We live in an era where even fact checkers require fact checks.
Facebook has partnered with a number of third-party so-called “fact checkers” due to what they call their commitment “to fighting the spread of misinformation on Facebook.”
Once a Facebook independent fact checkers rates a claim false, every page that has shared that information receives a warning, and their page’s traffic can be throttled as punishment. If their “fact checking” was implemented honestly, MSNBC and CNN wouldn’t even be on their platform anymore.
While Facebook’s fact checkers may occasionally warn of legitimate concerns about fake news posting, those legitimate fact checks seem to serve the purpose of cloaking the purely ideological “fact checks” that they implement far more often.
ACV Reports has previously documented how Politifact routinely has rated objectively true reporting as false in an attempt to squash conservative narratives. To give just an example at recent claims they rated false:
In response to the claim that New Jersey and New York have five times as many coronavirus deaths per capita as Florida, the “fact checker” noted that the claim was true, before rating the claim false under the basis that it could change in the future.
Dan Bongino reported that California has six extra Representatives due to illegals being counted in the Census. The “fact checker” didn’t bother to interact with the data from the source, and instead quoted an anonymous professor as saying that California may have four extra Representatives due to illegals. Bongino’s claim was rated “mostly false” when all that was disputed was the extent of how true it was.
Several media outlets, including this one, reported that violent crime in South Bend Indiana doubled under Pete Buttigieg’s tenure as Mayor, and the fact checker made an unsupported statement that the definition of violent crime changed under Buttigieg. The fact checker then did no actual work to quantify what the adjusted numbers would look like (presumably because he doesn’t know how and his reasoning for rating the claim false effectively amounted to “crime went up a lot – but it probably didn’t double.”
Another claim, again reported by Bongino, reported in an article by staff writer Jeremy Frankel was rated false by one of Facebook’s fact checker “Lead Stories.” And as usual, the claim was true.
A claim repeated in an article by danbongino.com staff writer Jeremy Frankel was rated false by Facebook fact checker “Lead Stories.” And as usual, the claim was true. (Photo: bongino.com)
The report included a Twitter video of Nancy Pelosi admitting that China would prefer Joe Biden be president. It was not the opinion of Pelosi, but a repeat of what the intelligence community has stated. Frankel quoted the relevant part of that report from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in his article: “We assess that China prefers that President Trump — whom Beijing sees as unpredictable — does not win reelection.”
The report goes on to discuss how China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China.
The article includes the Twitter post from Francis Brennan’s account that shared the video of Pelosi saying to Dana Bash: “[T]he Chinese… what they said is [that] China would prefer [Biden]. Whether they do, that’s their conclusion. That they would prefer Joe Biden.”
This information was initially reported by the National Pulse – and because Frankel quoted their reporting, Bongino.com was also flagged as part of the “fact check.”
Brennan’s post is screen-captured below, and the video is still available on his account:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with inexplicable pride, told CNN’s Dana Bash that “China … would prefer Joe Biden” for president. What makes Democrats think the American people would want the candidate that China prefers? (Photo: Twitter capture from @FrancisBrennan)
So how in the world is this “false”? To start, the alleged fact checker Sarah Thompson at Lead Stories (which recently announced a partnership with the CCP-linked TikTok) basically just attempts to fact check the National Pulse’s headline “WATCH: Pelosi Confirms China Would Prefer Joe Biden.“
In other words, Thompson is saying it’s false to say that Pelosi said China would prefer a Biden presidency, because Pelosi is acknowledging an intelligence report stating that China would prefer a Biden presidency. This is nitpicking, not “fact checking,” and it’s ludicrously stupid.
Thompson then provides additional context to Pelosi’s comments in that exchange that don’t actually change anything. In fact, all the additional “context” does it show Pelosi attempting to deflect attention away from China’s opposition to Trump by arguing that election meddling by Russia is worse.
Thompson then hilariously tries to argue that because the intelligence report doesn’t explicitly state that China wants Biden to win, but rather that they want Trump to lose, that the Chinese thus aren’t endorsing Biden. Perhaps she thinks they are voting third-party?
This comes just paragraphs after we were told that it’s false to report that Pelosi is saying the quiet part out loud and claiming that China would prefer Biden become president, because it was an intelligence report that made the claim first.
I would say “you can’t make this stuff up” — but it seems that Thompson indeed doesn’t have any problem making stuff up.
These social media “fact checkers” are nothing more than shills for the Marxist agenda of one-party rule by the Democrats. The damage they are doing to open debate and a free exchange of ideas will hasten the demise of the Democracy we have and give rise to the police state we fear, if freedom of speech and freedom of expression are not soon restored.
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