Don’t Let The Left Define Fact-Checking – Opinion

On Monday, the Aspen Institute released a report from their Commission on Information Disorder (yes, that’s a real thing) in which they propose “structural changes” to “reduce information disorder”. Voici quelques-unes de ces suggestions:

At first glance this seems like an effort to push for reforms in Section 230 or anticompetitive behaviour
Big Tech’s “mea culpa” recommendations. https://t.co/6jszpAIjN9

— Capital Research (@capitalresearch) November 16, 2021

Any time an organization begins talking about creating new norms that carry consequences for violation, it’s a good idea to look into who that organization is. That’s where the Commission on Information Disorder and their purity of their agenda begins to fall apart.

The Jussie-Smollett hoax was promoted by a co-author of an Aspen Institute report on disinformation, even though it was obvious that it was a hoax. Below are some examples of his tweets. https://t.co/4R37w4l3Hn pic.twitter.com/bxI1W42QWg

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) November 16, 2021

Well, that’s not ideal. Nor is the fact that the Commission is co-chaired by “award-winning journalist Katie Couric” — who is no stranger to disinformation, most recently selectively editing comments by SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to fit an anti-NFL narrative.

And then there’s this:

The Twitter executive responsible for blocking stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop is one of several advisers to the Aspen Institute’s disinformation commission.

Yoel Roth is one of several questionable advisers to Aspen’s Commission on Information Disorder, which on Monday released its much-anticipated report. Commission members include Katie Couric, who recently acknowledged that she edited comments on National Anthem protests out of a 2016 interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to preserve the justice’s reputation with liberals. Another commissioner, Rashad Robinson, helped fuel actor Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax.

…

Roth, the head of site integrity at Twitter, blocked access to an Oct. 14, 2020, New York Post article regarding emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. Roth explained to the Federal Elections Commission that he had blocked the story because the intelligence community warned him about foreign governments releasing hacked material before the election. No evidence has emerged that Biden’s laptop was stolen or hacked, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has since acknowledged that the company should not have blocked links to the story.

The Aspen Commission report criticizes Twitter and other social media companies for failures to rein in disinformation but does not cite Twitter’s censorship of the Biden article.

It’s becoming so commonplace that industry fact-checkers are actually the most egregious abusers of fact there seems to be a new article detailing their abuses daily. One of the most amazing examples is this piece from BuzzFeed calling out Snopes’s co-founder for plagiarizing news articles while calling his work a fact-check. It seems problematic to use news stories as fact-checks of news reports.

David Mikkelson, the co-founder of the fact-checking website Snopes, has long presented himself as the arbiter of truth online, a bulwark in the fight against rumors and fake news. But he has been lying to the site’s tens of millions of readers: A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that between 2015 and 2019, Mikkelson wrote and published dozens of articles containing material plagiarized from news outlets such as the Guardian and the LA Times.

Snopes reviewed the information received from BuzzFeed News. They found that Mikkelson had published 54 articles that were plagiarized. These articles cover topics such as the death of David Bowie and same-sex marriage licences.

While most Americans now realize that bias is so pervasive it can create friendly commissions to appear to oversight, online censorship continues to exist until Congress takes a serious look at their responsibility in dealing with anti-competitive practices of tech moguls who are in alliance with progressives. This Tuesday tweet from Senator Ron Johnson is just one of the latest examples of how “fact-checking” works in practice.

This year’s fifth annual event. @YouTubeI am being censored from speaking the truth.

The vaccine injury is not going to be the only one who hears 3.5 hours of tales from scientists, doctors, and other medical professionals.

You can at least see it from your home. @rumblevideohttps://t.co/IBOcjxZyu9

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) November 13, 2021

And now with the report from the Aspen Institute, the effort to make this version of “fact-checking” a best practice standard is in full swing. Congress would do well to not accept the Institute’s suggestions and work to find their own solutions to address censorship online.