Network of leftist 'fact-checkers' bankrolled by Soros

FPI / January 29, 2023

George Soros funds are linked to a global network of “fact-checkers” and so-called “misinformation” experts who have been tasked with suppressing and discrediting conservative voices online, a report said.

“Fact checking” is an important element in the Left’s online censorship machine, giving social media companies a politically neutral pretext to censor conservative viewpoints,” the New York Post reported on Jan. 25.

Prior to the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, in an open letter signed by 11 other leftist groups, the Soros-funded Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights called on Big Tech CEOs to take “immediate” action to spread so-called “voting disinformation” to “help prevent the undermining” of democracy, the Post reported.

The signatories had received a combined $30.3 million from Soros in just a four-year period.

The Hungarian publication Remix revealed that, of the 11 Facebook-approved fact checking organizations for Central and Eastern Europe, eight were funded by Soros.

“As is the case for the U.S., these fact checking groups are largely critical of the political right,” the Post noted.

One project of the Poynter Institute specifically, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), was launched in 2015 with its initial funding coming from the National Endowment for Democracy (backed by the U.S. State Department), the Omidyar Network, Google, Facebook, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

The IFCN acts as the “high body” for the dozens of fact-checking organizations under its umbrella, which unite under a shared code of principles, and a mission “to bring together the growing community of fact-checkers around the world and advocates of factual information in the global fight against misinformation.”

Among the most well-known organizations that are affiliated with the IFCN include the Associated Press fact checker, FactCheck.org; The Dispatch fact checker; The Washington Post fact checker; and PolitiFact.

The Post’s Matt Palumbo noted: “The problem, of course, is that these ‘fact checks’ are anything but impartial. Facebook and other social-media companies censored any articles that suggested the COVID-19 virus leaked from a Wuhan lab, based on denials of scientists who had a conflict of interest. Now that even top researchers say the lab leak is a distinct possibility, they’ve lifted those restrictions.”

Breitbart senior technology correspondent Allum Bokhari noted: “Facebook notoriously uses fact checkers to dodge responsibility for censorship, even though its infamous decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story took place before any third party fact checkers had weighed in. In court, Facebook has admitted that fact checks, despite their pretense of impartiality and objectivity, are just opinions.”

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