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The initial goal of Google's fact-checking feature was not to protect readers from fake news, but rather to give momentum to the mainstream media amid the Western public's unwillingness to accept their monopoly on objectivity, the Vice-President of the Movement for Changes (MfC) and Montenegrin parliamentarian Koca Pavlovic told Sputnik on Tuesday.

On Friday, Google said in an official blog post that the company had launched the feature, to be available worldwide, in which news and results of searches would be evaluated by such mainstream media outlets as The Associated Press, the BBC, the CNN and The Washington Post.

"The problem is not that the Western public has suddenly succumbed, en masse, to the spell of 'alternative facts' promoted by 'fake news' outlets like Breitbart and The Daily Mail. The problem is, rather, that Western public is less and less ready to accept the mainstream media's posture of objectivity and its claimed monopoly on journalistic opinion-making," Pavlovic said.

The lawmaker drew attention to the fact that the mainstream media, which claim that alternative news sources wreak havoc by spreading 'fake news,' used that very same 'fake news' while covering the supposed presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the early 2000s, as well as the most recent US presidential election.

"The notion that the mainstream media has, at any given point in its recent history, been less propagandistic, less agenda-driven, less willing to camouflage its particular ideological narrative as a collection of neutral facts and, in turn, to dismiss those who challenge its narrative as not merely wrong but factually mistaken, is a convenient delusion," Pavlovic added.

Pavlovich speculated that Google's fact-checking feature would not achieve its desired effect and would instead only provoke irritation among those people who prefer to distinguish truth from lies on their own.

Google stated that the fact-checking feature was introduced as a part of its efforts to help combat the spread of misinformation and fake news. Fact checks would not be provided by the company itself and would instead use fact-checking findings from such web sources as PolitiFact and Snopes.

According to Google's blog the international fact-checking community currently consists of 115 organizations including The Guardian newspaper, The New York Times newspaper, BBC and CNN broadcasters, Associated Press news agency, NBC News broadcaster.