Facebook teams with Soros-funded groups to ‘fake’ check news stories

by WorldTribune Staff, December 19, 2016

Facebook, in its effort to “fact-check” its news and ferret out “fake news,” has enlisted an organization funded by liberal billionaire George Soros and several other leftists to do the fact-checking.

Facebook announced on Dec. 15 that it will work with “third-party fact checking organizations” that are signatories to the code of principles of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

gty_facebook_newsfeed_mm_160202_12x5_1600IFCN, which is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Also providing financial backing to Poynter are the Omidyar Network and the Craig Newmark Foundation.

The Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, has partnered with the Open Society on numerous projects and it has given grants to third parties using the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides is one of the largest donors to left-wing causes in the U.S.

The Craig Newmark Foundation, the charitable organization established by Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark, donated $1 million to Poynter to fund a faculty chair in journalism ethics.

Facebook says that if the “fact checking organizations” determine that a certain story is fake, it will get flagged as disputed and, according to the Facebook announcement, “there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed.”

Poynter has hosted controversial journalism programs in the past, including one that was accused of downplaying the threat of global Islamic terrorism. FoxNews.com reported the course suggested reporters “keep the death toll from Islamic terrorism in ‘context’ by comparing that toll to the number of people killed every year by malaria, HIV/AIDS and other factors.”

The course taught reporters that the term “jihad” means internal struggle, and it discussed what it claimed was the issue of “right-wing activists” attempting to link American Muslims to terrorism.

The course in Islam, Fox News reported, was supported by a group calling itself the Social Science Research Council, which has received funding from Soros-financed groups.

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