By Larry Romanoff for The Saker Blog, June 27, 2021
In our world today, who desperately needs to be “fact-checked“? The mass media, of course. And, in today’s world, who owns, funds, and controls the entire fact-checking infrastructure and conducts all the fact-checks? The mass media, of course. So, the inmates are running the asylum and the foxes are guarding the henhouse. What could possibly go wrong?
First, let’s disabuse ourselves of the foolish notion that the fact-checking performed today actually involves any checking of facts. It does not. The primary purpose of this industry is not a search for truth but is instead an insidious form of censorship, one final way of tightening the string around the sack of information to prevent the escape of inconvenient truths and, if they do escape, to club them to death at birth. A powerful secondary purpose of fact-checking is to bury knowledge of the crimes and atrocities committed by our International Cabal of Gangsters (ICG) and to protect them from public censure. The only requirement for success is a gullible and uninformed public.
One of the more tragic results of media concentration, propaganda and censorship is that fact-checking has been almost totally co-opted by the propagandists. At a time when we desperately need honest fact-checking of media claims, the media outlets themselves like Gannet Publishing, Reuters, ABC news, have moved into the forefront of this market, effectively checking themselves and, unsurprisingly, conclude they didn’t lie to us. Worse, the media fact-checking departments also function as intelligence agencies, proclaiming their chastity while attempting to ferret out and silence the ultimate sources of contrary opinion and truth. One example from my personal experience:
Several of my early articles on COVID-19 went viral with reader downloads in the millions, instantly attracting the attention of the ICG. Following this, and coincident with numerous hit pieces in the mainstream media, I received an email from a gentleman at Gannett Publishing, presenting himself as “a fact-checker for USA Today“, ostensibly wanting to determine the veracity of some of my statements. It should be obvious that ‘fact-checking’ would produce a request such as “You made this claim. Please can you provide documented evidence of its accuracy?” Not with Gannett, it didn’t.
The request displayed no interest in obtaining evidence of my claims, but a demand to know my sources. The issue was that I seemed to know many things I should not know, and they couldn’t figure out where I was getting my information. The man was of course “reaching out” to me, but what he was reaching for was my information sources. He didn’t want more supporting evidence for my claims, but to know where I had obtained the evidence I’d already presented, specifically “from where did you collect the research in your articles?” He also wanted a list of the names of other “writers, officials or commentators” who knew what I knew and who shared my views. This is not fact-checking, but intelligence-gathering for the purpose of identifying and silencing sources of dissention.
The fact-checking industry was not created to fact-check the false claims and media support for the invasions of Iraq and Libya or today’s imaginary “genocide” in China’s Xinjiang, but instead to silence those attempting to reveal the truth. It was never meant to examine the process of vaccinations (of any kind) but to silence those either expressing fears of dangerous vaccines or exposing contaminations in those vaccines.
In this latter case, the vaccine makers (or their paid promoters) are the primary source of the ‘facts’ distributed by the media and used by the fact-checkers to ridicule and attempt to invalidate genuine public concerns. All three parties steadfastly ignore the hard fact that the US government has paid billions in compensation for injuries and deaths from dangerous and contaminated vaccines. (1) And nowhere do they mention that nearly 100 million Americans were infected with a potentially cancerous simian virus from a contaminated polio vaccine. (2) Nor do they mention the CDC report that infants receiving a full slate of childhood vaccines could potentially be exposed to more than 300 contaminants. You can see the problem: much of the truth and underlying evidence, though available, is being buried by the media in their support of the ICG, while the ‘leakage‘ is dealt with by other means.
There is nothing here about checking facts. It is all about the control of information, half of which involves the identification and silencing of opposing views. It is in this light that all fact-checking must be seen.
I recently wrote a heavily-documented article on the thesis (now widely-accepted, I believe) that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was not influenza but was instead a now-proven bacterial infection, the tragic result of a misguided experiment by the Rockefeller Medical Institute of a meningitis vaccine that began at Fort Riley in the US and spread around the world not by the soldiers but by Rockefeller itself. (3) Reuters immediately conducted a ‘fact-check’ of the thesis and pronounced it false. Reuter’s evidence? Non-existent, the claim sufficing as irrefutable proof. (4) Moreover, some of Reuters’ claims were completely false. The intent was to bury a politically-dangerous truth and prevent its escape into the public realm.
