Tag: fact checkers

Fact-Checking or Fact-Shielding? Twitter Files Journalist Slams PolitiFact’s Defense of Government Pressure on Big Tech

Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact, a Meta fact-checking partner, has decided that the Biden-Harris administration is not engaged in censorship at an industrial scale.

This claim made by vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is false, PolitiFact has asserted, because the Biden-Harris White House “contacting” (according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, they were contacted to be pressured) social media companies to flag content for removal “didn’t cross the line into coercion.”

Not only that but pressuring these companies (yet allegedly never coercing) to censor online speech is not a threat to democracy, PolitiFact was told by a Colombia professor – if the censors decide that speech is disinformation about Covid or election results.

The scale and nature of the way the US government leaned on tech companies to stifle speech that did not suit its political agenda is, to date, best revealed in the Twitter Files.

One of the journalists who worked on publishing the internal documents, Michael Shellenberger, now examined this PolitiFact “verdict” and the arguments the organization used. He rejects the notion that suppressing voters’ free speech is somehow “not a threat to democracy.”

Shellenberger was equally unimpressed by PolitiFact trying to explain its opinion regarding Vance’s claim by referring to the Supreme Court, which they said ruled it was not unconstitutional for the government to exert the kind of pressure it did.

“But the Court did not consider the US government’s pressure of Meta or many other cases of government demands for censorship,” Shellenberger writes and notes that the ruling (in the Murthy v Missouri case) was based on the judges deciding there were no legal grounds to bring the case.

To the question – as old as the rise of the fact-checking industry – why did a fact-checker (in this case, PolitiFact) get things wrong, the journalist suggests it’s more a case of “playing on the same team”.

PolitiFact, he writes, is “part and parcel of the Censorship Industrial Complex.”

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Florida Based ‘International Fact Checking Network’ – a Prominent Censorship Group – Is FUNDED BY STATE DEPARTMENT and Operates in US to Silence Independent Media and American Voices

Investigative reporter “Bad Kitty Unleashed” on X released a BOMBSHELL REPORT on the US State Department funding the international censorship group International Fact Checking Network (IFCN).

IFCN, despite being funded by the State Department, operates in the US.

Bad Kitty Unleashed reported:

This is a massive scandal! The State Department, who legally can’t operate in the US, has been funding US fact checking since 2015! Yes, it’s earliest days!

The news orgs that operate under the IFCN flag, such as the Washington Post, do the leg work. Which then results in posts on Facebook etc being labeled and the algorithms throttling the post.

This official International Fact Checking Network is also partnered with Google. Poynter’s IFCN was funded by the CIA linked, State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy and Omidyar grants.

Recall Google initiated the first ever US censorship program and expanded it globally by using the First Draft Consortium. First Draft also worked hand in hand with the IFCN. Poynters Politifact was in the First Draft network.

Here’s more on the recently discovered US government-funded censorship programs.

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Fact Check: CNN Claims Kamala Harris Only Made One False Statement During Debate

CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris delivered only one false statement during Tuesday night’s debate on ABC News, CNN Senior Reporter Daniel Dale alleged.

VERDICT: False. Harris delivered at least 21 false statements and hoaxes, according to Breitbart News’s Alana Mastrangelo:

1. “Very fine people” hoax
2. Project 2025 hoax
3. False claims on Trump trade deficit
4. Putin can “do whatever the hell he wants”
5. “Dictator on day one” hoax
6. Blaming botched Afghanistan withdrawal on Trump
7. Putin “would be sitting in Kyiv”
8. “Bloodbath” hoax
9. Abortion “monitor” hoax
10. Rental property hoax
11. Central Park Five “execution” hoax
12. “Suckers and losers” hoax
13. False fracking claims
14. False oil production claims
15. National Sales Tax
16. Distorting unemployment figures
17. “I was raised middle-class”
18. “Terminating” the Constitution
19. “Sold us out” to China
20. “Not one” troop in any war zone
21. Taking guns away

Read more specifics on Harris’s false statements and hoaxes here.

