don't know, and can't find out, who wrote them.

Contributors to Wikipedia are unknown and virtually untraceable and USA's federal law protects online corporations from libel lawsuits. This means that unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for publishing slanderous attacks on citizens posted by others.

Seigenthaler says in his editorial, "One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer."

While on Wikipedia the update has duly been made. It says, "Between May and September of 2005, a biographical article on Seigenthaler carried by Wikipedia contained incorrect statements to the effect that he might have had some involvement in the assassinations of John and Robert F. Kennedy. The comment, added by an anonymous editor, prompted Seigenthaler to write an Op-Ed in USA Today on November 29 2005 saying that "...Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool...[f]or four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin."