Before continuing, a dive into the world of fact-checkers
This is a slight detour, but it is necessary.
In the previous post, I quoted excerpts from
Fine-Grained Analysis of Propaganda in News Articles. Their article used a selection of articles evaluated by a company
Media Bias/Fact Check.
On their
about page they say:
About Media Bias / Fact Check
Founded in 2015, Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) is an independent website that has promoted awareness of media bias and misinformation by rating the bias, factual accuracy, and credibility of media sources, large and small. Media Bias/Fact Check relies on human evaluators to determine the bias of media sources and the level of overall factual reporting through a combination of objective measures and subjective analysis using our stated
methodology.
Dave Van Zandt is the founder and primary editor for sources. He is assisted by a collective of volunteers and paid contractors who provide research for many sources listed on these pages. Finally, MBFC also provides occasional fact-checks and original articles on media bias and publishes daily curated fact-checks from around the world.
Credibility
The credibility of a website/media source is not determined by who owns them but rather by its track record.
Everybody starts as a beginner and, through experience, becomes an authority in their field. MBFC is no different. Over the last 8 years, we have proven to be a trusted authority on the rating of bias and the credibility of media sources.
For example, MBFC is trusted by major media outlets and IFCN fact-checkers. This is evidenced by frequently being referenced by sources such as
USA Today,
Reuters Fact Check,
Science Feedback,
Washington Post, and
NPR, among dozens of others. We are also frequently used as a
resource in libraries, high schools, and universities across the United States.
Media Bias/Fact Check has also been used as a resource for research by the
University of Michigan and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Further, we have been utilized by numerous print books such as these:
Finally, MBFC scored a
perfect 100/100 rating by
Newsguard, which rates the credibility of Media Sources. We believe it is significant that a competitor gave us this score.
IFCN was mentioned, but what is IFCN? The acronym stands for
International Fact-Checking Network
They say about themselves:
What is the International Fact-Checking Network?
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter was launched in 2015 to bring together the growing community of fact-checkers around the world. The network advocates for information integrity in the global fight against misinformation and supports fact-checkers through networking, capacity building and collaboration. IFCN’s network reaches more than 170 fact-checking organizations worldwide through advocacy, training and global events. Our team monitors trends in the fact-checking field to offer resources to fact-checkers, contribute to public discourse and provide support for new projects and initiatives that advance accountability in journalism.
We believe truth and transparency can help people be better informed and equipped to navigate harmful misinformation.
And their
about page explains further:
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter has been a champion for the best practices and exchanges of fact-based information since it was established in 2015. Today,
the IFCN is a global leader in fact-checking excellence, providing more than 100 operations around the world with:
Opportunities to connect with fact-checkers from countries around the world at
events like IFCN Talks, Global Fact and International Fact-Checking Day.
The Wiki
List of fact-checking websites makes it more clear how the IFCN began:
International Fact-Checking Network
International Fact-Checking Network launched in 2015 by the Poynter Institute set a
code of ethics for
fact-checking organizations. The IFCN reviews fact-checkers for compliance with its code, and issues a
certification to publishers who pass the audit. The certification lasts for one year, and fact-checkers must be re-examined annually to retain their certifications.
[2] IFCN lists 170 organizations as members as of July 2024.[3] Facebook and Instagram have used the IFCN's certification to vet publishers for fact-checking contracts.
[4][5]
About
Poynter Institute, the Wiki has
The
Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in
St. Petersburg, Florida, United States.
The school is the owner of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network.[2][3] It also operates PolitiFact.[4]
Next is an example of what the authors of the article from the last post warned about, the general labeling of a site, rather than including analysis of individual articles
Poynter published a list of over 515 news websites that it labeled "unreliable" in 2019. The author of the piece used various
fake news databases (including those curated by the
Annenberg Public Policy Center,
Merrimack College,
PolitiFact, and
Snopes) to compile the list and
called on advertisers to "blacklist" the included sites. The list included conservative news websites such as the
Washington Examiner,
The Washington Free Beacon, and
The Daily Signal as well as conspiracy outfits including
InfoWars.
[17] After backlash from both readers of and contributors to some of the included publications, Poynter retracted the list, citing "weaknesses in the methodology".
[18] Poynter issued a statement, saying:
"[w]e regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication."[19] Reason pointed out that the author was a freelancer hired by the Institute who typically works for the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Reason drew parallels between the accuracy of the list with SPLC's
own work on hate groups.
