Prior to 2020 I didn’t even know there was such a thing as fact checker organistaions, yet I search the internet all the time.
It wasn’t until I watched a documentary-like video by a citizen researcher that reported how he awakened to Snopes being Fake. I didn’t even know who Snopes was. I knew Google and Facebook were censoring at this time, but it was after this video the I became aware of “fact checkers” – [WATCH @5min, the referenced Snopes ARTICLE]
When did Fact Checking begin?
Where did fact checkers come from, why did the start, why do they always use inflammatory, emotive words and phrases? Why is the public not able to discuss content and decide for themselves what is true and correct?
Why are “fact checkers” the alleged arbitrators of truth – self-appointed “watchdogs” of what is true and what is “fake news”? Who gave them that power? Will they morph into the “Ministry of Truth” for the encroaching digital currency, credit score sytem that threatens to control what we’re allowed to think and do?
From what I can tell “Fact Checking” went up a gear following Donald Trump announcing his presidential run in June 2015 and then went into overdrive from January 2020 when “coronavirus” hit!
This page a place to continuously add content to flesh-out the picture on Fact Checkers, to help make sense of the bigger picture and how they are involved in obfuscating and CENSORING information – keeping the unaware public blind and confused.
Legitimising the Fact Checker
There are way too many Fact Checker websites for me to explore…
…but the one’s I’ve looked at so far seem to have partnered with or receive certification from a couple of umbrella organisations to give the appearance that they are legitimate:
- The Trusted News Initiative which was born July 2019, where allegedly “independent” journalists report only a government sanctioned narrative. Big Tech platforms committed to do the same – TIMELINE
- The International Fact-Checking Network started in 2015 by the Poynter Institute
- Coronavirus Fact Alliance – also by the Poynter Insitute which formed in March 2020 – ARCHIVE
International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN)
In 2015, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a stated “non-profit journalism school and research organization” in the United States, launched the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which sets a code of ethics for fact-checking organizations. The IFCN reviews fact-checkers for compliance with its code, and issues a certification to publishers who pass the audit.” – WIKI
Many of the so-called “fact checking” websites gain “certification” from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) which Big Tech claim is ” independent”, “impartial”, “non-partisan” with an international network of fact-checkers. The purpose to identify and review content, call out “misinformation” and “take action on it”. –
IFCN – SIGNITORIES,
Code of Conduct – ASSESSORS
Facebook state: “To fight the spread of misinformation and provide people with more reliable information, Meta partners with independent third-party fact-checkers that are certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).” – REF
Poynter is part funded by Democracy Fund who’s priority is electronic voting systems! – They are part of the philanthropic The Omidyar Group. Curiously, the founders, Pam Omidyar, worked in an immunology lab in the late 80’s and her husband, Pierre Omidyar, is the software engineer who went on to found eBay! – REF, REF
Trusted News Initiative (TNI)
In June 2019, behind closed doors, Tony Hall, Director-General of the BBC held a Trusted News Summit at the BBC, which brought together global tech platforms and publishers. The goal was to arrive at a practical set of actions we can take together, right now, to tackle the rise of misinformation and bias – out of this was born the Trusted News Initiative (TNI) – REF
Together with “[m]ajor publishers, Google, Twitter and Facebook” who have “helped devise the scheme” on the back of “criticism of big technology firms … failing to do enough to prevent the spread of “false news”” and assist with fact checking. Together they intend to control information “from scares about vaccines to stories manufactured to influence elections.” – TIMELINE
Fact check sites in no particular order
This is not an exhuastive list
Politifact – HERE,
First archived 2007 – HERE, ALL
2007 – “PolitiFact, a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly….Our Truth-O-Meter will help voters sort fact from fiction in the [election] campaign[s]”- READ
Promoting “independent fact checking” – READ
“PolitiFact, a division of the Tampa Bay Times, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for its fact-checking of the presidential election. The Times, Florida’s largest newspaper, is independently owned by the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla.” – REF
Lead Stories – HERE
“Certification” – HERE
“Lead Stories is an innovative fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015” – ARCHIVE & HERE
“…we gradually shifted into full time fact checking ever since the primaries of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election”…[now] “we actively monitor the fake news ecosystem” [to coin President Trump’s phrase!] – REF
Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke co-founded Lead Stories after ending a 26-year career with CNN, where he mainly covered entertainment, current affairs and politics – REF
Powered by Trendolizer™ (patent pending in 2015) – Aggregating trending conntent – ARCHIVE
“Since February 2019 we are an active part of Facebook’s partnership with third party fact checkers.”