In another case, when public concern was rapidly accelerating about the escaping radiation from Japan’s Fukushima reactor, the media almost immediately buried the story and replaced it with a flurry of articles about one single salmon in Canada’s Osoyoos Lake discovered with measurable but insignificant levels of Cesium radiation. The lake is hundreds of miles inland and irrelevant to the radiation in the Pacific Ocean, but suddenly this was the only story. Following on this, Snopes obediently ‘fact-checked’ the Fukushima Pacific radiation and used this story of the single unrelated salmon to pronounce the prior Fukushima radiation stories false. (5) Again, this is not about checking facts but about burying the truth.
This is almost an aside but, with Osoyoos Lake containing potentially millions of salmon, what are the odds that only one salmon would be contaminated and that my net would find it? But in fact, the story originated on the social media and I could find no reliable evidence of the existence of this one radioactive fish. The few people reporting it were all referencing each other or Snopes, which almost certainly means a contrived and fabricated tale was used to mislead the public about the very real dangers of Fukushima. Well-done, I thought.
Another clever ploy is to take an inflammatory and inaccurate headline from a tabloid news source, attribute it to the person in question, then ‘fact-check’ the statement, pronounce it false, and use that to defame the author who never said any such thing.
The fact-checkers not only want to bury the truth, but to bury those who reveal it. Another example from my personal experience: My heavily-documented article about the WHO vaccination program that sterilised about 150 million women without their knowledge or consent (6) was obtaining considerable attention worldwide, most notably of the ICG, who called in the fact-checkers, in this case the Poynter Institute. I will deal with them in more detail in a moment. Poynter created a web page just for me, and this is what they wrote:
“FALSE: Larry Romanoff’s statements claiming WHO has taken part in creating various viruses in the laboratories. The organization has spread the new coronavirus in the world, so that the pharmaceutical companies can make money by developing vaccines, which, for its part, will reduce the world population.” (7)
The “false” part is that I have never written any such things. I have never claimed the WHO ‘created viruses’, nor have I ever mentioned the WHO in any context related to COVID-19. Their statement, slanderous as it is, is false in its entirety. But the amazing part is to follow. Poynter didn’t stop there. They found a news article on a Georgian news website that made brief reference to my writing, but that contained no reference to the WHO or any of the other claims above. They then copied this website page – and amended it – posting the copied and amended version on one of their own websites, providing the link to their fraudulent version – presented as the original – as ‘proof’ of my having made false claims.
First, this is the link to the original news page (8). It is in Georgian script, so you won’t be able to read it and most translators cannot handle Georgian, meaning no one will know what the page actually says. The website is ge.news-front/info. Next, this is the link to Poynter’s false web page (9).You can access it by clicking on the button: READ THE FULL ARTICLE (FACTCHECK GEORGIA) on the Poynter website above (7) This website, controlled by Poynter, is https://factcheck.ge/ka. This is also in Georgian script, so you won’t be able to read it either.
If this isn’t clear, Poynter attempted to confuse readers by conflating my article about the WHO ‘anti-fertility’ vaccination programs with my other (unrelated) articles on COVID-19, then fabricated a claim that I had accused the WHO of creating the COVID-19 virus to profit the pharma companies while sterilising the world. Lacking evidence of this, they copied a web page that was in a language almost no one can read and almost no translators can handle, amended the page and posted it on their own website, presenting it as the original, and purporting to contain ‘proof‘ of my ‘false‘ claims against the WHO. In America, this is known as “fact-checking“.
The Fact-Checking Industry
The fact-checking industry began with a disguised innocence and good intentions, with websites like Snopes initially spending their time debunking urban legends and refuting claims of Elvis being seen at the mall. But in fact, these creations were hiding in the bushes waiting for the right time to attack.
Fact-checking today is a huge worldwide industry conceived and created decades ago as a powerful censorship tool, controlled by a closely-knit incestuous group and heavily funded with countless millions of dollars primarily by George Soros, the Gates Foundation, various media companies, and similar. This industry was not created to fact-check the false claims and media support for ICG crimes, but instead to silence those attempting to reveal the truth.
The so-called Poynter Institute, whom you met above, is at the forefront of this industry today, with funding from the above sources. Poynter created and controls the so-called non-partisan International Fact-checking Network (IFCN) “that sets standards for fact checkers“, virtually forcing all players into this ‘network’ or into oblivion as we have seen happen to Internet browsers and search engines. Through these machinations, Poynter has certified itself as the policeman for the news feeds of the world. It isn’t widely known, but Facebook and others do not actually perform any checking of their own, but instead use this source to automatically police their content.
Poynter are even more dangerous than the above would suggest, because they have created for themselves a position as “the journalism institute responsible for training writers and reporters“, countless thousands of young people passing through this ‘institution’ very possibly forever corrupted by their training. And Poynter’s attempts in furthering the total media control of the ICG are not imaginary:
Poynter recently published a list of 515 news websites they deemed “unreliable” (10), a list compiled from “fake news” databases curated primarily by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at University of Southern California, Merrimack University, PolitiFact and Snopes. They not only damned these websites as providing misinformation, but their original article asked advertisers to blacklist all sites on their list. The later version according to Poynter executive Barrett Golding: “Fake news is a business. Much of that business is ad-supported. Aside from journalists, researchers and news consumers, we hope that the index will be useful for advertisers that want to stop funding misinformation.”
They overplayed their hand. The backlash to this was so extreme that Poynter had to retract the list and make a public apology, excusing themselves on “weaknesses in the methodology“. It wasn’t embarrassment for an ethical failure but multiple threats of serious lawsuits that caused the retraction. However, Poynter managing editor Barbara Allen wrote “We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication”. But then (to give readers a laugh), she stated, “We pledge to continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards.” One individual posted on Twitter: “Junkyard Attack Dogs Pose as Watchdogs“. Correct in all respects.
To my best knowledge, there are no fact-checkers that are not part of this worldwide network. Some are sponsored and operated by the media departments of various universities, but those departments have received funding from these same sources and therefore are subject to, and under the control of, the same people.
These “same people” are those who already own and/or control the entire mass media landscape, including newspapers, magazines, all TV and most radio networks, the book publishers, the book distributors like Amazon and Indigo, the Hollywood studios who control virtually all movies and most TV programs. They also have the same stranglehold on the social media landscape, as well as related entities like Google and Wikipedia.
As I have noted in other articles in this series, it is vital to understand that it is not Poynter, or Reuters, or Gannett who control the fact-checking industry. These statements evade the essential point that it is individuals, real people with names, who exercise this control, and who are working in concert with all other media individuals as lieutenants of the ICG, all sharing the same ‘values’ and all following the same ‘agenda’. A major part of this agenda is total information control, the fact-check portion being merely a kind of janitorial detail to sweep up and eliminate the bits of truth that succeed in escaping this information control net. And this net is nearly complete; information control and censorship in the US is alarmingly nearing a 100% level, yet few seem to have noticed. The same is true of Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, and increasing in other Western nations.
Once again, the mass media lie to us in whole or in part about almost everything of real consequence in the world today, reading from the same script as the ICG and furthering their agenda. Wikipedia, with its massive promotion by Google, is a major misinformation site that has almost a stranglehold on popular information, but is heavily biased and edited by these same people, and is untrustworthy on most topics of consequence. Google is astonishingly selective on information it permits to reach the public. Facebook and Twitter take their marching orders from the same source and will exercise a near-total embargo on any personal communications or posts that contradict the official narrative approved by the ICG. With COVID-19, yesterday, lab sources were embargoed, these social media almost vicious in their censorship of contradictory material. Today, natural sources of the virus are embargoed, Facebook and Twitter performing an instant 180-degree turn and today banning – as “misinformation” – the opposite of what they banned yesterday.
The book-publishers determine the content of all bound material that reaches the public, most especially educational materials from kindergarten to university level. If content does not fit the ‘agenda’, the book will almost certainly never see the light of day and, if it is lucky enough to escape the net, Amazon and Indigo will be “out of stock” or will simply delist the books. The entire fact-checking industry is marching to precisely the same tune, played by the same orchestra. This is already so true that whenever any major media outlet claims that something has been fact-checked, delete this information from your consciousness because it is almost certainly false.
I am repeating myself, but it is vital to understand that all this emanates from the same single source, a group of a few hundred people centered mostly in Europe, who are extraordinarily wealthy and who determine and set the agenda – again, real people with names. The determination to control all of the world’s information, either by distribution or by censorship, originates here. It is crucially important that you connect all these dots to the same central source.
