Tag: fact checkers

Congressionally Chartered National Conference on Citizenship Recruits Volunteers To Monitor and Flag “Misinformation”

You probably couldn’t pay a lawsuit a bigger compliment than a bunch of activists and their umbrella organization involved in censorship complaining that it has had “a chilling effect” on their work.

But that’s what a recent panel, hosted by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), heard regarding Missouri v. Biden (now Murthy v. Missouri). The lawsuit is “infamous” in those circles for putting some brakes on the government pressuring tech companies to do its censorship bidding.

And, those gathered went into how they recruit what one report calls volunteer censors whose task is to monitor social media and flag content as “misinformation.” (When working to set the tone and steer the narrative on platforms, they call themselves, “trusted messengers.”)

The National Conference on Citizenship, however, is a congressionally chartered organization, and yet it is part of a network that is looking for “misinformation” in private messages.

Back during the highly contested 2020 US elections, online censorship was essentially government business, with its public “face” being the Election Integrity Partnership, that originated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Having in the meantime received various levels of pushback from not only citizens but also lawmakers and even tech firms, “the censorship industry” is looking for ways to reinvent itself.

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Snopes REVERSES ‘fact check’ claiming Joe Biden didn’t wear hard hat backwards

Misinformation hall-monitor website Snopes was forced to reverse a fact-check on Saturday after making the false claim the Joe Biden did not wear a hard hat backwards during a recent photo-op with construction workers.

When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) posted the photo of Biden to X with several other construction workers, users responded slamming Biden for wearing the hard hat backwards.  

One user zoomed into the photo and posted, “Why his hard hat is wore backward?” 

Others were quick to respond to Biden’s often middle-class image that is portrayed in media, saying, “Hat backwards because ‘he’s a man of the people.'” 

“He’s never done a hard days work has he,” the X user continued.  

The post from Klobuchar started to gain traction and has been seen over 2.4 million times as of Saturday afternoon. As the photo went viral, Snopes was quick to publish a fact-check of claims that the Biden had been wearing the construction gear wrong.  

In a now changed post, Snopes writers said, “The photo is genuine. And it does look, at first glance, like Biden was wearing that hard hat backwards. But after comparing it to other photos and videos of the same event, we were forced to reach the opposite conclusion: The hat on Biden’s head was facing forward, bill to the front, not backward.” The media company rated the claim it was backwards as “false” in their reporting when published on Jan. 26. 

By Saturday afternoon, Snopes had reversed course on the claim after posting the fact-check on X with the caption, “Folks are saying Biden was wearing his hard hat backwards in the photo op with Sen. Amy Klobuchar and some construction workers in Superior, Wisconsin. But was he?” 

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PolitiFact’s Parent Company Is Paying Local Journalists To Write About Transgenders, ‘Extremists,’ And ‘Good Effects’ Of Biden

The group that runs the prominent fact-checking site PolitiFact is using money from Left-leaning activists to pay journalists “grants” of $10,000 or more to write about “extremism,” “anti-transgender groups,” and the successes of Joe Biden’s budget-busting American Rescue Plan.

The Poynter Institute, which holds itself out as a nonpartisan group of journalism experts, is using money from the Joyce Foundation, the Gill Foundation, and the Catena Foundation to fund classes for journalists across the country guiding them on how to cover topics such as “climate change” and “transgender medical care.” Some participants will then be paid grants, bankrolled by activist foundations, to write about particular topics for their employers.

Almost all the Beat Academy classes have an apparent political bias, often mirroring the activism of the funders. On February 1, for example, participants in the “Extremist Politics” session will “learn how to background candidates for extremist ties,” including on “school boards.” They will “gain access to extremism resources and researchers.”

Three participants will be awarded “$10,000 reporting grants” to write about “extremism.”

The next session on February 29 trains journalists to write articles criticizing Joe Biden from the left, saying, “Biden promised to make life better in disadvantaged and marginalized communities by targeting them with billions of dollars tied to climate change, affordable housing… and more. Is it working?” The panelists will explain “the forces and factors that eased and impeded the ability of deserving communities to access these funds.”

