Joe Schaeffer: Fact-Checkers Heading Down Same Black Hole as CNN, MSNBC

Mark Zuckerberg disbands his army of ‘truth tellers’ who are shocked, shocked at their dismissal.

A self-anointed coterie of journalists that has forfeited the public’s trust with repeated, egregious displays of personal bias is astounded that it can’t skate by on credentialism any longer. Where have we seen that before? The gravy train for fact-checkers appears to be grinding to a halt, and all the muttering in the world about “codes of principles” and “identifying truth” won’t be able to save another crumbling annex of the big-box media edifice from fading into irrelevance on a CNN or MSNBC scale.

Robert MacCulloch: Madness at TVNZ - is a formal public apology owing to Chris Luxon?

Our State-owned broadcaster, TVNZ, engaged academics at the Public Policy Institute at one of our State Universities to "fact check" the party leaders during the debate, which was watched by much of the country - the academics declared National Party Leader Luxon's claim that taking GST off fruit and veges would not lower their prices to be down-right, flat-out "false". Amazingly, Radio NZ are running the story below today, hot on the heals of DownToEarth Kiwi querying TVNZ's "fact checking":

Ministers advised taking GST off fruit, veggies would not lower prices

Lushington D. Brady: Who Are You Going to Trust?

How “fact-checkers” lied to your faces

There are some very good reasons that I warn readers to “Always assume that ‘fact-checkers’ are trying to bullsh*t you.” The most important of which is the truth demonstrated time and again: that “fact-checkers” are in reality ‘narrative-confirmation machines’.

To see the truth of that in action, just consider this 2021 Newshub ‘fact check’ of a Voices for Freedom flyer. With not just the $55m of PIJF funding at stake, but the sweet, sweet river of government advertising, Newshub appears to have engaged in a systematic campaign of telling untruths for power.