*
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
*
Notes
(2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10472327/
(3) The 1918 Rockefeller-US Army Worldwide Pandemic
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/1319/
(4) https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccines-caused-1918-influe-idUSKBN21J6X2
(5) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/radioactive-salmon-fukushima/
(6) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/05/a-cautionary-tale-about-who.html
(9) https://factcheck.ge/ka/story/38702
The original source of this article is The Saker Blog
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Moon of Shanghai, Blue Moon of Shanghai, 2021
Larry, give us some names. I read your articles with pleasure, but we need to know the enemy.
This Dutch guy resleases a lot of names in public: https://isgp-studies.com/. Like you, he is silenced by google and fb. by the way, zucherberg’s network now forbids sending your articles through his messenger service (same as with unz.com website) – a true medal of honor, if you ask me.
I would say, that we need to categorize and label the reporters into different groups:
– the ones that are zealots and truly believe in the deceit and care very little what world are they leaving or better say setting up for their own decendants,
– the ones that are payed to publish rubbish and just do it – you’ve got to eat something right?,
– the ones that are coerced or censored into oblivion to publish the cabals narrative,
– the ones that do not now what they speak of and actually don’t care, they are simply mediums to forward narrative, lies and deceits without any fact checking and
– all other fake reporters out there (like the black chimp from Idlib).
I guess intellectual mind with deep insight will construct this categorization much better. Then Mr. Romanoff should start adding reporters names to the list with clear links to the reports. The hit should be on the people who spew out the rubbish and make them a laughing stock of the world.
Larry seems reluctant to point the laser at the jewish mafioso oligarchya that owns the media, finan and much of the US government. Passing reference to Soros doesnt adequately describe the problem.
Think of building 7 as a metaphor for US society. Same perpetrators.
All these journalists, the alternative ones keep on talking like this article here by Romanoff and will not name names names, list of names the public can identify as culprit.
why in the hell not?
so the would the names on the list care about Romanoff under any circumstances, even if he were a silent nonentity somewhere? Romanoff is like any ordinary human, a victim for just being alive… all the same, to get rid of in time.
so why protect the list make them known and their crimes so that the people of they get up and out into the streets know who to go arrest try and string up. it is detestable that such small groups of people can run society of hundreds of millions of citizens up a tree and walk scot free regardless of their crimes, out in the streets, freely, safely, among the people they victimize horrifically all the time.
The journo gang censor themselves willingly and for no good popular reason! what crime would they commit if they named names of those who organize the social control of societies and commit vast social crimes in the process?
Its as if Romanoff and his journo gang wish the situation to prolong so that they can have jobs complaining all their lives about it: Have audiences for fifty, seventy years while populations suffer, when this situation ought to been changed already, long time now or, immediately then! Right now! with journo help naming names and explaining to the people who they can go about it legally.
I am sure that most ordinary citizens do not know that they are the law in collective social movement! I don’t know where it is illegal for the mass of people, majorities or great quantities of themselves get out into the streets and go directly to correct all that affects them negative in the society especially the government and its polices along with the polices of the rich against the best interests of the society?
It is the job of journos to tell the people that if they find that Fact-Checking is utterly dangerous to their collective good they can ask the government to change the law and if the government does not they can go out into the streets and change it immediately by citizen arresting the Fact-Checking crowd and charging them, putting them on trial summarily, putting them away if and when found guilty. But for sure putting and end to fact-checking as it is
And the citizenry in popular action do not even have to ask the government to act before they do. they come first in society not the government who they actually elected and put into office. The people in collective popular action are the law first and foremost…not the constitution and the government!
Yep!
Show Me the List!!
Katherine
Wow, are we ever living in a dangerous world. One desperately needs to learn how to become a “warrior.” It is in fact a biblical command one in which i took very seriously as a youth. We are in a war no question with forces that only the bible helps us to understand. Both with our selves that sin nature and with demonic forces that seek to control and magnify that sin nature within the human experience.
Beyond this or next to this rather Veritas Media has an excellent interview with:
Stefan Verstappen – Defeating the Psychopaths with The Way of the Warrior
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOrEmHFGp2k
https://www.chinastrategies.com/
Cheers
“The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.
Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.”
Cheers
https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393
… But instead of farming, he chose a career in journalism, eventually helping the Woodrow Wilson Administration promote the idea that US efforts in World War I were intended to bring democracy to Europe….