[17]
Election integrity and COVID-19
In 2020, after receiving funding from
Facebook, the Poynter Institute expanded the MediaWise program with a national media literacy program called MediaWise Voter project (#MVP). Its goal was to reach 2 million American first-time voter college students, helping them to be better prepared and informed for the
2020 elections.
[20][
non-primary source needed]
The Poynter Institute received $737,400 in federal loans from the Paycheck Protection Program during the COVID-19 pandemic. President Neil Brown noted that this was not the first time the institute received government funding, noting past training contracts with Voice of America.[21]
Mentioning COVID, the IFCN has on their website the image:
Following the link leads to a page that has this introduction:
Fighting the Infodemic: The #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance
Led by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute, the #CoronaVirusFacts united more than 100 fact checkers around the world in publishing, sharing, and translating facts surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The Alliance was launched in January 2020 when the spread of the virus was restricted to China but was already causing rampant misinformation globally. The World Health Organization classifies this as an infodemic — and the Alliance was on the front lines in the fight against it. The project concluded in early 2023.
Their fact-checking prowess stopped in early 2023, and they probably did not go back to recheck their pronouncements:
To give an impression of how they worked, here are some headlines in the following screenshot from this
page:
Some of the checks these groups and companies made led to the bans and FB prisons many are familiar with. What they achieved was to stifle the debate about the wisdom of implementing the COVID policies. Sure, many claims were initially anecdotal, some wrong, but to expect normal people to come up with peer-reviewed double-blind testing before they should be allowed to utter their suspicions is in my opinion just plain wrong.
Most recent, there is on
this page:
Scrolling down on
this page, one finds at the time of posting:
Incidentally, and only to comment on articles one and three, it just so happens that Georgia is where the EU, the US, and NATO have been working for years. Readers of SOTT will know the background for what is going on, but to include some of the headlines for the sake of context, here is:
US wants regime change in Georgia - Russian intel which has excerpts from other articles and also the following additional headlines:
As to the second article about populism, it reads like an echo of what Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron have expressed. Not that they are all wrong in that their opponents, which they call populists are gaining ground, but it has little to do with democracy and more about preserving their power.
For more comment on the fact-checking industry, consider the points that Mike Benz makes in this SOTT
Focus: The End of Democracy: "What I'm Describing is Military Rule"
You couldn't get a story killed. You couldn't have this favors for favors relationship. You couldn't promise access to some random person with 700,000 followers who's got an opinion on Syrian gas. And so this induced, and this was not a problem for the initial period of social media from 2006 to 2014 because there were never dissident groups that were big enough to be able to have a mature enough ecosystem on their own. And all of the victories on social media had gone in the way of where the money was, which was from the State Department and the Defense Department and the intelligence services. But then as that maturity happened, you now had this situation after the 2016 election where they said, okay, now the entire international order might come undone. 70 years of unified foreign policy from Truman until Trump are now about to be broken.
And we need the same analog control systems. We had to be able to put bumper cars on bad stories or bad political movements through legacy media relationships and contacts we now need to establish and consolidate within the social media companies. And the initial predicate for that was Russiagate. But then after Russiagate died and they used a simple democracy promotion predicate, then it gave rise to this multi-billion dollar censorship industry that joins together the military industrial complex, the government, the private sector, the civil society organizations, and then this vast cobweb of media allies and professional fact checker groups that serve as this sort of sentinel class that surveys every word on the internet.
There might also be something about fact-checkers in
Fake News Overlords in the EU
I think it is possible to learn something from the fact-checkers, they have resources, suggestions, and strategies, but to get hung up on their evaluations and conclusions and consider it the ultimate authority is not helpful. As mentioned, the way they were used to suppress the debate about COVID was not productive. The suspicions of many people may initially have been poorly founded, but they turned out to be more right than wrong. And with the fact-checkers not owing up to their role in this affair they have proved themselves to be little more than mercenaries for a move by governments and large multinational corporations to impose control on digital content and implement the policies that they prefer.
This post turned out to be more related to the politics of propaganda research than what this thread was intended to be, but not saying or commenting on the fact-checking industry would also be wrong, especially when some claim to be qualified to preside as unelected judges of what is permissible and what is not. The industry does not stand alone; what their results are used for is also determined by politicians, some of which are psychopaths.