Dale alleged that the only false statement Harris delivered was a claim that former President Donald Trump left the Biden-Harris administration the worst employment since the Great Depression.

“So, the Biden-Harris administration was not actually left the worst unemployment since the Great Depression,” Dale reported Tuesday evening:

They were left a 6.4 percent unemployment rate in January 2020, one that was certainly elevated, by recent standards — pretty high — but it was significantly down from the 14.18 percent level it reached early in the pandemic, so, it was already improving at the time the Biden-Harris administration took office, and that 6.4 percent level was the highest since the Great Recession, so, in the last 20 years, not going back decades.

Democrat allies in the establishment media widely applauded ABC News debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis for their performance.

Muir and Davis attempted to “fact-check” Trump at least seven times but never did so with Harris, according to an analysis by Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak. Harris regurgitated many hoaxes, notably the Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax, but the moderators turned a blind eye. The “fact-checking” was in one direction, Pollak found.

At one point in the debate, Muir even fact-checked Trump’s claim that he was sarcastic when discussing the results of the 2020 election in a recent interview.

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CNN ‘Journalist’ Dragged For Fact Checking JD Vance’s Joke About Tim Walz

Earlier this week, JD Vance cracked a joke about Democrats holding their convention in Chicago so that Tim Walz would be able to say he’s been in a war zone.

Hilariously, a CNN reporter took the comment at face value and ‘fact checked’ it as wrong.

She did a journalism. Hard hitting research.

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Regime-Approved ‘Fact-Checkers’ Rush To Downplay Tim Walz’s Stolen Valor Controversy

It’s another day that ends in “-y,” which means legacy media hucksters are running dishonest interference for the Democrat Party.

The latest example comes in the form of a Friday “fact-check” by The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. Known for his willingness to lie on behalf of Democrats, the Post’s “democracy dies in darkness” guru decided to offer his “assessment” of the controversy engulfing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

While lauded by regime-approved media for his National Guard service, Walz’s rollout as Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate has been marred by reports and resurfaced clips indicating he committed “stolen valor.” As Matt Beebe has detailed at length in these pages, Walz abandoned his unit before it deployed to Iraq to run for Congress and has inflated his military rank throughout his political career.

Rather than present those facts up front for Post readers, Kessler begins his “fact-check” by citing a quote from Harris announcing Walz as her vice-presidential pick and the following paragraph:

Since [Harris’ announcement], Walz’s record has been under attack by Republicans, with claims that he abandoned his troops on the eve of a deployment to Iraq and that, in an instance of “stolen valor,” inflated his credentials and wartime experience.

The implication, of course, is that any and all scrutiny of Walz’s record and prior claims about his military service are solely the product of GOP partisanship — not the actual facts documenting Walz’s dishonesty. By deploying this deceptive tactic, Kessler aims to convince readers his subsequent “fact-checks” are valid, despite their representation as blatant attempts to run interference for Walz.

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Big Pharma Funds COVID Fact Checkers

FactCheck.org, the organization that flags “misleading” COVID-19 content for Facebook, is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropic organization funded by pharmaceutical giant and vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson (J&J), YouTube commentator Jimmy Dore reported.

Dore said his own shows have often been slapped with a “misleading” label when he covered issues related to COVID-19 or vaccines.

“These fact check organizations aren’t there to check facts,” Dore said. “They’re there to push a political point of view and an agenda and to discredit people.”

Dore said when the organization “fact-checked” his work in the past, its claims were always “bogus.” He said FactCheck.org never reached out to consult him about his content, it twisted his words and it never even pointed to any erroneous facts.

Instead, he said, “They didn’t like my headlines,” and they would say they were misleading.