….The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind….
*HENRY FORD wrote a book, *”The International Jew.”
Lots of names/labels for humans that are not an enlightenment, e.g., Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching >barbarians….
Hopi Legend well worth reading & contemplating….
LarryR wrestling with pigs is a dirty experience.
Taoists’ subtle practices during the worst Emperors’ reign, to be invisible after a fashion.
Your Gene of Altruism, Saker’s too (Et Al) cannot stop the worst of human specie… what the painting Goya depicted eons ago…. “Goya gave Saturn a partially erect phallus, implying that cannibalism is, at least in the divine realm, apparently something of an aphrodisiac….”
We’re in for a very “Dark Winter” so be prepared!
Re Bernays: see Curtis series “The Century of the Self”
The Century of The Self
Adam Curtis2002
To many in both business and government, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power is truly moved into the hands of the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How is the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interest?
Series
Part 1 — Happiness Machines
Part one documents the story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays who invented ‘Public Relations’ in the 1920s, being the first person to take Freud’s ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn’t need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer manipulation, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement to outrageous PR stunts and to eroticising the motorcar. His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods, it was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.
Part 2 — The Engineering of Consent
Part two explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud’s ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses. Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany, and in response to this, they set out to find ways to control the masses so as to manage the ‘hidden enemy’ within the human mind. Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the centrepiece philosophy and the US government, big business, and the CIA used their ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the masses. However, this was not a ‘cynical exercise in manipulation’ according to those in power, as they really believed that the only way to make democracy work and have a stable society was to repress the ‘dangerous and irrational desires and fears’ of the people.
Part 3 — There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed
In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas, which lead to the creation of a new political movement that sought to create ‘new people’, free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people’s minds by business and politics. This episode shows how this idea rapidly developed in America through “self-help movements”, into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation. Soon, American corporations realised that this new self was not a threat, but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this, they turned to the techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts, to manipulate the inner desires of the new self.
Part 4 — Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
This episode explains how politicians turned to the same techniques used by business in order to read and manipulate the inner desires of the masses. Both New Labour with Tony Blair and the Democrats led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group which had been invented by psychoanalysts in order to regain power. Both set out to mould their policies to manipulate people’s innermost desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products. Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s. The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they perhaps didn’t realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate people, but to develop a new way of controlling them.
When you see on the SUN website an article with this title:
“LIFE IN HELL Electric shocks, iron pipe beatings, clamped penises – Inside Putin’s hellish ‘torture dungeons’ in occupied Crimea.”
You know propaganda and fake news in western medias have reached insane levels. The article has been published 3 days ago when the British destroyer hms defender entered into russian waters near Crimea.
It’s nothing less than real war propaganda.
I wonder when western medias will start reporting that Putin personally visited Crimea to throw babies from incubators. It worked for Irak in 1991 they could try it again.
Miight have something to show for it, especially if accompanied by a picture of Analny Navalny’s hideous face after his usual intake of booze, pills, and syringes.
On second thought: What’s wrong with cruelty — fake or otherwise — against Russians by Russians? Is Putin violating some fundamental principle (rules-based international order) which stipulates that it’s only Western connected interests that should be given ”free reign”?
”The request displayed no interest in obtaining evidence of my claims, but a demand to know my sources. The issue was that I seemed to know many things I should not know, and they couldn’t figure out where I was getting my information.”
Next time this happens, Larry, please try out this (maybe you did, but there is no hint about it in your otherwise most revealing and well-written piece):
— For crying out loud, are you so dense that you can’t connect the dots on yout own? My last name is Russian. Hence, I thrive on evil, rotten falsehoods originating in that reputable St Petersburg troll factory. Why do you ask?
I don’t have much hope in being able to change the minds/attitudes of Ziomedia addicts. But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t have immensely fun at the slobs’ expense. It’s rewarding as hell, believe me (especially compared to the despair and gloom that might ensue otherwise).
What is ICG?
Katherine
International Criminal Gang
“A powerful secondary purpose of fact-checking is to bury knowledge of the crimes and atrocities committed by our International Cabal of Gangsters (ICG)…”
Perception from the jungle of concepts…
BTW, who said that writers task is not to change the world, instead, writers task is to describe the world?
Just made a tiny piece of research and —voilà:
The reputable S:t Petersburg troll factory come true at last!
