Why revelations about fact-checker bias matters

 Why revelations about fact-checker bias matters

TOM KNIGHTON

It seems that something we already suspected about so-called fact-checkers turned out to be accurate. They’re biased as hell.

Now, in and of itself, that’s normal. People are biased in general, especially about anything they’re remotely familiar with. The more you understand a subject, the more likely you are to have biases.

Generally speaking, of course.

With fact-checkers, you’d hope to see some signs of neutrality. While it’s difficult to know what those signs would be in many cases, one that would show some degree of neutrality for the industry would be a fairly even sign of people making donations to both parties.

It seems that would be too much to ask.

Nearly 100 percent of political donations from self-identified fact checkers—including those whose employers claim journalistic neutrality—go to Democrats, a Washington Free Beacon analysis of federal campaign finance disclosures found.

The Free Beacon reviewed political donations over the past four election cycles from those who identified their occupation as "fact checker." $22,580 of the $22,683 in political donations that came from self-identified fact checkers during that time—a whopping 99.5 percent—went to Democrats and liberal groups. Only three of the fact checker donations made during that period went to Republicans. Top recipients include socialist Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who during the seven-year period received ten times more fact checker money than every Republican combined.

The findings contradict claims of neutrality from top fact-checking operations. Fact checkers for the New York Times and Reuters, for example, contributed to President Joe Biden, failed South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Jaime Harrison, and liberal Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign. The Times fact checker, Cecilia Nowell, contributed three times to Warren's failed presidential bid from 2019 to 2020 and still accepts "fact-checking assignments" from the outlet on a freelance basis, according to her LinkedIn. Reuters, meanwhile, from 2020 to 2021 employed Carrie Monahan, daughter of veteran journalist Katie Couric, as a "fact check producer." Monahan during that time contributed to Biden, Harrison, and Georgia Democratic senator Jon Ossoff.

Both the Times and Reuters say they approach fact checking in an unbiased and balanced manner. Those organizations and others, however, have a long history of botched fact checks on high-profile conservatives.

Now, it would be easy to say, “So what?”

However, you shouldn’t.

For better or worse, fact-checking is something a lot of people look for. They want the truth, not the spin. So, they hear something and then run to places like Snopes, Reuters, or the New York Times to see if the claim is true.

Then, these people who are in a position where people perceive them as neutral provide the very thing people are trying to get away from: Spin. They’re just doing it in a way that looks unbiased.

Next, those people internalize that fact-check and use those talking points authoritatively.

Social media sites like Facebook use those fact-checks to flag certain things as false, even if they’re verifiably true. For example, I know of one critique of Vice President Kamala Harris during the campaign that was flagged as fake news despite being composed of actual quotes.

Sure, the site challenged it and got the fact-check removed, but not until a couple of days after the post came out—well out of the “sweet spot” for attracting readers.

The biased nature of the fact-checkers, particularly coupled with the Silicon Valley biases on social media, conspire to present only one side of any debate as true, tilting public perception regardless of pesky things like reality.

It takes these biases and amplifies them until that’s literally all anyone hears.

As a result, it lays the foundation for controlling the minds of the voters, guiding them to vote a certain way because only one side is apparently capable of telling the truth at all.

Don’t get me wrong, the individuals in question have a right to support literally anyone they want to. However, they don’t get to be free of criticism for their lack of neutrality on the very subjects they’re paid to evaluate.

No, the fault of this is the fact-checking industry itself for failing to make any effort to keep itself neutral by providing various viewpoints in evaluating claims.

But it’s hard not to figure that’s by design, now isn’t it?

https://tomknighton.substack.com/p/why-revelations-about-fact-checker