Tag: fact checkers

Facebook ‘corrects’ woman’s complaint vaccine ‘is killing me,’ then she dies

Facebook, which routinely adds its editorial comments to posts with which it disagrees, recently “fact-checked” a woman’s complaint about her reaction to a coronavirus vaccine.

Desiree Penrod, 25, said on Facebook after getting vaccinated in early March: “The vaccine is killing me today. My arm hurts, beyond exhausted, headache, stomach cramps and earaches.”

Penrod also posted: “Multiple people told me that I looked pale today. Yesterday, I was fine but today it’s taking its toll on me.”

Facebook, citing the World Health Organization, added a disclaimer to a post by Penrose, “COVID-19 vaccines go through many tests for safety and effectiveness before they’re approved.”

A week later, Penrod died. Her obituary said she “passed away unexpectedly.”

Facebook’s editorial comment citing the WHO provided a link to the international organization, whose investigation into the origin of COVID-19 has been criticized because of China’s control of it.

Keep reading

The Foundation Funding “Fact-Checkers” Who Defend the Chinese Communist Party Is Heavily Invested in China.

The Knight Foundation – a George Soros-linked, left-wing group purporting to tackle disinformation by funding anti-conservative media operations and “fact-checkers” – has investments in firms tied to the Russian government and Chinese Communist Party, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.

The group’s most recent financial disclosures reveal over $17,000,000 invested in a Chinese Communist Party-linked investment fund and over $1,200,000 invested in Russia Partners – which boasts of its close connections to “government leaders in Russia.”

The unearthed financial ties come as the group continues to peddle conspiracy theories about Russian influence in the 2016 election and purports to “protect press freedom” while investing in countries whose journalism sectors are consistently ranked among the least free.

Keep reading

Fact-Checkers Hammering Biden and Cuomo? No.

CNN host Brian Stelter asked a big question on his Sunday show. “What’s the future of fact-checking now that Trump is out of office?” He proclaimed it was “fraught with complexity, and allegations of bias and shouts of false equivalence.”

This is not complex. In 2016, a Rasmussen poll found that only 29 percent of the public trusted the media’s “fact-checking” of presidential candidates. There’s not just “allegations” of bias but easy and daily confirmation of bias.

Stelter tried to insist — on behalf of his network — that the fact-checking focus is now on President Joe Biden. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale explained, “(I)t’s basically more like a smattering of falsehood than the daily avalanche we got from Trump, but he’s not perfect.” Dale has tried to demonstrate that he’s checking Biden, issuing an online report on 40 of Biden’s statements from his first month in office.

But there’s a catch. Dale’s becoming less visible. Mediaite noted on Feb. 20 that this CNN fact-checker was featured on air or mentioned by name on average more than once every other day since June 2019. But exposure dipped noticeably after the election, and “since President Joe Biden’s inauguration … Dale has only appeared on the network once. And that appearance, last Friday, was to fact-check Donald Trump’s lawyers.” Dale showed up with Stelter just three days after the Mediaite piece was published.

Stelter also interviewed PolitiFact editor-in-chief Angie Drobnic Holan. Is PolitiFact obsessed with fact-checking Biden? No.

In the first four weeks after Biden took the oath, PolitiFact issued two Biden fact-checks — two! Last week, it fact-checked three of Biden’s statements from the CNN town hall, since that was apparently a little too prominent to ignore. It added one more on Feb. 22. That’s six fact-checks of the president so far.

Let’s compare that to fact-checks defending Biden. In the same time frame, PolitiFact issued 19 fact-checks of Biden’s critics, and all but one of them were proclaimed “Mostly False,” “False” or “Pants on Fire.” (There was one “Half True”). There’s apparently no such thing as a “True” Biden critique.

Keep reading

Newsweek ‘Fact Check’ Claims India Vaccine Ban “Mostly False” While Admitting De Facto Ban

Newsweek published a “fact check” which labeled claims that India had banned the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as “mostly false” despite admitting in the article that India has in fact temporarily banned the vaccine.

Last week, discussion around the issue intensified after it was revealed that Indian health authorities had refused to give permission for the vaccine to be distributed.

“On February 3, 2021, India’s Subject Expert Committee (SEC), a panel that advises the nation’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), a national regulatory body focused on pharmaceuticals and devices, ruled that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should not be recommended for an EUA in the country “at this stage,” reports Newsweek.

The report quotes India’s Subject Expert Committee (SEC), which ruled, “The committee noted that incidents of palsy, anaphylaxis and other SAE’s have been reported during post marketing and the causality of the events with the vaccine is being investigated. Further, the firm has not proposed any plan to generate safety and immunogenicity data in Indian population.”

In response, after the meeting with the regulator, Pfizer Inc. withdrew its application for the vaccine’s use in India.

Keep reading

MSM outlet caught deleting fact-check tweet on Kamala LIE

An online mainstream media outlet was caught deleting a fact-check tweet on Kamala Harris and then replacing it with one that omitted the fact-check:

FOX NEWS – Axios drew criticism Monday after it deleted a tweet fact-checking Vice President Kamala Harris, who repeated the debunked claim that the Biden administration is “starting from scratch” with its coronavirus vaccine rollout.

During an interview with Axios co-founder Mike Allen that aired on HBO Sunday, Harris was asked about the struggles of the administration’s response to the pandemic after nearly one month in office.

“There was no stockpile … of vaccines,” Harris responded. “There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations. We were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try and figure it out. And so in many ways, we’re starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year!”

Axios shared that exchange on Sunday evening, but included a comment by White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, who refuted CNN’s reporting last month that quoted anonymous Biden officials making the same claim.

“We certainly are not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution,” Fauci said during a White House press briefing.

Keep reading