Facebook is partnering with an extreme right-wing website’s fact-checking arm, a move that is generating condemnation from both mainstream and progressive critics.
Axios reported on Wednesday that Facebook would be working with The Daily Caller‘s for-profit fact-checker website Check Your Fact to uncover bias and false statements in stories on the social media site.
In a statement to The Wrap, Facebook downplayed its partnership with Check Your Fact, putting the new alliance in a broader context.
“Since we launched our third-party fact-checking program in 2016, we’ve been working with partners around the world who share our goal of stopping the spread of misinformation on our platform,” Facebook’s head of news integrity partnerships, Meredith Carden, told The Wrap. “We now work with 47 partners around the world who fact-check content in 24 languages.”
Check Your Fact purports to be separate from the Caller, but the site’s editorial decisions on what to check and how at least hint at right-wing bias. At this writing, the top three “fact-checks” on Check Your Fact are:
- Did Bernie Sanders say the U.S. has ‘had enough with white men in places of power’?
- Does Emmanuel Macron want the rebuilt Notre Dame to represent a more ‘diverse’ France?
- Did Teddy Roosevelt say, ‘to anger a liberal, tell him the truth’?
“Facebook has come under fire for working with certain fact-checking partners in the past,” said Axios, referring to the site’s work with now-defunct right wing site The Weekly Standard.
While the decision to work with the Standard did come with a large amount of criticism, not least because of the magazine’s enthusiastic cheerleading for the Iraq War and its role in perpetuating the WMD myth that led to the U.S. attack on the Middle East country.
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But, as The Guardian pointed out, the Caller is further to the right than the Standard.
The Caller was founded by the far-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who regularly delivers monologues on his show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” that have been described as indistinguishable from white supremacist talking points.
In March, Common Dreams reported on audio from a talk radio show in which Carlson made a number of bigoted and racist statements, such as calling Iraqis “semi-literate primitive monkeys” and saying that people in the Middle Eastern country should “just shut the fuck up and obey” American directives.
Critics note that the issue is more than just Carlson; the Caller has itself a long history of falsehoods, misrepresentations, and a habit of publishing white nationalists and right-wing conspiracy theories.
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