A post that dared to accurately point out that an Internal Revenue Service job posting required a willingness to use “deadly force” apparently triggered Facebook’s leftist fact-checking partners.
Both Meta companies Facebook and Instagram slapped The Heritage Foundation with a “Missing Context” label for posts that read: “ICYMI: ‘Be willing to use deadly force if necessary’ (The IRS edited this job listing yesterday).” An archived IRS article indicates that a job listing for “special agents” within the Criminal Investigation branch of the agency did in fact say that “major duties” required agents to “[c]arry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”
But leftist Facebook fact-checking partner Lead Stories constructed a straw man that Facebook and Instagram put under The Heritage Foundation’s posts. Fact-checkers rewrote the original job posting. An updated version of the job listing revealed that the “deadly force” language was edited out following major backlash. “Fact Check: IRS Is NOT Trying To Arm All Its Agents,” the Lead Stories headline blares.
The Heritage Foundation never said in its posts that the IRS was trying to arm “All” its agents, but inserting one’s own meaning into a benign post is convenient when Big Tech’s goal is to censor content that makes President Joe Biden look awful.
The Lead Stories article specifically targeted a Facebook post by the “pro-liberty youth organization” Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) that included a snapshot of the IRS “Criminal Investigation” job description. YAL included its own commentary along with the snapshot: “The IRS is hiring! It wants the government to arm its IRS agents and disarm its citizens. We’ll let everyone just marinate on that for a second.”
Lead Stories twisted the YAL post in an attempt to make it seem like the group was saying “all” IRS agents were required to be armed. “Is the IRS All its members should be armed employees?” asked Lead Stories. “No, that’s not true: A job posting from the IRS Criminal Investigation unit, which carries firearms, does refer to carrying firearms.”
In fact, Lead Stories propagandized, “the unit consists of only 2,100 law enforcement agents, according to a spokesperson.” How peachy. Facebook also plastered YAL’s post with a “Partly false information” label. [Emphasis added.]
Even though the controversy was severe enough for the IRS to edit the “deadly force” language out of the job description entirely, Lead Stories’ primary source to rebut the accuracy of the YAL post was … the IRS:
It isn’t unusual to find the job description of the Criminal Investigation Unit. [IRS spokesperson]Anny Pachner stated. This is the standard job description for federal law enforcement jobs, she stated. Lead Stories validated this statement by reviewing the FBI’s special agent job description.
But when Lead Stories apparently broached the stealth edit of the job post to eliminate the violent language, theYouRS just played dumb: “Lead Stories followed up with Pachner for information on why the ‘Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary’ line was removed from the C[riminal] I[nvestigation] unit special agent job description.Pachner assured us that she was looking into it. We will update this story with any response.” [Emphasis added.]
The Heritage Foundation is a member of MRC’s Free Speech Alliance.
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