‘The World Needs Fact-Checking’: Tech Giants Giving $13 Million To Fund Global Fact-Checking Initiatives | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Leif Le Mahieu.

    Two tech giants on Tuesday announced a $13 million grant to fund global fact-checking projects.

    Google and YouTube said they would provide financial support to the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), an arm of the Poynter Institute, to support "fact-checking initiatives" through 2025.

    "The world needs fact-checking more than ever before. This partnership with Google and YouTube infuses financial support to global fact-checkers and is a step in the right direction," said Baybars Örsek, the IFCN's executive director. "And while there's much work to be done, this partnership has sparked meaningful collaboration and an important step."

    About $12 million of the grant will go to the group's Global Fact Check Fund, which will disburse money to fact-checking groups from around the world that adhere to its Code of Principles. These include groups in the U.S., Brazil, Nepal, Ukraine, Norway, Spain, Taiwan, South Africa, and India.

    Örsek added that IFCN was "grateful to Google and YouTube for their commitment to bolster fact-checkers in an ever-increasing environment of mis- and disinformation."

    According to the Poynter Institute, some funds will go toward a foundation to establish a "neutral and independent selection committee" and other expansions of the fact-checking program.

    The IFCN was established in 2015, and its advisory board includes individuals from various organizations, including PolitiFact and The Washington Post.

    Olivia Ma, who manages Google's Global News Program and Ecosystem, said that the company believed it had a role in combating "misinformation" and guiding people toward making "informed decisions."

    "Combating misinformation is an ongoing global challenge for society. We take seriously our role in helping to fight misinformation by continually investing in products, programs and partnerships that help people access high-quality information," Ma said.

    Some have raised concerns about the growing emphasis on fact-checking in recent years, with critics questioning whether the motivation is to suppress conservative or differing viewpoints. For example, the theory that the novel coronavirus may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, was initially widely maligned by certain fact-checkers as the origin of the respiratory virus. However, Facebook later reversed course, saying that the theory was now up for debate and had not been thoroughly discredited. At around the same time, PolitiFact retracted a fact-check it had run on the claim saying that the theory was now more "disputed."

    This year, Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a former PolitiFact source, told The Daily Wire that the fact-checking group wanted him to "help them nail Republicans." Riedl also claimed PolitiFact would start with a "rating" of a claim and then work backward to justify that rating.

poll#128

Where do you stand on the wanton censorship by Big Tech Platforms, while retaining their Section 230 carveout indemnifying them for Slander /Defamation lawsuits and Copyright infringements?

  Big Tech Platforms have the right to Censor all speech providing they voluntarily relinquish their Section 230 Carveout.

  Big Tech Platforms DO NOT have the right to Censor any speech, while retaining multiple indemnifications by virtue of the Section 230 Carveout.

  I know nothing of this 230 talk, but "I do love me some social media".

476 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?

poll#125

Since only about 20% of the News Media has any shred of Journalistic Integrity remaining: How does our Constitutional Republic continue without a "Free Press"?

  Demand real information, using real sources, backed up by facts.

  Promote real journalist entities only, and admonish those that prostitute their profession.

  We Democratic Socialists are doing just fine, thank-you, by promoting lies while having very little real knowledge about so much.

260 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?

poll#169

Considering how abjectly corrupt and civilly abusive the Left has become regarding the corrosive effect of their elected leaders; their entrenched and ruling bureaucracy; employing their failed Education Industry as Indoctrinators; their collusive private sector operators, such as the terminally discredited Legacy Media and Big Tech censorship of Free Speech: What will be the best course forward for hardworking Middle Americans, including the Patriot Class?

  Withdraw from society, go underground and plan for a resurgence when it is feasible to do so.

  Work within the confines of better policy by the People's government, once good sense and sanity is restored in the electorate at large, to achieve such.

  Are you a crazy, nut-job Insurrectionist? Everything is perfect within our plan to achieve our intended goals for the Socialist Left.

  Secession to form a true Constitutional Republic.

437 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?