Since April 2020 Lead Stories has provided COVID-19 “fact checking related advice and services to ByteDance, the company running TikTok.”
Snopes – HERE
Curously archives stated 2021 – ARCHIVES
“Snopes is the internet’s definitive fact-checking resource”, “evidence-based and contextualized analysis” – ABOUT
In 2003 David Mikkelson and his ex-wife Barbara founded Bardav Inc – which owns the Snopes website – REF, The sites is now owned by Snopes Media Group – REF
Right Wing Watch: Disrupting Extremism, Defending Democracy – READ,
First archived 2006 “Taking action to defend demoncracy” – ARCHIVE, Started as “People For” in 2000 – REF
Ralph G. Neas – 1st President
Norman Lear – Founder – at over 100, he wants to defeat Trump (Hopefully through a democratic process!)
Email direct to People For the American Way (PFAW) – HERE
Science-Based Medicine (SBM) is entirely owned and operated by the New England Skeptical Society (NESS), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking – REF
SBM first post Jan 1, 2008 – HERE, with Anti-pseudoscientists authors Steven Novella (Neurologist), Wallace Sampson (oncologist), David H. Gorski (surgical oncologist, NIH-funded investigator and DOD funded researcher) et al – ARCHIVE, SBM was linked to NESS, and QuackWatch (linked to private, non-profit lobby organisation NCAHF)
NESS founded by Steven Novella, MD et al in January 1, 1996, as a non-profit organization to promote science and reason, the investigation of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims – REF, REF, ARCHIVE
NASS organising the global Skeptics – ARCHIVE
2008: Homeopathy was one of SBM’s first attacks (a 200 year old feud) – ARCHIVE, then AAPS for “stand against mandatory vaccination” – ARCHIVE, REF (by expert and prolific blogger Gorski, an oncologist! (where does Gorski find the time? Ghostwriter???) Gorski’s first post (besides his intro) was anti-anti-vaccination – READ, ARCHIVE)
Links about fact checkers in reverse chronological order
Links continuously being added
2024
April 3, 2023 – Disinformation Chronicle | Paul Thacker: Fake Physician Allison Neitzel Caught Running Real Medical Misinformation Site – Medical clown for “disinformation reporters” Brandzy Zadrozny at NBC and Kiera Butler at Mother Jones crashes her own disinformation circus.- READ
- “Allison Neitzel rocketed to national fame on CNN after graduating from the Medical College of Wisconsin and posting a letter on social media that accused Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers of spreading COVID misinformation.”
- “Neitzel is one in a legion of medical clowns the media launched into prominence during the pandemic because they served as useful idiots for “disinformation journalists” needing a quotable “expert” to bash people who dared question conventional COVID wisdom, or who charged that the government made phony claims about a lab accident in Wuhan, overstated the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, or lied about the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines.”
- Her website called Misinformation Kills.org, which the “URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine” [Hmmm], appears to have all pages deleted! The site now holds only an apology statment to “Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), Dr. Paul Marik, or Dr. Pierre Kory”. Screenshot HERE
- March 29, 2024 – FLCCC Doctors Receive Public Apology from Accuser Dr. Allison Neitzel – READ
2023
January 3, 2023 – Gateway Pundit: Another FAKE FACT-CHECKER Identified – Politifact’s Jeff Cercone “Fact-Checks” on COVID Despite Zero Credentials – READ, PolitiFact – BIO, Texas Lindsay THREAD
2022
December 24, 2022 – AP Fact Checker: No, COVID-19 vaccines aren’t gene therapy – READ, Reuters Fact Check (Aug 10, 2021) also – READ
- “CLAIM: The COVID-19 vaccines “are a gene therapy, NOT a vaccine.”
- AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The COVID-19 vaccines do not change a person’s genes, as gene therapy does, experts say…
- Actual FACT straight from Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Regulations: gene therapy simply is DNA or RNA “entering” the human cell, nothing is stated about integrating into nucleus, so by definition the mRNA products are “gene therapy” – IMG, MORE
- TGA: “gene therapy means the in vivo transfer of DNA or RNA into the cells of human recipients”
- The issue is TGA’s secretary Skerrit allowed the products to enter the “Provisional Registration” pathway as a “vaccine”, thus magically bypassing the “gene therapy” classification. Smoke and mirrors!
March 10, 2022 – Johns Hopkins Medicine: COVID-19 Vaccines: Myth Versus Fact – READ
Explore this website and you decide what is “fact” using JH topics:
- MYTH: The COVID-19 vaccine can affect women’s fertility – EXPLORE, EXPLORE
- MYTH: If I’ve already had COVID-19, I don’t need a vaccine – [Attack on natural immunity]
- MYTH: Researchers rushed the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, so its effectiveness and safety cannot be trusted – EXPLORE
- MYTH: Getting the COVID-19 vaccine means I can stop wearing my mask and taking coronavirus precautions
- MYTH: Getting the COVID-19 vaccine gives you COVID-19 [A positive PCR test = COVID-19, that is all you need! A depressed immune system, induced by the jab leaves one vulnerable to infection, which the vaccines don’t stop – EXPLORE]
- MYTH: The side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine are dangerous [Death is a side effect reported in the Pfizer documents – though simply dismissed as causal. Autopsies show spike protein with no nucleo capsid] – EXPLORE, EXPLORE, EXPLORE, CDC’s V-SAFE
- MYTH: The COVID-19 vaccine enters your cells and changes your DNA – EXPLORE
- MYTH: The messenger RNA technology used to make the COVID-19 vaccine is brand new [Moderna, BioNTech and Novavax all had never brought a product to market prior to their “accelerated” COVID-19 “vaccine”!]
- MYTH: The COVID-19 vaccine was developed with or contains controversial substances – EXPLORE
- MYTH: Now that we have a vaccine for COVID-19, we can make vaccines for the common cold, HIV and other diseases – EXPLORE
February 25, 2022 – National Pulse: Pfizer is Funding Facebook’s Fact-Checking Partner – READ
- Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. is sponsoring journalism training (Soros funded International Center For Journalists) programs utilized by Facebook to train its “fact-checking” partners and censor stories and posts critical of COVID-19 vaccines.
January 18, 2022 – American Though Leaders with Jan Jekielek: Sharyl Attkisson: How Propagandists Co-Opted ‘Fact-Checkers’ and the Press to Control the Information Landscape – WATCH,
- In 2016 Attkisson remembers “mainstream media outlets started to consistently use the term fake news to describe mostly conservative news stories that they deemed untrue” – READ
- “Virtually every piece of information that can be co-opted has been, whether it’s Wikipedia online, fact-checkers, the news,” says five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson. “This is all part of a very well-funded, well-organized landscape that dictates and slants the information they want us to have.”
- Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism – BOOK
January 10, 2022 – Post Millennial: REVEALED: AP source who ‘fact checked’ Mass Formation Psychosis theory encouraged ‘behavioral nudging’ people into Covid compliance, quoted Goebbels – READ, Re AP Fact Focus – READ, on Dr Malone’s interview with Joe Rogan
2021
December 30, 2021 – Fauci Admits COVID Hospitalization Numbers Are Bogus – WATCH – something Others Have Been Censored for Saying – READ, TIMELINE
December 23, 2021 – The Highwire Ep 247: FACEBOOK “FACT-CHECKERS” EXPOSED & how Del deals with Fact Checker News Guard – WATCH, FULL
- “After all the censorship, shadowbanning and warnings about misinformation, court documents now reveal that Facebook (now Meta) admit that their third-party fact checkers are only giving opinions on content”
December 14, 2021 – The Federalist: Facebook Quietly Admits Its Third-Party ‘Fact-Checks’ Are ‘Opinions’ – used to censor certain viewpoints – READ, NY Post – READ, Breaitbart – READ
December 13, 2021 – NY Post: Here’s where the ‘facts’ about me lie — Facebook bizarrely claims its ‘fact-checks’ are ‘opinion’ by John Stossel (who brought the lawsuit against Facebook/Meta) – READ, The Highwire – WATCH
December 1, 2021 – National Pulse: CONFLICT: Reuters Chairman is Pfizer Investor and Board Member – READ, Reuters is a member of the Trusted News Initiative – TIMELINE
- The chairman and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Thomson Reuters Foundation– James C. Smith – is a top investor and board member for pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer.
November 2, 2021 – BMJ Newsroom: Facebook urged to act over incompetent “fact check” of BMJ investigation – Facebook fact checks the British Medical Journal! – READ, Open letter – HERE, Regarding Pfizer whistleblower – Brook Jackson
- Editors at The BMJ are urging Facebook to correct a “fact check” of a recent investigation that they say is “inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.”
August 29, 2021 – Expose News: The Trusted News Initiative – A BBC led organisation censoring Public Health experts who oppose the official narrative on Covid-19 – READ
August 10, 2021 – Reuters Fact Check: mRNA vaccines are distinct from gene therapy, which alters recipient’s genes – READ, Forbes – READ, (also see Dec 24, 2022 above)
- “Vaccines that use mRNA technology are not gene therapy because they do not alter your genes, experts have told Reuters after contrary claims were posted online.”
- [Fact: mRNA doesn’t have to “alter your genes” to still legally be a classed as “gene therapy”, it simply needs to enter the human cell to fit the legal definition – IMG, The big issue is a “gene therapy” product was allowed to enter a regulatory pathway under the classification of “vaccine”, where “vaccine” has no definition!]
June 1, 2021 – How Meta’s third-party fact-checking program works – READ
- “Since 2016, our fact-checking program has expanded to include more than 90 organizations working in more than 60 languages globally. The focus of the program is to address viral misinformation…”
May 28, 2021 – The Highwire Ep 217:“FACT CHECKERS” EAT CROW ON COVID ORIGIN – WATCH, BACKUP, FULL
- “As liberal media rabidly attacked, discouraged and stifled any mention Covid-19 might have come from the lab in Wuhan, Politifact deemed it a conspiracy theory. But now as a cascade of evidence suggests, everyone, including Fauci is having to reverse their stance on the origins of the virus.”
May 27, 2021 – NY Post: Facebook’s lab-leak censors owe The Post, and America, an apology – READ
- “Think about it: If you were Xi Jinping, and you wanted to deploy an information-control operation over the origins of COVID-19, you couldn’t have done better than to just let Facebook, working in conjunction with America’s bottom-feeding “fact-checking” industry, do its thing.”
