Tag: fact checkers

Viral ‘Russian Mobile Crematorium’ Tweet is From an 8-Year-Old YouTube Video

A viral tweet that remains unchecked by “fact checkers” claims to show a Russian-operated ‘mobile crematorium’ in Mariupol, but the image is taken from an 8-year-old YouTube video.

Whoops.

The tweet was posted by news outlet NEXTA, which boasts nearly a million followers on Twitter. The tweet has received over 7,000 retweets and almost 11,000 likes.

“Mobile crematoria in #Mariupol,” states the tweet.

“Mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko said today that #Russian mobile crematoria have started operating in the city.”

“According to him, tens of thousands of people could have died in Mariupol and the cremation, “covering up the traces of crimes”.

Except a simple reverse image search reveals the ‘mobile crematorium’ to be a screenshot from an 8-year-old YouTube video.

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Did the White House Get Caught Colluding with Fact Checkers Again?

It will come as no surprise to conservatives or anyone willing to think critically and fairly that the Biden White House enjoys a cozier relationship with the mainstream media than the Trump administration did. Fawning coverage of the White House’s new cat that distracted attention from Biden’s crises is a great case in point. The way in which mainstream outlets go after Biden’s critics is another example, and one that we at Townhall have experienced and watched unfold in real-time — as we reported. 

But thanks to a late-breaking story from POLITICO on Wednesday, it looks like there are even more symbiotic relationships at play between the White House press shop and supposedly independent fact-checkers or unbiased mainstream outlets.

Here’s what Alex Thompson and Max Tani reported:

Over the past month, the White House’s press shop has repeatedly promoted stories from The New York Times’ fact-checker, LINDA QIU.

Biden cited a Qiu piece himself earlier this month when he addressed House Democrats in Philadelphia. “Headline fact checker in the New York Times: “Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices,” he said, reading the headline of the piece. “And it goes on to explain why gas prices are so high.”

Many members of the president’s press team have also become Qiu content boosters in recent weeks.

On March 10, deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES tweeted out the same Qiu fact check on why “Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices,” adding a touch of his own commentary. “The only way to be straight with readers is to include this context,” Bates noted.

Press secretary JEN PSAKI shared the same piece, noting “FACT CHECK on GOP.” 

On Monday, Bates shared another story by Qiu. “@nytimes Fact Check: ‘Attacks on Judge Jackson’s Record on Child Sexual Abuse Cases Are Misleading’ Hawley and Blackburn ‘have taken the judge’s remarks and sentencing decisions out of context, distorting her record,’” he tweeted.

POLITICO does note that “Not all of Qiu’s fact checks have been heralded by the White House,” as seen in her piece: “Biden’s Inaccurate Claims in Defending Afghanistan Withdrawal,” but that was last August, apparently before Qiu decided to play nice with the White House and go from supposedly independent fact-checker to a Biden clean-up crew member.

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Top ‘Fact Checker’ Labeled Hunter Biden Laptop Story a “Hoax”

The co-founder of one of the world’s leading ‘fact checker’ organizations, which presents itself as a supreme authority on which sources of information can be trusted, labeled the now completely confirmed genuine Hunter Biden laptop story a “hoax”.

Whoops.

Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the legacy media declared the laptop scandal to be a hoax, with Politico and others citing “dozens of former intel officials” who declared it to be “Russian disinfo.”

This prompted social media giants like Twitter and Facebook to censor discussion of the story, even locking out major news outlets like the New York Post from their accounts.

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French digital minister tells Big Tech platforms to scale up “fact-checking capabilities”

Telecom ministers from European countries have asked the major online platforms to ensure they have the adequate capacity to handle “misinformation” in Central and Eastern Europe, which they say are the major targets of Russian propaganda.

On March 8, officials from EU governments and representatives from the major online platforms met in France to discuss how to fight disinformation being spread by the Russian government. Initially, the agenda of the informal meeting was the Metaverse, how to bring more women to the technology sector, and environment. The agenda was changed in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In a joint statement, the ministers said: “The battles initiated by Russia in the current conflict are raging not only on the ground but also on the internet.”

France’s digital minister Cédric O said that online platforms had made some efforts to fight Russian propaganda, adding that the accounts of Russian state-controlled media outlets Sputnik and RT have been removed on the major platforms. However, O said it was important to put “pressure on the platforms to do even more.”

During the meeting, the ministers made two requests, according to a report by EURACTIV. They asked the platforms to respond to take down requests from governments more quickly. And, they asked them to increase their content moderation teams in the languages spoken in Central and Eastern Europe.