Johnson & Johnson’s viral vector COVID-19 vaccine received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in February 2021. After the shot was linked to dangerous blood clots, its use was suspended a couple of months later and it was eventually completely pulled from the market in May 2023.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was established in 1952 by Robert Wood Johnson II, who ran J&J with a bequest of shares from the pharmaceutical giant. Today, although the foundation says it has diversified its holdings, it holds nearly $2 billion in J&J stock.

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Lawmakers Request Delay on Meta’s Shutdown of “Fact-Checker” Favorite Content Surveillance Tool

Meta’s decision to shut down a content surveillance tool called CrowdTangle, announced earlier in the year and about to take effect next month, has met with opposition from a group of US lawmakers.

CrowdTangle, which the giant bought in 2016, has over the years been “repurposed” by “fact-checkers,” researchers focusing on “disinformation” as well as media who flag it.

Meta said it is replaced by the Meta Content Library, available to some researchers but not commercial entities (such as media outlets, a number of whom are currently running “fact-checking” operations).

Now 17 lawmakers (three Republicans among them) have written to Meta asking that it reconsider this decision, referring to CrowdTangle as a “transparency tool” both for researchers and journalists.

The letter, addressed to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, says CrowdTangle is being used to “view and study” content on Facebook and Instagram, but also other platforms, searching for content ranging from foreign influence, and terrorism, to mental health.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

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JD Vance sex slur is deleted by AP after wire agency decided to ‘fact-check’ lurid claim about GOP VP pick’s sexual preferences

The Associated Press has deleted an article where they fact-checked a wild sex claim about Donald Trump‘s VP choice JD Vance.

The wire agency sparked backlash after it published a piece on the Ohio senator Wednesday that was titled, ‘No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch.’ 

However, by the next day, the AP had removed the article from its archives, with the page address showing it is now unavailable.

A spokesperson for the AP told DailyMail.com on Thursday that the fact-check on Vance did not go through the standard editing process.

The agency said it’s looking into how it was published.

The now-deleted article came after memes began circulating on social media repeating a false rumor that claimed Vance, 39, wrote about having sex with a couch on his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy.

High-profile names such as comedienne Kathy Griffin appeared to fall for the fake news, writing: ‘I don’t think we should have a couchf***er as our vice president. That’s just me. Sorry JD.’

DailyMail.com has reached out to the Associated Press for comment on this story. 

The false information reportedly began circulating on X after the now-private account @rickrudescalves wrote: ‘Can’t say for sure but he might be the first VP pick to have admitted in a NY Times bestseller to f***ing an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions.’

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NewsGuard fact-checked me today, providing the opportunity to clarify questions about the Audenz vaccine and the extremely high mortality rate in its small trial.

The big guns, the Health Editor, approached me this afternoon. Happy to learn the presentation is getting attention.

Below is the email I received and below that is my detailed reply.

On Jul 3, 2024, at 1:26 PM, John Gregory <john.gregory@newsguardtech.com> wrote:

Dr. Nass, 

My name is John Gregory, health editor at NewsGuard. We’re a news organization that reports on and tracks online misinformation. 

I’m emailing in regards to your April 20, 2024, CHD video in which you cited the FDA package insert for the H5N1 vaccine Audenz, and said, “One in 200 people who got this vaccine in a clinical trial died,” and later added, “This is a dangerous vaccine for a nothing disease.”

Video of your remarks has begun circulating widely on social media platforms in the past two weeks, used as evidence for claims like “Dr. Meryl Nass: One of the approved Bird Flu quackccines, Audenz… had a death rate of 1 in 200 during clinical trials.” 

I noticed the screenshot included in your original video highlighted the sentence, ““Fatal SAEs [Serious Adverse Events] included 11 (0.5%) Audenz recipients and 1 (0.1%) placebo recipients,” even though the very next sentence said, ““No SAEs were assessed as being related to Audenz,” meaning that none of the reported serious adverse events – including deaths – that occurred among trial participants were caused by the vaccine.