Two journalists will be paid a total of $20,000 to write articles heralding the successes of Biden’s massive spending package the American Rescue Plan: “Enrollees can apply for one of two $10,000 reporting grants to capture how certain communities have used the funds to good effect.”

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Biden Complains About Provision That Bans Pentagon From Contracting With Censorship Groups, “Fact-Checkers”

There are few things as jarring as a sitting US administration evoking the First Amendment (constitutional free speech protections) – while the purpose to all intents and purposes seems to be to actually undermine them.

In such cases, the hypocrisy doesn’t simply whisper. Here, it screams. And there have been many such instances over the years.

This is a new example: the Biden administration late last week approved the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the upcoming year.

One – for an “authoritative democracy,” provisions was that the US Defense Department would not be allowed to contractually work with certain groups, such as by now-infamous NewsGuard, and the free-speech-trampling Global Disinformation Index (GDI) – effectively out there working hard to silence opposition-leaning press in the US.

But then, as soon as the 2024 NDAA was signed by Biden late last week, the somewhat erratic president – or whoever is… advising him – pushed a different story to the public.

“While I am pleased to support the critical objectives of the NDAA, I note that certain provisions of the Act raise concerns,” reads a subsequent statement, signed by Biden.

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NewsGuard Is Selling Its Government-Funded Censorship Tool To Private Companies

The for-profit censorship giant NewsGuard is now selling its “Misinformation Fingerprints” technology to private companies to silence Americans’ speech — technology the federal government helped NewsGuard develop to the tune of nearly $750,000 in taxpayer funding. So while NewsGuard is now making headlines for trying to take down Elon Musk’s X, the bigger story concerns the federal government’s funding of the censorship-industrial complex.

NewsGuard launched a Thanksgiving-week attack on the social media company former known as Twitter, claiming some 200 ads from prominent advertisers appeared on feeds of users spreading lies about the Israel-Hamas war. Elon Musk returned fire, calling NewsGuard “a propaganda shop” that “uses these reports to pressure companies to buy their ‘fact-checking’ services.”

“It’s a profit over any principle model,” the X owner countered.

The verbal sparring between Musk and NewsGuard is likely to continue for some time, but the war on free speech being waged by NewsGuard extends much beyond X and is being subsidized by our tax dollars.

“In September 2021, NewsGuard was awarded a grant through the Small Business Innovation and Research program, which funds early-stage companies to develop products and technologies that can be helpful for government,” NewsGuard announced in its 2021 Social Impact Report. “Under the grant,” the report explained, “NewsGuard plans to further develop the Misinformation Fingerprints tool and test the effectiveness of the Fingerprints in detecting state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.”

Federal records show the Department of Defense funded the Small Business Innovation and Research program’s award of nearly $750,000 to NewsGuard for the further development and testing of the Misinformation Fingerprints tool. And according to NewsGuard’s 2021 Social Impact Report, its “Misinformation Fingerprints” catalog traced “762 false narratives,” “providing one-of-a-kind tracking seeds for the AI tools used by defense industry clients.”

By the following year, NewsGuard reported in its 2022 Social Impact Report that its “Misinformation Fingerprints” technology had accumulated 1,122 supposedly false narratives and been “deployed at scale” — including by social media companies. Since then, NewsGuard has highlighted the use of the Misinformation Fingerprints tool by social media companies “seeking to mitigate falsehoods on their platforms…”

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Microsoft and Meta Detail Plans To Combat “Election Disinformation” Which Includes Meme Stamp-Style Watermarks and Reliance on “Fact Checkers”

And so it begins. In fact, it hardly ever stops – another election cycle in well on its way in the US. But what has emerged these last few years, and what continues to crop up the closer the election day gets, is the role of the most influential social platforms/tech companies.

Pressure on them is sometimes public, but mostly not, as the Twitter Files have taught us; and it is with this in mind that various announcements about combating “election disinformation” coming from Big Tech should be viewed.

Although, one can never discount the possibility that some – say, Microsoft – are doing it quite voluntarily. That company has now come out with what it calls “new steps to protect elections,” and is framing this concern for election integrity more broadly than just the goings-on in the US.

From the EU to India and many, many places in between, elections will be held over the next year or so, says Microsoft, however, these democratic processes are at peril.

