By Craig Stuart

Is Fact-checking now an integral part of online journalism? If so, what exactly is it? How does it work? More importantly, what impact is it having on the present and future of independent journalism?

Fact-Checking, as an internet phenomenon began to proliferate following the election of former US President Donald Trump in 2016. The notion was that a group of independent and unbiased information verifiers would ascertain the veracity of claims made in blogs, posts, and articles posted online. In this way, online information would be held to a high standard of accountability, and the amount of misinformation would be limited and ultimately determined, by these fact-checkers.

The concept of fact-checking is on the face of it, a noble one. However, more and more misinformation identified by the fact-checkers seems to be any narrative that runs counter to the established, mainstream, or government position on an issue. So, are the fact-checkers actually independent? Do they deserve the Internet’s trust as referees, there to judge the line between truth and fiction? Put another way, are fact-checkers independent and thus trustworthy, verifiers of facts?

A closer examination of some prominent fact-checking sites and the tactics they employ in verifying online information may give us pause as we dig down into that question.

AfricaCheck.org — On its website, AfricaCheck claims to “sort fact from fiction in the online reporting space”. And in this way, … “identify important public statements, interrogate the best available evidence and publish fact-checking reports to guide public debate”.

According to AfricaCheck’s own website, their 2020 sources of funding included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) (11%), Google (9%), and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (4%). That means almost one-quarter of Africa Check’s annual funding in 2020 came from these three organizations.

Reuters — Reuters News has a fact-checking unit within its editorial department. According to their website,” the principal aim of this unit is to fact-check visual material and claims posted on social media. The factchecking unit at Reuters has joined Facebook’s thirdparty fact-checking program. Through this program, Facebook will provide funding to the Reuters fact-checking unit, in exchange for assessments of the authenticity of the content on its platform”.

Reuters also has a division called Thompson Reuters Foundation (TRF), which in 2019 partnered with the Gates Foundation in an initiative called Generation for Changemakers in Africa. TRF also does work around freedom of speech, which, as it happens, also gets funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As we start to delve into some of the important sources of funding for some of these fact-checking services, the question becomes…. Can we count on Reuters to fact check information about any of the many ventures BMGF is involved in, including GAVI, Gate’s vaccine advocacy or the BMGF generally? More to the point, is it reasonable to expect Reuters to be impartial about the Gates Foundation or any of the initiatives Gates or his foundation is involved in?

The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) POYNTNER – operates as a sort of certification board for fact checkers. It reviews fact-checkers for compliance with its (IFCN’s) code and issues certifications for those checkers who pass that audit. This certification lasts for a year and then fact-checkers must be audited again in order to maintain their certifications to Google, Facebook, and other technology companies. The IFCN website shows it has received funding from the BMGF, Open Society Foundation, and Google.

PolitiFact notes in a section of its website entitled “Who pays for PolitiFact?” that any organization that provides more than 5% of its revenue would be listed. TikTok and Facebook are the only organizations listed under this section (updated February 2021), however, no funding amounts are provided. PolitiFact does divulge that in 2020, Google gave PolitiFact 50,000 USD. The fact is the mainstream approved fact-checking sources all seem to be approved and funded by the same group time and again.

Now that we have some idea of who the fact-checkers are, how do they go about debunking falsehoods they identify in online posts? According to James Corbett, award-winning investigative journalist, and creator of the CorbettReport, fact-checkers are keen to debunk online content they disagree with, and typically rely on setting up a straw man approach. They do this in order to marginalize the claim they want to debunk. Factcheckers will take a story that has some credibility to it — something that is factual — and then extract one sensational (or irrelevant) aspect of the claim. They will then make that part of the claim the central point of the entire claim and then debunk that claim. If the fact-checkers successfully attack that small part of an entire claim, they will then assert they have debunked the entire position. Their objective is to marginalize and ridicule, rather than disprove with clear facts. It’s a simple, and oft-used tactic fact-checkers embrace because it is very effective. It works because the average Internet browser, trying to confirm or refute information they have seen online, is likely to begin the effort by initiating a Google search. In doing so, they will be funneled by Google, based on established algorithms, to a series of sites that say this popular information is debunked, fake news. This is usually the end of the story because, unfortunately, so few internet users go to the trouble of doing their own due diligence by going beyond the landing page headline and clicking into the site link to read how the debunk occurred. What methodology was used by the fact-checkers? How did they approach the issue to be debunked? Was it truly an unbiased examination… and can their techniques and conclusions withstand scrutiny? Human nature being what it is, Corbett estimates that only 1 in 10,000 will do that essential legwork. Fact Checkers capitalize on this aspect of human nature — and are generally successful. Take, for example, the fact that in October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security joined with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and BMGF to host a tabletop exercise called Event 201 in New York City. According to the Event 201 website, Event 201 “simulated an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modelled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms”.

