Tilak Doshi Contributors
Energy
I analyze energy economics and issues related to public policy.
Fact checking is a growth industry. According to Census latest annual fact check compiled in October 2019 by Duke Reporters’ Lab, there are at least 210 fact-checking platforms currently operating in 68 countries. This is almost five times the number provided by the first edition of the same census released in 2014. News fact-checking is important business.
Almost everyone – from the humble farmer in the dusty villages of Asia and Africa to the ‘masters of the universe’ on Wall Street – owns a cell phone and is readily available to access it from time to time. real time (usually free, some paid) for news and information transmitted by print media and social networks over the internet. News that is freely or cheaply available on mobile phones or PCs is vital to livelihoods, from the bidding price of the rice crop in the nearest rural wholesale market to the stock price on the Stock Exchange New York. And much of it is important to all of us as individuals with concerns about our work, our neighborhood, our country, and the well-being of our family and friends.
Factcheckers: Pastor of the Herd
In the two most contentious areas of contemporary issues – the impact of major pandemics and climate change on lives and livelihoods – the question of what “truth” is remains elusive for many of us as well as to our parents and grandparents. grappling with the problems of their own time. But they only have access to rumours and perhaps cheap spreadsheets available on the nearest street corner or samizdat from underground sources in authoritarian states.
Like the priests in pre-reform Europe, who represented their flock of faithful, mostly illiterate believers, the fact-checkers today are self-appointed media watchmen. They aim to get to know the mess of misinformation and “fake news” from the county’s facts and narrative truths. But are they the defenders of truth and accountability as they claim, or are they the enforcers of the political narrative? Are they the arbiter of “consensus science” (a paradox) is supposed to include facts about climate change or the covid pandemic? Are they supporters of partisan politics who provide themselves with the sham and exaggeration they claim to be against?
In an American society besieged by culture wars and the increasing politicization of life at all levels, it may not be surprising that we witness “The downward spiral of the fact-checking profession is primarily run by reporters engaged in politics, not experts who specialize in subjects they judge with any sense of the imagination. “.
Covid-19 pandemic: Some very basic questions
More than two years after the pandemic, some of the most fundamental questions are still controversial, and even data integrity question still mired in controversy. Overreported covid deaths because many people may have died with covid rather than belong to covid? Is the key and mask created any obvious difference to public health? Anybody there possible early treatments for an existing disease or are vaccines approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under an Emergency Use Authorization the only way? Is it a covid vaccine? Safe and effective? For each of these questions, the majority of fact-checking websites (or fact-checking sections of the old media) support the incumbent narrative of the major pharmaceutical companies, regulatory agencies, and the like. such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FDA, and key government officials such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. The Biden administration welcomes this and goes further in calling out social media companies like Facebook Working with the White House to “fight misinformation” about covid-19.
Perfectly credentialed professionals who don’t subscribe to the reigning fairy tale are often excluded from the media by “fact-checking” gatekeepers. There are many such examples (this and this) but perhaps the most recently reported case involves three prominent authors of Great Barrington Declaration: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician and epidemiologist; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at the University of Oxford, an epidemiologist; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, epidemiologist and health economist.
Are from email obtained through the American Institutes of Economic Research’s Freedom of Information Act, it is clear that two of the top public health officials of the US government – Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Infectious Diseases, and Allergy and Francis Collins, then Director. of the National Institutes of Health – has no intention of communicating or publicly arguing with the authors of the Statement. Instead, as a editorial comments of a major newspaper said, “two holy public health officials conspired to quell dissenting views”.
In what appears to be a shock statement from a government official whose mantra is ‘follow the science’, Dr Collins wrote in an email: ‘This recommendation from three epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel laureate Mike Leavitt at Stanford. It takes a quick and devastating publication to undo its base… Is it in progress? ”
Calling three highly publicized experts from the world’s top universities “marginal epidemiologists” is more a reflection of the accuser than the accused. Collins then spoke to Washington Post and accused that the Claim was “not mainstream science…it was dangerous”. According to the emails, Dr Fauci – who argued that his detractors were “unscientific” because, in his own words, “I represent science” – replied that “takedown request” was in progress for a article via Wired, a ‘technology’ magazine. The author of the article as “senior writer, climate” for the magazine with an Oxford University degree in English language and literature.
Climate change: A decades-old debate
Like the media coverage of covid-19, the climate change headlines in the mainstream media over the past three decades have been one-sided. The basic premise is that “science is solved” as in a tweet by then-US President Barack Obama in 2013: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous” with clear implications : “Who are you to challenge this?” And, as in the context of covid-19, the marginalization of climate skeptics has a long track record.
Two examples suffice to verify authenticity and editorialize to ensure that skeptics don’t need to register to reach the wider public. The first concerns London-based BBC, affectionately known as “beebs”, for its authoritative news broadcasts around the world as it emerges from the ashes of World War II . The British media giant is known and praised not only for its balanced news features but also for its documentary nature. And in this space, two famous figures with the same name – David Bellamy and David Attenborough – emerged in the 1970s, directing fascinating TV shows about nature and the environment from all corners of the globe. tens of millions of houses. Like the British commentator James Dellingpole wrote in her eulogy for Bellamy, who passed away in 2019, “both are superstars … both are on their way to becoming national treasures.”
However, while one, Attenborough, basked in the halo of international fame and was invited to numerous climate conferences as a speaker and star delegate, the other declare he became a pariah as soon as he rejected the group’s idea of global warming – describing climate change as a “poppy”. Even though climate skepticism has killed off his media career, he remains completely unrepentant. The BBC itself has made it clear told its staff that it would not invite climate skeptics to panel interviews and discussions to balance the debate because “the science has settled.”
More recently, fact-checkers have been busy working with another outsider: renowned physicist Steven Koonin, formerly Secretary of Science in the Obama administration, Director of Caltech and BP Chief Scientist. He published a book titled “Uncertainty: what climate science tells us, what climate science doesn’t say and why it matters” in 2021, arguing against the popular narrative of the gas alarmist Queen. Before release, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a review[1] of the book and immediately followed by the “fact-verification” section of a website called “Climate Response.” Above it website, Climate Feedback describes itself as a “worldwide network of scientists that separates fact from fiction in reporting on climate change. Our goal is to help readers know what news to believe.”
This “fact-checking” was cited by Facebook to discredit the WSJ review and the book itself in all user posts related to the book review. This is then followed by a Editor as the WSJ has pointed out that while disagreement with the book’s author is natural, since all advanced science is contested, calling such disagreement a “fact-check” is a false statement. Dr. Koonin himself later provided a rejected in the WSJ.
Factchecks are just official opinions
Without going into too much detail about the claims of so-called fact-checkers, the point here is to note deviations of truth in the presentation of criticized arguments in the “fact-checker”. economic” like that. Perhaps this is best revealed by the fact that Facebook Discuss in legal defense that the fact-check cited was only an “opinion” when faced with a lawsuit brought by prominent journalist John Stossel, who has posted two videos about climate change.
Readers and viewers beware of this particular change to empty caveat The clause: “fact-checking” is used by mainstream news outlets and social media to police what you read and see as opinions only.
[1] Full disclosure: This contributor also published a review books by Steven Koonin.
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