Tag: fact checkers

The Co-Founder Of The Fact-Checking Site Snopes Was Writing Plagiarized Articles Under A Fake Name

David Mikkelson, the co-founder of the fact-checking website Snopes, has long presented himself as the arbiter of truth online, a bulwark in the fight against rumors and fake news. But he has been lying to the site’s tens of millions of readers: A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that between 2015 and 2019, Mikkelson wrote and published dozens of articles containing material plagiarized from news outlets such as the Guardian and the LA Times.

After inquiries from BuzzFeed News, Snopes conducted an internal review and confirmed that under a pseudonym, the Snopes byline, and his own name, Mikkelson wrote and published 54 articles with plagiarized material. The articles include such topics as same-sex marriage licenses and the death of musician David Bowie.

Snopes VP of Editorial and Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni suspended Mikkelson from editorial duties pending “a comprehensive internal investigation.” He remains an officer and a 50% shareholder of the company.

“Our internal research so far has found a total of 54 stories Mikkelson published that used appropriated material, including all of the stories Buzzfeed shared with us,” Marchionni and Snopes Chief Operating Officer Vinny Green said in a statement.

Keep reading

Fact-Checker Poynter Demands Local News Reduce Coverage Crime Stories Because it Fuels “Systemic Racism”

Fact-checking institute Poynter is demanding that local news stations reduce coverage of stories that connect “Black and brown communities” to violent crime because it is fueling “systemic racism.”

Yes, really.

The institute, which oversees the International Fact-Checking Network which operates Politifact, put out a statement urging journalists to “break the cycle of crime reporting.”

Arrests for misdemeanors disproportionately affect people of color. Systemic racism compounds the injustice as reviews have shown that prosecutors are more likely to exclude Black jurors from trials.

The crime and courts beat exists because it’s constantly churning out stories. Much of that content is directly related to public safety. Journalists can be smarter about who we cover and the follow-up stories we provide. Kelly McBride, who chairs the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at Poynter, said, “Local news reporters have amplified narratives that connect Black and brown communities to crime. As a result, we have fostered systemic racism through our crime coverage.”

It’s within our power as journalists to break that cycle. We don’t need to publicize the crime blotter simply because it fills airtime or generates clicks.

The announcement was made at the same time that Politifact asserted that a claim the Austin-American Statesman deliberately omitted a mass shooting suspect’s description because he was black is “false.”

However, the original report stated the reason for not including a description of the suspect was because it “could be harmful in perpetuating stereotypes,” meaning that Politifact is outright lying.

Keep reading

Bogus Fact-Check Site Used by Google Lists All Conservative Outlets as “Low Credibility” – But Lists All Far Left and Liberal Mainstream Outlets as High Credibility

Fact-checking is an imminent necessity because “you’re not intelligent enough to adequately read, research and or rationalize for yourself,” the socialist arbiters of truth proclaim, “so, you must rely on us to filter out the ‘fake news.’”

Exhibit A: MediaBIasFactCheck.com, a fact-checking that prides itself as “the most comprehensive media bias resource in the Internet,” despite being run by an owner who was previously exposed for misleadingly claiming to be a journalist.

Keep reading

MSM Admits Fact Checkers Were Wrong — Truth Will Never Be Found Through Censorship

Over the last twelve months, social media’s expurgation of any and all information pertaining to Covid-19, not part-and-parcel to the mainstream status quo, has become ineffaceable.

Everywhere we look now, we see embedded links to the Covid-19 Information Center on any post that dares even utter the words “vaccine” or “covid”. More pervasive still, are the notices of “this content is no longer available”, having been unceremoniously expunged for allegedly violating the ministry of truth’s “community guidelines”. Being so brazen as to even brand one hundred percent authentic facts as “misinformation”.

Facebook is now permeated with warnings pinned upon post after post indicating “this information has been disputed by independent fact-checkers”.

Ahh yes, the same “independent fact-checkers” that only recently had their financial biases uncovered. Confirming the very conflicts of interest many of us had suspected in the first place, along with their counterparts in the mainstream media.

Ironically, just as a recent report has demonstrated how censorship backfires — Indicating excessive “fact-checking” actually contributed to the spread of misinformation.

Now, as the Overton window begins to shift it appears the MSM is left with egg on their face yet again.

Keep reading

Fact Check — No, Spokane Students Were Not Forced to ‘Pick Cotton’

CLAIM: Black students at a Spokane, Washington, middle school were ordered to “pick cotton” as a school assignment.

VERDICT: False.

The disturbing story is already viral…

BET: “Black Middle School Students Reportedly Ordered To Pick Cotton”

NPR: “Cotton picking lesson leaves Black middle school students reeling in Spokane”

ABC: “Black students ‘humiliated’ by cotton-picking assignment”

Drudge: “SHOCK: Black Middle School Students Ordered To Pick Cotton…”

This sounds awful, right? Who would do such a thing? The mother of the two 14-year-old girls at the center of this racial storm pulled the twin girls, not only out of the class but out of the school entirely and is demanding, according to ABC News, the “removal of a school administrator whose suggestion was to separate two Black students after their mom raised concerns about a classroom assignment the students say involved cleaning cotton.”

Here’s how the mother portrayed the principal’s “suggestion”: He wanted to “segregate my girls into a room by themselves, away from the white teacher.”

She also wants the social studies teacher and “other school administrators to be disciplined for how they handled the situation.”

The outraged mother told local news, “For you to pass out cotton and to my children [and tell them] that essentially, they’re going to pick the cotton clean and it’s a race of who can get it clean first, that was extremely bothersome to me and my children” She added, “Under no circumstance … do they need to be taught what it’s like to be a slave or what it’s like to be black.”

With some reading between the lines, it’s pretty obvious what happened here, and it had nothing to do with forcing black kids to pick cotton…

Here’s how the girls themselves described what happened… [emphasis added]

Twins Emzayia and Zyeshauwne Feazell said they were in their social studies class on May 3 when they said the teacher pulled out a box of raw cotton and told the class they were going to do a “fun” activity. The girls added the students were subsequently instructed to clean freshly picked cotton as part of a classroom assignment to see who could do so the fastest.

Let’s start with the most important point… By their own admission, the girls admit no one forced them or even asked them to “pick cotton,” which proves all these stories and headlines false.

“Cleaning” and “picking cotton” are two entirely different things. Picking cotton is obviously associated with slavery, but cleaning cotton is associated with what the school says was part of an assignment about the Industrial Revolution and cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized the cotton industry by putting an end to the tedious and time-consuming labor involved in removing the seeds from the cotton by hand.

Is it not fairly obvious that this teacher used a hands-on assignment to show the class just what a revolution the Industrial Revolution was — an assignment that had nothing to do with “picking cotton?”

Something else that gives it away is what one of the girls said: “We didn’t learn about the slave trade or anything about the history of slavery.”

In other words, the cotton wasn’t handed out in the context of slavery, it was handed out in a different context altogether, which backs up what the schools said about the lesson revolving around the cotton gin.

Keep reading