The elevation of fact checking to an “industry” is really weird to me.
Whenever I see the term now I know some kind of scam is being perpetrated and facts are being distorted, not “checked.”
Fact checking used to be (and still is!) conducted by any responsible, punctilious publishers or or copyeditors or magazines that had a reputation for reliability.
Traditional fact-checking involved a number of fairly obvious actions to ensure that the basic facts presented were correct: spellings of names and places, dates, scientific factoids terms (e.g., a geological age), the designation of an organization or city (was X really the capital of Y dynasty), etc. etc. Occasionally fact checking resulting in tweaking of sentences or, more rarely, a whole graf. Suppose it turned out that a steamship company didn’t exist before 1887. Someone who emigrated from Trieste to the USA must have gotten there some other way. Suppose that strike was settled in November 1936, not after Christmas, in January 1937. Suppose X wasn’t actually the author of Y. Some recasting or rewriting needed. Also, fact checking at Time Inc. pubs and the New Yorker often included checking back with people quoted in an article to make sure they had been quoted correctly.
Or, suppose it turned out that an author has actually copied whole passages from some source the fact checker (or, more likely, a manuscript copy editor) used. Let the PE know about the plagiarism and watch out for more of same.
Experienced, widely read editors have well-tuned antennae that twitch when they see something that looks a bit dodgy; often there is in fact a mistake, and often there is no mistake, and one learns something new. Traditional fact checking saves the reputation of both the author and his/her publisher or the journal/magazine. The New Yorker and Time Inc were famous for their fact-checking operations. I have had more than one author thank me for saving their butt from looking stupid or sloppy.
Fact checking didn’t mean changing an author’s viewpoints, censoring his/her opinions, suppressing information that was available in the written record, avoiding controversy, or any of the political, so-called “debunking” uses to which so-called “fact checking” is now put. It might be suggested that an author tone down language where there was a potential for legal repercussions, or the editor/fact checker would flag a passage for the legal department to look at.
Countless nameless conscientious—and *curious*— editors and other toilers in the backrooms of publishing, established fact checking as being worth the extra trouble because it buttressed good journalistic and authorial reputations and standards by eliminating embarrassing and stupid mistakes. Many editors have gone the extra mile to ensure accuracy of material, not for the purpose of suppressing it but of making it more reliable by eliminating errors that would weaken the whole written product.
Now it seems like the term “fact-checking” itself has been hijacked and corrupted for a totally different agenda: to suppress dissenting viewpoints. A public ignorant of the original use of fact checking at quality periodicals and publishers has accepted the validity of “fact-checking” as a way of establishing the truth of very complex matters. Jeez, why couldn’t the fact-checkers establish whether there was any fraud in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia? Why do we need a Supreme Court—-or any courts!!!—when we have “fact-checkers” to tell us what is true??? Very likely “fact-checkers” have been deployed to relieve Rudy Giuliani of his license to practice law.
“Fact-checking” has become a weapon, a kind of bludgeon wielded by the strong against the weak in the information arena. At the same time, it is used selectively. I don’t hear anyone talking about “fact-checking” in connection with Judith Miller’s and Colin Powell’s lies re WMD in Iraq, or with Russiagate, or with any number of other howlers perpetrated on the public. Where were the New York Times’s fact-checkers back in November 2002????
“Fact-checking” is to truth telling as cleaning toilets is to maintaining a holy shrine.
The elevation of “fact-checking” to to cultic status actually means the replacement of genuine open debate—by identifiable or at least real people—with pronunciamentoes of anonymous absolutist entities, maybe some of them algorithms or AIs, with whom there is no arguing. “Fact-checking” is unilateral, one-sided, brutish, biased, in bad faith, a monopoly in the marketplace of ideas. “Fact-checking” is a symptom of the degradation of knowledge itself and of the processes whereby it is gained.
When someone otherwise known to be intelligent informs me that Reuters “fact-checkers” have determined that “the vaccines are safe” or that capitalism is better than communism and such other absurdities it makes me want to upchuck.
Katherine
Moderator, please promote Katherine’s post to its own page. This needs to be shared widely.
Thanks, Bob, for understanding the point of my post.
I had a feeling it might be totally *misunderstood*!
