The legal definition of a fact is:"Something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information"
Like reality and truth, a fact is absolute. It never changes, it is immutable and eternal. Our understanding of the facts may differ because we only have the available evidence to inform our knowledge of the facts. The availability of evidence is vital if we are to have any hope of knowing the facts. Our access to evidence doesn't change the facts, it merely limits or expands our knowledge of them."An actual and absolute reality, as distinguished from mere supposition or opinion; a truth, as distinguished from fiction or error."
The definition of knowledge is:
Access to information is the key component for developing knowledge of the facts. Knowledge doesn't mean we always get the facts right, but we have no chance if information is limited or deliberately restricted."[Noun]...awareness, understanding, or information that has been obtained by experience or study, and that is either in a person's mind or possessed by people generally."
Vital Access to Information
The same is true with current affairs and public issues. The facts are fixed but our knowledge of them is determined by our access to information. Information is subject to many competing forces. Censorship, propaganda, commercial interest, fabrication, omission and basic human error all combine to distort, obfuscate or over emphasise information (evidence). This makes knowing the facts about contemporary public issues just as tricky as knowing the historical facts, often more so.
Fortunately, we can all employ critical thinking skills, cross reference the evidence from various sources and decide the facts for ourselves. Thanks to the current iteration of the internet, the logical pursuit of information, forming our own balanced judgments of the facts, has never been more accessible for ordinary folk. The process called thinking is the service the fact checkers are selling.
Fact checkers claim their knowledge of the information (evidence), which identifies fact, is both complete and indisputable. They are certain about what happened, thoroughly understand all the relevant circumstances, have a complete grasp of reality, knowledge of all the relevant information and are accurately able to determine what is fact.
In short, they say they possess the truth. If you disagree with them, you don't know the truth and are therefore wrong, regardless of the evidence you cite.
If you rely upon the fact checkers for your facts you must accept this. You no longer need to think critically or examine the evidence yourself. The fact checkers will do the hard work for you. They will tell you what the information is, give you your knowledge and cement the facts in your mind. All you need do is "Google it."
What Do Fact Checkers Do?
The State has decided people are incapable of critical thinking and can't tell the difference between facts and disinformation. Further, they propose legislation that will fundamentally change the nature of the internet. It is in this political environment that fact checkers have been commissioned to discern the facts and present the truth to the confused public.
In 2014 there were just 44 Fact checkers worldwide. As of June 2019 there were 188. While the whole of Africa, Asia, Australasia and South America have 67 fact checkers between them, the much smaller geographical and less populated regions of Europe and North America have 121. So there must be more incorrect information in the U.S. and Europe than anywhere else in the world.
Some independent fact checkers, such as the UK's Full Fact, have been given charity status. The UK Charity commission accepted Full Fact's charitable purpose:
"To provide free tools, advice, and information so that anyone can check the claims we hear about public issues."
Fact Checking?
Recently Facebook announced that its subsidiary Instagram was working with fact checkers to deploy a rating system. They will apply a rating "label" to all information as either true, partly false or false. Information rated as partly false or false will then be removed from search results and associated hashtags denied. Once the label is activated Facebook and Instagram bots seek out all "matching" content and label it accordingly. Thus effectively removing the offending information from the public domain.
The public will then be redirected to the correct information:
"Credible sources", as far as most International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) fact checkers are concerned, often means the mainstream media (MSM) who they cite while seemingly oblivious to the MSM's never ending stream of fake news output.".....If something is rated false or partly false on Facebook, starting today we'll automatically label identical content if it is posted on Instagram (and vice versa). The label will link out to the rating from the fact-checker and provide links to articles from credible sources that debunk the claim(s) made in the post."
Independent Fact Checkers?
For fact checkers to have any credibility they need to be scrupulously unbiased, thoroughly independent and as objective as possible. Any evidence that they are not means they are not fact checkers at all but rather political organizations that offer an opinion. If they are paid by people or groups with clear agendas then they have no credibility and everything they say needs to be treated with caution. We would still need to exercise due diligence and examine the evidence ourselves to establish if the fact checkers opinions are indeed facts.
