No. of Recommendations: 3
But there was nothing to establish their claim of possessing the skills to make such judgements. Granted they did have a system they explained very well that subjectively rated a publisher on a number of metrics and then mathematically combines these ratings into a final score. But at the root of it were subjective scores, assigned by humans of unknown bias, to various criteria. That was more or less the end of the trail.
I will give MBFC some credit for designing what appeared to be a decent methodology, but nothing to convince me their conclusions are dispositive.That's how it's supposed to look: a bunch of hopelessly biased people get together, create a framework, and then go forth and demonstrate confirmation bias on an industrial scale. Let's look at the track record of the "fact checkers". I already provided a very recent example of Snopes face-planting itself:
Let's start with NPR, who you know will soft-peddle this and/or turn it into an "icky conservatives pounce" thing:
https://www.npr.org/2012/01/10/144974110/political...HEMINGWAY: Well, there's a number of reasons why I arrived at that conclusion. One of the facts I pointed out in the piece was that the University of Minnesota School of Public Affairs had actually done a survey of PolitiFact, and they evaluated all 500 statements that PolitiFact had rated from January of 2010 to January of 2011.
And they found that of the 98 statements that PolitiFact had rated false, 74 of them were by Republicans. Now, I can think of a number of reasons why you might cite one party over the other more, in terms of, you know, who was telling the truth and who wasn't. But doing that at a rate of three to one strikes me as awfully suspicious, particularly when, if you delve into the specifics of the statements that they cited, there's all kinds of problematic things contained there, whereas they are, you know, like you're mentioned, they're often fact-checking opinions and providing counter-arguments to, you know, stated opinions.This is how the left does it: you offer an opinion, and they fact-check your opinion with some bogus misdirection or 2 to either change the subject or paint you as a misinformation specialist. This is how ChatNPC made his bones back on Political Asylum. He'd literally respond to every thread with some irrelevant fact that did nothing to advance any kind of argument - he'd just do it to present it in a way to try to discredit whoever he was responding to. He'd be responding to a post about, say, how deep the water was in the port of New York with some snide remark that "You know, 2+2=4, not 6". All the PA seals would bark in applause. One has zero to do with the other, but that wasn't the point. The disruption was.
but back to NPR. As I said, they try their best NPR-BS way to soft peddle this, but Hemingway isn't having it:
CONAN: Mark Hemingway, checking matters of fact would seem to be a useful exercise.
HEMINGWAY: Absolutely, and I don't think anybody's against checking the actual fact. It's just that it comes down to, you know, like what you mentioned before, where you have situations where, you know, you have debates that are far too nuanced to say this is, you know, correct or this is incorrect.
And it just becomes this thing where, you know, one person's presenting an opinion, but because you have this pseudo-scientific marketing gimmick, where you're saying it's false, or you're assuming someone's intent or, you know, no disrespect to Glenn, you know, the Pinocchio itself does sort of imply lying and intent and other things like that.LOL.
Now let's get into investigating the "fact checkers" these guys like to brag about. One of America's
best investigative journalists is Sharyl Atkisson. Here's her column on this (no libs, I could care less where it appears. Her credibility is legendary)
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/08/10/investigati...That discord is likely to persist because in large part the fact-checking solution is illusory. Many such efforts fail because they amount to a circular feedback loop of verification. The fact-checkers are like-minded journalists or often liberal Silicon Valley gatekeepers, who frequently rely on partisan news sources and political activists to control narratives on a wide variety of issues and controversies. This small group of players exerts an oversized influence, using fact checks to shape and censor information.Yup. 100%.
For now, the trend to “fact-checking” information the public accesses online and on the news is gaining momentum approaching the 2020 election. The evidence indicates the backgrounds and interests of those involved in the effort are serving to complicate rather than purify an increasingly fact-challenged information landscape.it's not gotten any better since then.