May 20, 2021 – Glenn Greenwald via Twitter: Fact-checking, like virtually everything the corporate media does to feign superiority, is a total scam: just another way for them to smuggle their own ideologically-driven disinformation and conspiracy theories under a more elevated facade – Re Lab Leak reversal – TWEET
- Re PolitiFact conspiracy theory about face – READ,
- Around the time Fauci’s admitted virus could have come from lab – READ
April 27, 2021 – Life Site News: Major vaccine ‘fact-checker’ funded by group headed by former CDC director with $1.9B in J&J stock – READ
- “Former director of CDC is now CEO of the foundation that funds FACTCHECK. org’s vaccine fact checking program. Roughly 15% of said foundation’s assets are J&J stock.” – Rep Thomas Massie – TWEET
March 22, 2021 – BBC Media Centre: BBC Trust in News: RISJ research suggests independent fact checking labels can help deter the spread of Covid-19 misinformation – READ
- BBC Academy launched its three day virtual Trust in News conference hosted by the Trusted News Initiative and announced new independent research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, funded by BBC World Service
February 22, 2021 – Amazing Polly: Critical Thinking Is Dangerous! Read Less To Learn More! New Research by “Experts!” – Let the fact-checkers teach you how ignorance is strength!! – WATCH
February 18, 2021 – New York Times | Opinion: Don’t Go Down the Rabbit Hole – Critical thinking, as we’re taught to do it, isn’t helping in the fight against misinformation – READ, Amazing Polly credit – WATCH
- Promoting Michael Caulfied’s “technique” uses Wikipedia as a credible authority source of information – because wiki tells you Robert F Kennedy Jr is an anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist! – Thus just move on from the article you may have been going to read in full!
- “Critical thinking, wrongly applied, can do real harm” – Michael Caulfield 2018 – READ
2020
October 17, 2020 – Logical Faction: Fact Checking the Fact Checkers – citizen journalist gets fact checked by Lead Stories/Facebook – WATCH, Fact checkers “debunked” this VIDEO which drew attention to Jeffery Epstein!
April 12, 2020 – BBC: Coronavirus: Bill Gates interview @bbcbreakfast4365 – WATCH [curiuosly this is unlisted]
- The BBC founded the Trusted News Inititative Yet their platform hosted Bill Gates who is NOT a doctor, scientist or public health exptert, but does have vested interests in vaccines, yet his opinion is “Trusted” on all things pandemic
March 30, 2020 – Doctor Mike Varshavski board certified family medicine phycisian interviews Dr. Fauci On COVID19 – WATCH, PhD Scientist Grades [“Fact Checks’] Fauci in this interview – Dr James Lyons-Weiler – WATCH
“Fauci is applying population science to a situation that needs individualised medicine”
Dr James Lyons-Weiler
March 27, 2020 – EBU: Trusted News Initiative announces plans to tackle harmful coronavirus disinformation – READ
- “The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) was set up last year to protect audiences and users from disinformation, particularly around moments of jeopardy, such as elections. Now…extend its efforts to identifying false and potentially harmful coronavirus information by putting in place a shared alert system”
March 22, 2020 – TikTok launch their COVID-19 safety center such as “Combatting medical misinformation” – READ, ARCHIVE
Febraury 6, 2020 – Poynter: Google, Facebook and Twitter could do more to surface fact-checks about coronavirus – READ
- “Between Jan. 22 and Feb. 5 [2020], 41 fact-checking organizations around the world have published 211 fact-checks about the 2019 coronavirus using ClaimReview, the infrastructure built by Schema.org to help fact-checks be surfaced by Google and used by social media platforms like Facebook.
Yesterday [Feb 5, 2020], Google also launched an SOS Alert [Crisis Response], in partnership with the World Health Organization.
January 28, 2020 – Poynter: Coronavirus: Fact-checkers from 30 countries are fighting 3 waves of misinformation – READ
January 24, 2020 – FactCheck.org: Social Media Posts Spread Bogus Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory – READ
January 2020 – Fighting the Infodemic: The #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance state that they launced Jan 2020, the first page archive is March 20, 2020 – ARCHIVE, READ
- “The IFCN launched the Alliance in January when the spread of the new coronavirus was restricted to China but already causing rampant misinformation globally. The World Health Organization now classifies this issue as an infodemic — and the Alliance is on the front lines in the fight against it.”
- By January 2021 they had about 100 fact-checkers around the world in publishing, sharing and translating facts surrounding the new coronavirus – ARCHIVE
2019
July 11, 2019 – The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is born – Beyond Fake News – “How news organisations can rebuild trust and tackle the next disinformation challenges.” – TIMELINE,
- TNI partners include: AP, AFP; BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU),Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, Microsoft , Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, The Washington Post, all heavily funded or have ties with Big Pharma companies aka the vaccine manufactures.