When the UK Government Foreign and Commonwealth Office established the Open Information Partnership (the Expose Network) they suggested their network of actors use approved fact checking services, such as Full Fact in the UK, who are members of Poynter's International Fact Checking Network (IFCN). Poynter's major funders include the Charles Koch Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Omidyar Network (Luminate), Google and the Open Society Foundation.
Full Fact, for example, list their corporate members to include the City of London Corporation (the UK financial sector and a global center for international finance), the global corporate law firm King & Wood Malleson, St Jame's Place Wealth Management (a huge global capital investment firm), and the defence contractor Rolls Royce. Their funding partners include Google, The Omidyar Network and the Open Society foundation. They even wrote a policy proposal paper called "Tackling Misinformation In an Open Society."
BBC Fake Documentary To Promote War
Chair of the board of trustees is Conservative Party donor Michael Samuel and he is joined by fellow Conservative Lord Inglewood and Labour Peer Baroness Royal. The political establishment is well represented when it comes to making sure we have the right facts.
Another Full Fact trustee is Lord Sharkey Liberal Democrat Peer and former strategic adviser to once UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Clegg joined Facebook in October 2018 to become Facebook Head of Global Affairs. In January 2019 Full Fact became approved third party fact checkers for Facebook and in September 2019 Nick announced that Facebook won't "fact check" politicians in the same way that it fact checks the general public. Speaking of Facebook's approach to the political class Clegg said:
Obviously this carte blanche doesn't extend to the general public. Presumably because we are all disinformation agents."From now on we will treat speech from politicians as newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard."
Another Full Fact trustee Tim Gordon was also an advisor to Nick Clegg. He co founded Best Practice AI which was the first UK AI firm invited to join the World Economic Forum's Global AI Council (GAIC). The GAIC bring together representatives from tech giants including Microsoft , IBM and Google's Chinese division with British government ministers, such as former Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Jeremy Wright, who attending their council meeting in 2019.
GAIC is one of six WEF global councils focused upon technology and the fourth industrial revolution. Their stated purpose is:
So as Full Fact rolls out automated AI fact checking, fully funded by regular WEF attendees Pierre Omidyar and George Soros, with the full support of GAIC members Google, it is good to know these projects are rooted firmly in Full Fact's independence. As they only report the facts they state on their website:"....to provide policy guidance and address governance gaps."
"Bad information" is information that questions government policy agendas and harms globalist interests. These interests are defined for government by global institutions like the World Economic forum, where government ministers attend to get their orders. Independent, in Full Fact speak, must mean "employed by global corporations and oligarchs.""Full Fact fights bad information. We're a team of independent fact checkers and campaigners who find, expose and counter the harm it does."
The extensive political, intelligence, non governmental and globalist network steering Full Fact is by no means unique to them. A cursory glance at the supporters of the other fact checking signatories to the IFCN reveal a similar web of globalist and corporate interests in practically every case. The IFCN, and its members, are paid by people with overt political, financial and social agendas. Independence is non existent and consequently the fact checkers claims of objectivity need to be treated accordingly. They have no credibility at all.
Not Fact Checking
Get Your Facts Straight
The engineering department of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) undertook a 4 year long study into the collapse of WTC7. The UAF report is currently open to peer review and cites the evidence it is based upon. It was published in draft form in mid September 2019 and the findings were officially announced at the same time. It categorically states:
The UAF study represents the most thorough, up to date, scientific analysis of the collapse of WTC7. Incomplete peer review of the UAF report is no reason for AP Fact Check to ignore it. The NIST report, the sole source for the fire collapse theory, has never been peer reviewed. Anyone using AP Fact Check to check the facts about the collapse of WTC7 would be wrong if they believed AP Fact Check. AP Fact Check haven't got their facts straight.".....fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse."
This is a common problem with so called fact checkers. Due to the political nature of their role, all too often they stray into opinion rather than fact. There's nothing wrong with that except the fact checkers falsely claim their opinions are facts not opinions. What's worse is that the Internet is being policed and information censored on the basis that the fact checkers opinions are facts.
