The rise of independent fact checking websites was supposed to guard us from an influx of “fake news,” but who is checking their facts? One thing I’ve learned in the field with which I work is that deception is a skill, and deception is as certain as death and taxes. Where there are truth and facts, deceit is never far behind.
It’s interesting to see that many Americans, if they disagree with a report or viewpoint, are quick to search out what Snopes or a similar site has to say, post the link, and be done with it. Their hands are clean because the fact checkers know the facts, right? Wrong. Partiality runs rampant in the media, and unfortunately that creeps into the fact checking industry.
Whether it’s FactCheck.org with its deep far-left academic heritage at UPenn, Politifact, with its propensity to list any and all things conservative as “false,” or even Snopes, who has recently paired with tech giant and professional news censor, Facebook, most of these outfits have an agenda, and it’s not to tell the unadulterated truth.
One could go as far to say that fact checking, or at least the phenomenon that it has become in our culture, is a form of censorship. It’s not the yellow journalism, propaganda poster style of the mid 1900’s, but why would it be in the era of technology and quick information?
- JF D'Orsie