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‘Fact-Checkers’ Are Technocracy’s Digital Brownshirts

We are under siege. A nihilistic fanaticism is running free among us thanks to the emergence of a journalistic “ethos” that establishes an almost complete equivalence between the “truth” and those utterances that support the strategic goals of the great economic and digital powers of our time.

A few months ago Facebook censored an article in the British Medical Journal that highlighted serious irregularities in Pfizer’s clinical vaccine trials. Then two weeks ago, fact-checkers from the Spanish websites Newtral and Maldita burst into the public square to accuse professor of Pharmacology, renowned expert in drug safety, and ex-WHO adviser, Joan Ramón Laporte of foisting lies and disinformation onto the Spanish populace. This, in reaction to Laporte’s testimony before a Spanish parliamentary commission investigating the country’s vaccination effort.

Despite his towering credentials, his intervention was quickly tarred as problematic by the media and subsequently banned by YouTube. The crime of this new Galileo Galilei? Alerting the assembled parliamentarians to the existence of grave procedural irregularities in the trials for the vaccines, and questioning the wisdom of a health strategy that aims to inject every Spanish child over the age of six with a new, poorly tested, and largely ineffective medication.

This incident reveals that the fact-checkers will attack anyone who does not accept the truth as dictated by the great economic and government centers of the world. This is not the usual official media obfuscation to which we’ve become accustomed over the years, but rather a brazen McCarthyist intimidation device, designed to frighten citizens into submission by appealing to their lowest and most ignoble instincts, an approach lain bare in Maldita’s smug and Manichaean slogan: “Join and support us in our battle against lies.”

Under this harsh binary logic, an internationally famous scientist like Laporte is not even given the opportunity to be judged wrong or misguided in good faith. Rather, he is immediately accused of being a willful and dangerous liar who must be immediately banished from public view.

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COVID “Conspiracy Theories” Have Now Magically Become “Fact-Checked” Mainstream Narrative

I started out 2022 by predicting that capitalism and common sense would catalyze a massive pivot in how the mainstream media reports on Covid.

I believed that the media would eventually start the process of pivoting from hysteria and that politicians, understanding full well that they can’t get re-elected during mid-terms this year on a platform of locking people in their homes, would follow.

All I can say one month into the year is holy shit, does it look like I was right.

So far in 2022, innumerable U.S. states, in addition to countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark, are lifting Covid restrictions.

Connecticut and Delaware are planning on lifting school mask mandates by the end of March. Oregon officials have also announced that general mask mandates would be lifted March 31. Even New Jersey and California announced they would ease mandates in coming weeks.

And the media narrative has very quickly changed, too.

Dr Leana Wen, columnist with The Washington Post and CNN medical analyst who has, in the past, gushed non-stop about following the government’s Covid guidance, has now completely changed her playbook for her appearances on CNN.

On Monday of this week, she told CNN:

“There was, and is, a time and place for pandemic restrictions. But when they were put in, it was always with the understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And, in this case, circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed. The responsibility should shift from a government mandate imposed from the state or the local district of the school … it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family, who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed.”

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University That Funds Biden’s Think Tank And Hosts FactCheck.Org Has Contract With BioNTech, Gets Paid For Vaccine Sales And FDA Approvals

Documents obtained by NATIONAL FILE show that the University of Pennsylvania, which hosts and funds Joe Biden’s think tank called the Penn Biden Center, directly profits from the sale of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Coronavirus vaccines. The University gets more money if more vaccines are sold. The University of Pennsylvania also gets “milestone payments” when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. BioNTech pays the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees directly, and the university is protected from civil liability if people try to sue for “bodily injury” or “death” caused by BioNTech vaccines.

BioNTech signed a licensing agreement in 2018 with the University of Pennsylvania, which directly funds the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Even though Coronavirus had not yet broken out when the deal was made, the 2018 agreement ensured massive payments for the University of Pennsylvania if its technology ended up getting used in new mRNA-based vaccines. Well, UPenn’s technology did end up getting used in the mRNA-based Coronavirus vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech, and the deal has led to massive revenue for the university. Joe Biden, who was working for the University of Pennsylvania when the deal was made, received more than $900,000 from the University of Pennsylvania in the two years before he ran for president in this past election.

The University of Pennsylvania also houses the pro-vaccine website FactCheck.org. University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann is now Biden’s nominee for Ambassador to Germany. The Biden administration’s FDA has speedily approved or authorized Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines including for children — all while the Penn Biden Center’s parent university enjoys massive profits from vaccine sales and FDA approval. And the Pfizer-connected FDA even knew about numerous adverse events for children related to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but allowed children to be injected with it anyway. Now, as the FDA considers emergency use authorization for a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children as young as six months old, the direct financial relationship between these vaccines and Joe Biden’s think tank must be exposed.

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