You also did not mention that the FDA’s own statistical review of Audenz stated that, “No deaths occurred that were considered related to the vaccine,” and concluded, “No major statistical or safety issues have been identified” with the vaccine, or that the published results of the Audenz trial said:

None of the serious AEs or AEs of special interest reported by subjects who received aH5N1c were considered vaccine related. Two subjects in the placebo group reported a related AE of special interest (immune thrombocytopenic purpura and polymyalgia rheumatic); these events were also considered serious AEs. During the study, 12 (0.4%) subjects had serious AEs with a fatal outcome, none of which were attributed to the study treatment, and most (n = 11) occurred after Day 43 during the follow-up period in subjects ≥65 years with underlying severe comorbidities and multiple concomitant medications.

Is there any reason why you did not mention any of this countervailing information?

My deadline is 5pm eastern today, July 3. Thank you. 

— 

Best regards, 
John Gregory

john.gregory@newsguardtech.com

Office: ‪(312) 489-8676

More about NewsGuard criteria here.

Dear Mr. Gregory,

Since I provided a screenshot of the package insert of the Audenz licensed vaccine and repeated what it said, this can hardly be characterized as misinformation, which you claim to be investigating.  Since I included the next sentence in the presentation, it cannot even be construed as incomplete.

Had you been working on issues of vaccines for over 25 years as I have, you would have been aware that the sponsor (mfr) and FDA, who together craft the vaccine labels aka package inserts, ALWAYS assert that most or all of the deaths and serious adverse events occurring during a clinical trial were adjudged to be not due to the vaccine.  Had they judged otherwise, a license would probably not have been issued.  A license was issued for Audenz.

Later, when a vaccine is given to millions of people, not just a few hundred as in this case, one learns which side effects are IN FACT attributable to the vaccine.

For example, at least a hundred million Americans had received an mRNA COVID vaccine before it was determined to cause myocarditis, in late May of 2021 by FDA.

That is the reason why the raw data, which I presented, are important.  So that people have the information to judge for themselves what risks they may face when choosing vaccination.  In fact, clinical trials often exclude sick subjects, and drugs and vaccines almost invariably appear more safe and effective in clinical trial data than they do later, in the real world—a fact known to all medical researchers.

Why did I not mention material from an article?  Because I was referring to the Audenz label, which is the legal document that FDA attests is true, unlike published articles which are generally written by the vaccine sponsor and have a lesser degree of reliability.  In fact, the numbers in the article versus those in the label are not exactly the same.

Furthermore, if the US government was comfortable with the H5N1 Audenz vaccine, why did DHHS’ BARDA just place an order with Moderna for H5N8 mRNA vaccines, even though the avian flu circulating in the US is H5N1?  Even though it makes much more sense to match the neuraminidase portion of the vaccine to the circulating strain…  which is done every year when seasonal influenza vaccines are produced?

Finally, I invite you to take a look at the WHO data on deaths in humans worldwide from the H5N1 bird flu, which confirms it is a nothing disease in humans, having mutated to a different form than it once had.  The federal health agencies have monitored 9,000 farm workers and all they found were 4 mild cases of disease, no hospitalizations and no deaths in the US over the past several years.

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NewsGuard Co-Founder Advocates Banning Anonymous Social Media Posts, Enabling Lawsuits Against Tech Firms for “False” Content

NewsGuard co-founder and co-CEO Steve Brill has published a book, “The Death of Truth” – but he’s not taking any responsibility. On the contrary.

Namely, Brill’s “apolitical (misinformation) rating system for news sites” as NewsGuard is promoted to customers, is often blasted – and currently investigated by Congress for possible First Amendment violations – as yet another tool to suppress online speech.

But corporate media sing his praises, presenting him as a “media maven.”

A censorship maven more like it, critics would say. And while getting his book promoted, Brill managed to add his name to the steadily growing list of governments, NGOs, and associated figures who are attacking online anonymity.

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