Katherne
“I am repeating myself, but it is vital to understand that all this emanates from the same single source, a group of a few hundred people centered mostly in Europe, who are extraordinarily wealthy and who determine and set the agenda – again, real people with names. The determination to control all of the world’s information, either by distribution or by censorship, originates here. It is crucially important that you connect all these dots to the same central source.”
Where can one get a list of these people?
Katherine
My hair stood up on the back of my neck when I first started reading this article. I had to stop, put it down, let many hours pass, do other things, and when my mind was clear and relaxed try to finish reading it because I trusted the author, I figured I owe him at least that.
Many things started up again, so I slowed down, hoping it would leave me, I kind-a -read like a first-grader would, word by word, forcing time to slow down for me literally (and figuratively).
Something was go’n on, I do not know what nor how to describe, but it was like each sentence was pealing back some hidden part of my life long since intentionally buried, forgotten, erased from my existence, never wising to return.
These memories had a mind of their own because I could not will them into existence, it is only the feelings that your article evoked that slowly, slowly, brought them back to life.
By the time a reached the end of the article, having laughed a little at some of the jokes that were included, I sat back happy I finished…finally…thinking I did a good…then I remembered…it was like getting hit in the gut hard, over and over again, and then I finally realized what I was feeling, why I was feeling it, and why I should be thankful, it is finally all over…(never realizing what I lived through until now)
I have to go back about 25 years ago…@ University.
I was able to figure out, in all my classes, for the most part, covering all range of subjects that professors were misleading / “brainwashing” their students by how questions in their exams/ homework/ readings/ texts were worded.
I tried to pass it off…mostly because I needed to graduate, with the best grade point possible.
The problem was this nebulous observation on my part started to weigh on my soul heavily.
Finally I decided enough was enough, the only way I can fight this and take back my conscience, was to simply leave those questions, when I run across them… blank…they can’t do anything to me, figured…or so I thought.
Until one day in biochemistry class after exams were turned back, my tall professor, walked directly over to me, out of a class auditorium of like 100 or more students, and asked me point blank…why I did not answer this question, he pointed to on my exam with his long finger, with the entire auditorium listening in.
I told him, I don’t know, guess I just got lazy…I can’t rewrite my exam now.
He turned to leave, but I could see his face was red, and he was steamed…
For me this was a occurring theme…
A female professor got so angry at me, she decided to write in the answer in red pen, the exact answer I was refusing to answer, the question I left blank, the exact answer I chose not to answer because if I wrote it with my own hand, I would have been re-writing “truth” as a “falsehood” possible imprinted in my brain forever, out of principle, because I understood the professors’s intent in ask’n said question, I chose to leave blank.
I paid a price whenever I did this, because I was hoping the professors were not talking behind my back, especially to department heads, about what I was doing.
They were.
They were smug about it…
My grades dropped as they became more emboldened…indirectly pointing me out in lecture halls with 300 people in them.
I think this was the punch in the gut, feeling I was remembering…
I saw everyone pass me, moving on…while I kept my moral conscious compass intact, I was a train wreck inside.
I kept all this inside me, all these years hidden from anyone…until I read your article…and the tears started…
but I was finally vindicated…I knew I did the right thing, and I was not crazy…even though admittedly to everyone else all these years, I looked it.
Wisdom being 20/20, I had to realize, those same professors who thought they were getting away their their indiscretions can be held accountable, not so much for what they said, or wrote, but all they people they unsympathetically affected.
.. ‘m glad I chose my road.
Mr. Romanoff is correct. All key ‘fact checkers’ (we call them New Stasi [State Security] or Thought Police in Europe are “part of IFCN of the US-American Poynter Institute… with an alliance of over 75 member organisations”. The insect-people – us, like ants in the parable who cannot fathom where the deadly boot is coming from – probably assumed it was their own corrupt local government that squashed them, when in reality, it is was a foreign power with hired boots in lockstep all over the place.
”So, the inmates are running the asylum and the foxes are guarding the henhouse. What could possibly go wrong?”
Good question. Suppose the (real) troll factory PolitiFact.com operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida during an interview with a job applicant asks the latter to fact-check the claim In Moscow the sky is green, and that is Putin’s fault. If the job applicant answers that this is 100% true, how would PolitiFact.com know the applicant is sincere? Or if the applicant rejects the claim as total horseshit, how would PolitiFact.com know the applicant wouldn’t promote his/her own prestige at the potential expense of the company?
