Fact Checkers Make Exception for Liberal-Leaning News Outfit
If there was ever a reason to doubt the authority and authenticity of the mission of the so-called “fact checker” organizations it is this: There are more than one of them.
You see, if “facts” and “truth” were binary, there wouldn’t be a glut of competing companies out there attempting to sell their services to social media corporations and other media outlets. We wouldn’t have any disparity whatsoever. There would be one fact-checking group because, as stated in their creeds, there should be but one set of “facts”.
The entire industry is a bit of a scam, if we’re ready to be that honest with ourselves. And, if we’re not, there are plenty of examples out there of these companies massaging the narrative in order to maintain their lucrative contracts.
NewsGuard, the establishment “news rating” project that claims to fight untrustworthy media outlets, is cautiously defending NPR as the establishment media outlet continues to claim that U.S. Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonya Sotomayor are at odds over masks, even after a statement from both Justices and Chief Justice John Roberts debunking the story.
On Tuesday, NPR released a story claiming that Justice Sotomayor had opted to work remotely after Justice Gorsuch refused a request from Chief Justice Roberts that all justices mask up when on the bench.
Later in the day, a Supreme Court source told Fox News that neither Justice Roberts nor Justice Sotomayor had made any such request.
But then:
Despite the total breakdown of the initial story, Newsguard refuses to make any judgments on NPR’s reporting, arguing that the situation is still unfolding.
Prior to the statement from Chief Justice Roberts, Newsguard maintained that the facts of the story were still unclear.
“There are two conflicting reports, one from NPR and one from Fox News, both citing anonymous sources,” said Matt Skibinski, general manager of Newsguard. “It’s hard to say anything definitive about either report without more information.”
But Newsguard cannot hide from this fact:
However, even after all three Justices named in the story – Gorsuch, Sotomayor, and Roberts – made public statements debunking it, while NPR refused to issue a correction, Newsguard maintained that the story was still unfolding.
Perhaps one of the several other “fact checking” corporations would like to take a stab at it?