The exercise included participants meeting the challenges of battling “fake news” about the virus, shutting down international travel, and the negative impact on businesses around the world. In case you had any uncomfortable questions about the timing of that event, FactCheck.Org is there to set you straight. The headline from an online fact-checking site dated January 2021, reads “New Coronavirus wasn’t “predicted,” in Simulation”. The site’s Quick Take — for those with no time to read through the 300-word story reads “A conspiracy theory website distorted the facts about an emergency preparedness exercise to suggest that the “GATES FOUNDATION & OTHERS PREDICTED UP TO 65 MILLION DEATHS” from the coronavirus now spreading. The event dealt with a hypothetical scenario involving a fictional virus.” Most people will stop there. No need to look any further — a reputable fact-checker makes it clear — it’s a conspiracy theory. It never happened. Debunked! Easy as that.

The Fact-checkers strategically assault the notion that what is at issue is a matter of 65 million worldwide deaths, and that the coronavirus used for Event 201 was not exactly the SARS-CoV-2 virus we are now dealing with. So, if the number of deaths (65 million) never materialized, and the virus description was imprecise, then of course the whole story is fake! That’s the straw man logic. In this way, Fact-checkers are successful in deflecting attention away from addressing the truth of the core issues, namely of the timing of Event 201 coming at exactly the time that the pandemic was underway. They ignore, and in no way address, the issue that Event 201 simulated a shutdown of business and global spread of a coronavirus, a mere month before the present global pandemic began. All that is just a monumental coincidence.

Sometimes, the straw man technique involves taking a social media post, perhaps even an unpopular one, that misrepresents a true fact being shared by the community. Therefore when the post is debunked — the whole (true) fact being shared by the community is now seen as false. Other tactics they use involve discrediting the author/scientist/or group who uncovered the fact, and using a red herring, something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion.

Fact-checkers are effective because there are so many people out there happy to let others do their thinking for them. The result is a chilling effect on independent news. Fact-checkers undermine independent thought on online news sites not part of the legacy media structure and has led to the de-platforming of entire e-news sites. And it undercuts the way independent journalists have been operating in the online space for the last ten years, argues Corbett. Some independent journalists have tried practicing self-censorship in the hope of staying on the right side of the divide — and keeping the algorithms from denying access to their information to their audience. This affects advertising funds and when those dry up, to rapid shutdown of independent news sites.

What about solutions? A partial answer might seem obvious — personal responsibility. Corbett suggests we accept that there is real disinformation online and it is being shared. There is a legitimate need for real factcheckers, so how should this be addressed? The answer lies in the exercise of personal responsibility by both content creators and Internet users.

It is a fact that a certain segment of internet content creators play fast and loose with the information they put out (any Youtubers out there?) because they prioritize monetization over being factually correct. Other creators can be more interested in pushing people toward a certain agenda, and, in doing so, sacrifice proper verification of information to that end. But what if creators were just more responsible about the content they put out — and readership was more willing to exercise due diligence in their research into the info they read online? Would that not go a long way to solving the issue?

As a society, we may have already reached the point where we have real difficulty separating fact from fiction in our online space. The imperfect, and intuitive solution is that creators must be more responsible and readers more diligent and less accepting of what they read as automatic truth. So, do your homework and verify for yourself to the absolute best of your ability but let us also be realistic. That work, even if undertaken diligently, may not always end in an iron-clad, totally satisfactory conclusion. It is nevertheless our responsibility to take the time, exercise our brains and do the background research. As Corbett notes, we may not always arrive at a definitive conclusion. Life (and truth) may not be as simple as a green checkmark beside a narrative. We may be left with two competing narratives with the truth found somewhere in between. “There is no shortcut to understanding the truth about the world. You have to roll up your sleeves and do the work”, asserts Corbett. Why not set that threshold for us before we pass information along to others? That kind of integrity will lead to a firmer structure in building information we can trust.

As Corbett rightly affirms, without our investment in that kind of personal responsibility, the ever-growing fact-checking industry could permanently become a part of and threaten — the internet ecosystem as we know it.