There is a concerted manner in which the Left Cabal, in concert with their Big Business masters, prop up dubious networks and groups in order to hijack a particular phenomenon in order to sustain their monopoly over the narrative. The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) is one such effort.
During the early days of social media, and for a long time afterwards, it was organic and there were very few rules and regulations. The organic structure of social media allowed people to voice their own thoughts freely and dominance of mainstream media over public discourse was demolished bit by bit.
Thus, we saw the rise of Prime Minister and Donald Trump, who despite their numerous differences in personality, used social media effectively in order to reach people directly and thereby, boosted their campaigns greatly.
The mainstream media was shocked by the development and their resultant irrelevance. Therefore, they had to try and hijack control back from the people. Thus, social media platforms enforced numerous rules and regulations to boost censorship, all the while cheered on by journalists themselves.
In order to further strengthen their hold, the specter of ‘fake news’ was invented in order to target their political opponents. The real concern was not fake news, clearly. Because mainstream media is the biggest peddler of fake news.
The Specter of Fake News
In India, we have consistently documented the numerous times when mainstream media has peddled fake news in order to peddle the political agenda of their masters. In the USA, the most dangerous fake news over time have been peddled by the likes of CNN, NYT and Washington Post.
For instance, the Russian collusion hoax was dangerous fake news that has led to significant tensions between two of the biggest nuclear powers. Then we had the Kavanaugh hoax where the media provided platform to charlatan Michael Avenatti to spread fake news in order to boost his own political career.
Then we had the Covington Kids hoax in which a major news channel had to settle a legal suit by a student who was portrayed as a ‘White Supremacist’ by the media over a misleading video clip of an altercation. Thus, quite clearly, ‘fake news’ is not the primary concern here.
But, in order to regain their hold over public discourse, the Left Cabal in concert with their masters floated the IFCN whose primary job it is to accredit ‘fake checkers’ of their favoured political dispensation.
The bias of IFCN
One of the ‘fact checkers’ they had accredited was Alt News, whose founders have a significant record of peddling fake news themselves. Their ideological orientation is well documented as well. Recently, they had justified Islamist Sharjeel Usmani celebrating the death of Rohit Sardana because of political differences.
Another IFCN-accredited ‘fact-checker’ Boom Live, too, has a track record of peddling fake news. Boom Live, in one such instance, peddled a conspiracy theory about Justice Muralidhar’s transfer days after it was transferred.
IFCN has denied accreditation to media houses in the past due to nothing more than disagreement over politics. OpIndia and Facthunt were denied accreditation citing reasons that undeniably bore the taint of bias. Our complete response can be read here.
That they have little regard for fact-checks in and of themselves is further evidenced by the fact that fact-checker accredited by them regularly peddle fake news themselves and dub true events as fake.
What happens when IFCN accreditation for research purposes?
In November, 2018, BBC came up with a shoddy research to blame Nationalism for the rise in fake news. Ultimately, they were forced to backtrack after OpIndia published a series of article debunking their ‘research’.
One of the main reasons why the BBC got it so wrong is the fact that they relied on biased fact-checkers for their research. The bias crept in because they relied on IFCN accredited ‘fact-checkers’ for their research.
Thus, what happens when researchers rely on IFCN for research purposes? They end up reaching faulty conclusions that eventually forces them to pull down their research in their entirety. The BBC research has several other flaws but one of the primary ones was their reliance on biased sources of fake news.
IFCN is not designed for an authentic mechanism to curb fake news. Its sole purpose is to assist the Left cabal in maintaining their grip over public discourse under the garb of fighting ‘fake news’. Thus, it is extremely dangerous that Facebook partners with only IFCN accredited ‘fact checkers’ to combat fake news.
Twitter, too, has relied on such ‘fact checkers’ to dub tweets as ‘manipulated media’, which continues to be a cause for concern. It is also to be noted that the Poynter Institute, which owns the IFCN, also owns the Tampa Bay Times, a media outlet which endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of the United States of America in 2016.