“While voters exercise this right, another force is also at work to influence and possibly interfere with the outcomes of these consequential contests,” said a blog post co-authored by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith.

By “another force,” could Smith possibly mean, Big Tech? No. It’s “multiple authoritarian nation states” he’s talking about, and Microsoft’s “Election Protection Commitments” seek to counter that threat in a 5-step plan to be deployed in the US, and elsewhere where “critical” elections are to be held.

Critical more than others why, and what is Microsoft seeking to protect – it’s all very unclear.

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US Government & NewsGuard Sued by Consortium News

The United States government and internet “watchdog” NewsGuard Technologies, Inc. were sued today in federal court in Manhattan for First Amendment violations and defamation by news organization Consortium for Independent Journalism, a nonprofit that publishes Consortium News.

Consortium News‘s court filing charges the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, an element of the Intelligence Community, with contracting with NewsGuard to identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from U.S. official positions on foreign policy. 

In the course of its contract with the Pentagon, NewsGuard is “acting jointly or in concert with the United States to coerce news organizations to alter viewpoints” as to Ukraine, Russia, and Syria, imposing a form of “censorship and repression of views” that differ or dissent from policies of the United States and its allies, the complaint says.  

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Hilarious: NBC News Instantly Exposed As Liars After Claiming They “Gained Access” To X Community Notes System

When NBC News published a hit piece claiming that Twitter/X’s Community Notes fact checking system rarely corrects posts and asserting that they “gained access” to the system, both claims were instantly revealed to be untrue… by Community Notes itself.

“Elon Musk has touted Community Notes as a way to fight false and misleading information on X,” NBC News tweeted.

The outlet then declared”@NBCNews gained access to the system, and found that on posts containing known misinformation, few posts were ever corrected. Many fact-checks were delayed.”

The claims were quickly revealed to be complete BS, hilariously by Community Notes.

One note reads, “NBC did not ‘gain access’ to any special Twitter system they merely had one of the many thousands of community notes contributors show them that some misleading posts had yet to have any notes added.”

It adds that “Any 6 month old account with a verified phone number can join the program.”

Another points out that it is completely erroneous to suggest some back room employee is approving notes, as implied by NBC.

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BBC’s disinformation correspondent and chief fact-checker Marianna Spring is accused of lying on her CV by falsely claiming to have worked with a Beeb journalist when applying for a job in Moscow

The BBC‘s disinformation correspondent is facing claims that she lied about her experience on her CV.

Marianna Spring, 27, shot to prominence with her reporting on the way social media has been used to peddle false information.

But she is now facing the embarrassing allegation that she gave misleading information herself –  one claim of working with a respected BBC correspondent – to try to secure work.

According to a report, about five years ago Ms Spring was trying to get work as a freelancer in Moscow for US-based news site Coda Story.

An article in The New European said when she applied to the website’s editor-in-chief Natalia Antelava in 2018, she said she had worked alongside BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford on covering the ‘perception of Russia’ during the 2018 football World Cup.

Her CV reportedly bragged: ‘June 2018: Reported on International News during the World Cup, specifically the perception of Russia, with BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford.’

According to The New European, Ms Antelava, a former BBC journalist herself, is said to have rebuked Ms Spring after checking out the claim.

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Google Likes To Say Fact-Checkers It Uses Are “Independent.” But It Also Funds Them.

In a world where censorship dons the cloak of fact-checking, the recent allocation of grants by the Global Fact Check Fund raises brows. The fund, which is a joint effort of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) housed at the Poynter Institute and the technology behemoth Google, along with its subsidiary YouTube, has been touted as a guardian of truth. With $875,000 in grants divided among 35 organizations across 45 countries, it aims to arm them with modern websites, manpower, and training to identify misinformation. However, the initiative comes with its own set of problematic undertones.

The broad strokes painted by the fund’s mission statement include terms such as “increasing quality, volume, frequency, scale, and impact of fact-checking abilities” – a seemingly lofty aim. The IFCN’s director, Angie Drobnic Holan, frames it as a crusade against misinformation, stating, “Misinformation is on the march in many parts of the world. This important funding will enable fact-checking organizations to become better at their work, stronger in their capabilities and wider in their reach.”

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