In January this year the HighWire released a video which contrasted clips of Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist for the World Health Organisation (W.H.O). The Video was titled "W.H.O. Chief Scientist Caught Lying To The Public." There was no commentary in the Highwire video, viewers were simply presented with the two clips of Dr. Swaminathan. It was left to the viewers discretion to decide if they believed Dr. Swaminathan was, in fact, lying.
In the first clip, from an official W.H.O. vaccine promotional video, Dr. Swaminathan states:
The second clip records Dr. Swaminathan's address to the U.N. Global Vaccine Safety Summit in 2019. She informs the summit:"We have vaccine safety systems. Robust vaccine safety systems.... [The] WHO works closely with countries to make sure that vaccines can do what they do best: prevent disease without risks."
These two mutually exclusive statements cannot both be true. If one is, the other is a lie. Vaccines cannot both "prevent disease without risks" while "deaths....have occurred due to a particular vaccine." The intention to deceive is an evident fact. Yet Facebook's automated fact checking labeling system flagged the video as 'PARTLY FALSE' and directed users to two articles from two credible sources which both presented specious, illogical arguments to discredit the factually accurate HighWire video.".....We really don't have very good safety monitoring systems in many countries.....we're not able to give clear-cut answers when people ask questions about the deaths that have occurred due to a particular vaccine.....One should be able to give a very factual account of what exactly has happened and what the cause of deaths are, but in most cases, there is some obfuscation at that level."
Creating Truth Policy
Facebook removed the FALSE label shortly after receiving the protest letter, without explanation or apology. They clearly accepted their fact checking wasn't checking any facts at all, simply censoring factually accurate information. However, in the fast paced modern information environment, the damage was done, and the political objective achieved.
This is not fact checking. This is political opinion masquerading as fact checking, deceiving the public into believing something is factually accurate (or inaccurate) when, in fact, it isn't.
Poynter and the IFCN also confuse their opinion with fact. In May 2019 Poynter were forced to issue an apology, of sorts, to a number of media organisations after they issued an index of 'unreliable' media sources. When some of the listed organisations inquired about the basis for Poynter's unfounded accusations, requesting Poynter and the IFCN provide some evidence to back up their claims, Poynter quickly removed the suggested "blacklist."
Poynter's IFCN make a great deal out of their fact checking principles so it's a shame they didn't apply any when they issued their blacklist. Poynter's managing editor, Barbara Allen, said the purpose of the blacklist was as follows:
".....to provide a useful tool for readers to gauge the legitimacy of the information they were consuming......We began an audit to test the accuracy and veracity of the list, and while we feel that many of the sites did have a track record of publishing unreliable information, our review found weaknesses in the methodology. We detected inconsistencies between the findings of the original databases that were the sources for the list and our own rendering of the final report."
When requested to evidence their decision the IFCN, guardians of the fact checking industry, couldn't provide any. They had no relevant information, had no evidence to back up their opinion and were simply stating something as a fact when it was nothing of the sort.
Just because an organisation claims they are a fact checker it doesn't mean they check facts. They are essentially establishment stooges whose role it is to police information and make sure the wider public doesn't have access to any evidence that challenges official narratives and policy decisions. These fallible groups of people, no better informed than anyone else, are being used by the internet giants, at the behest of government, to censor what we can say online.
Let's ignore the establishment's fact checkers and hang on to our critical thinking skills for a while. It looks like we are going to need them more than ever.
Comment: See more about the well known US-based "fact checking" Snopes:
- Concerning survey finds too many people believe Snopes is a legitimate fact-checking website
- Fact-checking the 'fact-checkers': Politifact and Snopes flagged just 4% of fake news items coming out of Mueller's witch hunt
- Quillette founder slams Snopes for casting doubt on Andy Ngo's credentials
- Snopes to debut a 'factually inaccurate but morally right' fact checking system
And do not miss Sott.net's own response to some outright biased "fact checking":Warning: Do NOT Read This! NewsGuard 'News Rating Agency' Gives SOTT.net Red 'Fake News' Label