My own written job application to PolitiFact.com would actually include the above fact-checking request where I would point out that
a) Putin certainly would colour the sky green anywhere in the world if he could, but as long as the skies remain grey, blue, or red, he is having a problem.
b) It becomes slightly more complicated in the specific case of Moscow’s skies turning green, since that could be at the discretion of the majority population. Would require more investigation with regard to Putin’s most recent election campaign there.
c) Turning the skies green in Moscow (or elsewhere) might be a nice accomplishment in Putin’s mind, but as long as he has to address the mortal danger posed by the rising star of Alexei Navalny he won’t bother too much about the colour of the skies including in places where he already turned them green (unless Navalny decides to stir up public anger because of it).
I have to say I’m pretty damn pleased with my job application to PolitiFact.com. Firstly, the quite clever idea of anticipating the employer’s question at an upcoming interview and, even more, corroborating the drivel that matters (Putin is evil, Russians accept anything, Navalny is powerful) without putting too much ideological grandstanding into it. With co-workers such as myself, the West’s troll factories would be all but invincible!
Not exactly news but as articulated by Juvenal ‘’Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’’ (‘’Who Guards the Guardians?’’) says it all. It is basically censorship which has always been based of the elites’ control of information and in doing so keeping the masses in the dark.
Politics as manipulation.
The same could be said of Candide who’s character Dr.Pangloss is famous for the rather optimistic enunciation that ‘’ …all is best in the best of all possible world’s.’’ This was taken as an axiom of irrefutable knowledge and taken to mean ‘Panglossian.’ Same method, same outcome.
If we fact-check this article for example; https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/28/explainer-how-will-moscows-mandatory-vaccination-drive-work-a74353: what are we likely to find: That Mr Putin’s power is under attack, a color revolution that struck as soon as he left Moscow for the Biden summit?
What is all this ‘mandatory vaccines’ in Moscow turning that city, seemingly Russia as a whole into vaccination Ridden NYC.
would fact-checking reveal a color game with the Russian media in the middle of it?
You want names?
Search for the board members of WEF
World economic forum
Well, I read the referenced article about experimental anti-meningococcal meningitis vaccine being the real cause of the 1918 pandemic.—I came away frustrated and disappointed.—The article left key questions unanswered:—1) So what was in that experimental vaccine, attenuated meningococcal bacteria which were actually alive and virulent and infected the soldiers getting the vaccine? but the soldiers should then have gotten meningitis, not bacterial pneumonia. 2) If autopsies were showing prevalence of pneumococcal and streptococcal pneumonia in those who died,—not meningitis!—how would that work? As I understand, the cocci are a family of bacteria. Are the label pneumococci, meningococci, streptococci then different names for the exact same organism-pathogen, only given depending on where the organism is found, and they are not really different species or strains genetically distinct. Otherwise, would the accidentally virulent meningococcal organism in the vaccine transform itself into species which infect the lungs but not the meninges. One would expect that all those dying should have been dying of infectious meningococcal meningitis out of control, not bacterial pneumonia.—That is where the article fails, to clarify the causal chain of the pandemic.
And then the article goes off on a whole new tangent about international Jews kidnapping Chinese slaves
and transporting them worldwide.—That is why we have the Chinese diaspora, not that any Chinese would emigrate voluntarily? All that had little to do with what the article was about initially.
The article left the mystery remaining:—so what was the infectious pathogen or pathogens which spread so quickly and caused so many deaths,—which bacteria(s) was that.
I read the Reuters debunking article, and it was also very lame. It also failed to address the issues raised above, if the vaccine was to be against bacterial meningitis that went out of control, why were the infections
not a pandemic of meningitis? Or am I missing something?
Hello Larry Romanoff,
Came across a very interesting and intelligent video which will certainly interest you.
Cheers
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/07/07/how-boomers-were-taught-to-hate-themselves-black-pilled-analyses-norma-rae/
Hello, Mr. Romanoff, I am endered by your writings, and I am especially interested in your upcoming book series.
If I may be privy to this information, where could I find these books when they are released (and when will they be released? If this is a trade secret, then sorry for asking0.
Mr. Romanoff asked me to reply to your question. He will begin publishing the entire content of his series of books on Moon of Shanghai and Blue Moon of Shanghai by the end of August. Some selected portions may be published first on the Saker.