July 11, 2019 – BBC | Media Centre: Media Freedom: What is it and why does it matter? – Speech by Tony Hall, Director-General of the BBC to the FCO Global Conference on Media Freedom – READ, ARCHIVE
- “Last month I convened, behind closed doors, a Trusted News Summit at the BBC, which brought together global tech platforms and publishers. The goal was to arrive at a practical set of actions we can take together, right now, to tackle the rise of misinformation and bias.”
May 5, 2019 – Liberty Nation News: Poynter Institute Goes Down in Flames over Fake News – READ, NewsBusters – READ, Fox News – READ
- “Another self-appointed media “watchdog” has shown a shocking lack of awareness of its own bias while attempting to discredit conservative news sources
- “Establishment journalists anoint these watchdogs as authorities, and then the watchdogs declare that the establishment journalists are trusted news sources.”
Febraury 5, 2019 – Lead Stories Joins Facebook’s Third Party Fact Checking Partnership – READ
2018
2018 [?] – The News Talkers forum: Phony baloney: The 9 fakest fake-news checkers – READ
2017
July 27, 2017 – Daily Mail: ‘Fact checking’ website Snopes on verge of collapse after founder is accused of fraud, lies, and putting prostitutes and his honeymoon on expenses (and it hasn’t told its readers THOSE facts) – READ
July 26, 2017 – NPR: Who’s The True Boss Of Snopes? Legal Fight Puts Fact-Check Site At Risk – READ
- “Snopes laid the foundation for online fact-checking,” says Bill Adair, the founder of PolitiFact, a Pulitzer-prize winning offshoot of the Tampa Bay Times. “The site’s early work debunking urban myths showed there was a substantial digital audience that wanted accurate information.”
- “After he and his former wife, Barbara Mikkelson, divorced, she sold her 50 percent stake in Snopes and its parent company to five officers of Proper Media — as individuals.”
May 10, 2017 – Courthouse News Service: Fact-Checker Snopes’ Owners Accused of Corporate Subterfuge – READ
April 7, 2017 – Google: Fact Check now available in Google Search and News around the world – ARCHIVE
- Google, along with partners at Jigsaw, in October 2016 started enabling publishers to show a “Fact Check” tag in Google News for news stories. “This label identifies articles that include information fact checked by news publishers and fact-checking organizations.”
2016
October 13, 2016 – Google: Labeling fact-check articles in Google News – ARCHIVE
- Over the last several years, fact checking has come into its own. Led by organizations like the International Fact-Checking Network…” “Labeling types of articles” began 7 years prior to this date.
2015
July 13, 2015 – Lead Stories: Donald Trump Commands Social Nets In First Trendolizer Political Rankings – “…the inaugural Lead Stories’ Trendolizer Political Ranking” – READ, Trendolizer is the tool lead stories used to identify trending content.
- Donald Trump holds a commanding lead in the race for attention and interest on social networks , according to the inaugural Lead Stories’ Trendolizer Political Ranking compiled Monday, July 13, 2015
- Jeb Bush, who conventional wisdom ranked as the GOP frontrunner until Trump’s loud entrance, is at a distant 5th
- [As someone who is not American and never followed US politics before 2020, I find this a curious piece of information, so I’m adding it here. The first time the “Political Rankings” tool was used was one month after Donald Trump announced his intention to seek the 2016 Republican presidential nomination on June 16, 2015 – WATCH]
2013
Novmeber 1, 2013 – PolitiFact The Poynter Insititute: Welcome to PunditFact: A new home for fact-checking – READ
2012
September 29, 2012 – UK Column: Faux Facts – The disturbing Truth About fullfact.org – READ, “fact checker” Full Fact – HERE, FullFact described UK Column article as “consiracy theory” – ARCHIVE
