In my rather failed attempts on FB to bring up perspectives that differ from the main stream media I got a lot of (sometimes angry) push back, comments that things had been debunked or fact checked or that my source was biased. Now FB, Twitter, Instagram et. al attach all kinds of labels telling people things are unsafe to read, disputed, etc., if you are lucky. Otherwise they simply block or shadow ban what is posted. I find it shocking that as 1st amendment loving Americans we simply accept this on the basis that tech companies tell us they are looking out for our best interest. There is definitely a time and place for censorship (think calls for violence or child pornography) but we now allow this to be applied to a broad range of topics where we once encouraged the airing of many sides of a debate.
A couple of charts showing the extent of media consolidation. Just a few companies are controlling the majority of what we see.
And who are those fact checkers?
The top players are Politifact (Owned by Poynter), Media Matters, Propublica, FactChecker.Org, and AP Fact Check. Funding for these groups often comes from the same organizations with distinct left political bents matching up with the ideology of some of those leading these fact checking groups.
Poynter has several fact checking groups
- Politifact (originally founded by Bill Adair)
- CoronaVirus Fact Alliance
- MediaWise Teen Fact Checking Network (for teenagers by teenagers funded by WhatsApp, Facebook, Google)
- Internet Fact Checking Network (IFCN) that sort of certifies all major fact checkers: According to Facebook “To reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more reliable information to users, we partner with independent third-party fact-checkers globally who are certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN)”. Key contributors to Poynter are;
– Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
– Omidyar Network : Established by Pierre Omidyar (founder of Ebay). The orgnization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic, social, and political change. The web site promoting “reimagining capitalism” and “pluralism”, AKA Great Reset ideas of World Economic Forum (Charles Schwab)
– Open Society Foundation (Soros): too much to cover in a bullet point but Soros is the financier of the Davos conference with the World Economic Forum where the Great Reset plan has been laid out. He also has heavily invested in social justice activist groups, District Attorney races in the US. Interestingly Soros announced today (12/5) that Lord Mark Malloch Brown as the new president of the foundation. He was formerly the UN. deputy secretary-general and most notably the president of Smartmatic, the software at the center of the systemic election fraud issue.
– Park Foundation: Grant making foundation that supports several groups with heavy focus on social justice, voter programs in WI, AZ, & MI including the Tides Foundation.
MediaMatters is a tax-exempt organization focused on monitoring and correcting misinformation and has been engaged in trying to silence conservative media voices such as Tucker Carlson, . It was created by David Brock who Time magazine called “one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic Party”. David Brock is closely aligned with the Clintons and wrote a book on Hillary. He also was involved in weekly White House strategy calls during the Obama administration. The President is Angelo Carisone who ran a harrasment campaign against Glen Beck driving him off of Fox. In general, Angelo has stated he would wage an “all-out campaign of ‘guerrilla warfare and sabotage.'”[66] against Fox. MediaMatters is a non profit and does not disclose its donors but I found some donors from news releases and articles they include;
NEA (National Education Association): National teachers union, from 1989 through the 2014 election cycle, the NEA spent over $92 million on political campaign contributions, 97% of which went to Democrats.[12]
Tides Foundation: Major pass-through funder to numerous left-leaning nonprofits. The foundations largest funder from 1998-2018 were from 2 Soros organizations at ~$22 million.
Open Society Foundations (above)
ProPublica is a non profit listed as resource for fact-based investigative reporting. Paul Sagan is chairman of the board and also on the board of directors of Moderna (Covid vaccine company) and was Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum. They also have partnerships with ABC, BBC, The Atlantic, HuffPost, Buzzfeed, CBS, CNN, MSNBC. ProPublica receives funding from
Open Society Foundations (above)
Democracy Fund: Founded by Pierre Omidyar Public policy-oriented foundation contributing to center-left and left-wing media organizations, left-wing voter registration organizations, and public policy organizations.
Park Foundation (above)
FactChecker.Org is Washington Post’s (owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon) internal fact checking group led by Glenn Kessler a long time journalist who has come under much criticism for false or misleading fact checks. Here is just one from The Atlantic.
Facebook outsources some of its fact checking to this group by sending them links to content to be checked. FActChecker is also a member of the IFCN. Listed funders of FactChecker.Org are;
Annenberg Foundation: foundation providing grants typically to left leaning causes. Linked to activities in Chicago with Obama and Bill Ayers (communist activist Weather Underground founder).
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Stanton Foundation founded by Frank Stanton former president of CBS
In conclusion, this just shows that a few companies own most of the media, fact checkers and those supporting them are decidedly left leaning, and the key funders, founders and users of fact checking are quite interwoven.
The Fact Finding Expedition 