When it comes to the global media wars, there is no shortage of dirty, insidious maneuvering going on these days, as the entire infotainment industry tosses objectivity to the wind in order to make ratings.
And so, in this unnecessary corporate struggle, each side of the political coin is trying to damage the other, often massaging the narrative to suggest that their adversaries are somehow untrustworthy.
The latest weapon in this war has come in the form of bought-and-paid “fact checkers”, and it’s no surprise to discover who’s behind a large portion of them.
Over the past few years, a cottage industry of “fact checkers” and “misinformation” experts has emerged to advance the left’s mission of silencing dissent to its agenda around the world. Analysis of the funding of these organizations leads back to a familiar figure: left-wing billionaire George Soros.
The New York Post broke down the trail of Soros dollars linking a global network of organizations intent on suppressing and discrediting conservative voices online.
So, what precisely is going on here?
Later in the year, heading into the midterms, 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 signatories had received a combined $30.3 million from Soros in just a four-year period.
As the Hungarian publication Remix revealed, of the 11 Facebook-approved fact checking organizations for Central and Eastern Europe, eight were funded by Soros. As is the case for the US, these fact checking groups are largely critical of the political right.
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 US State Department), the Omidyar Network, Google, Facebook, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
The existence of more than one, singular fact-checking company itself belies the uselessness of the entire industry, at least from a purely logic-forward perspective.
