Phony baloney: The 9 fakest fake-news checkers
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
He ranked the news organizations as “Garbage Left (not worth it),” “Hyper-Partisan Left (To Confirm Your Beliefs),” “Leans Left (Not Horrible),” “Neutral (What Journalism Should Be),” “Leans Right (Not Horrible),” “Hyper-Partisan Right (To Confirm Your Beliefs)” and “Garbage Right (Not Worth It).”
Healy labeled WND, the Drudge Report, the Blaze, Accuracy in Media, the Family Research Council, Breitbart and other organizations as “Garbage Right (Not Worth It).”
However, Healy considers the following to be “Neutral (What Journalism Should Be)”: Reuters, USA Today, the Texas Tribune, Financial Times, Associated Press, C-SPAN and the Economist. Even NPR is located partially in the “neutral” category on his chart.
One Twitter user named Nigel Fenwick asked Healy : “Hi Will – is this your own graphic? What’s the basis of this analysis? What data was used? Is it objective or subjective?”
Healy simply replied : “[M]ost of this was from mediabiasfactcheck.com but note this is just the first draft. I plan on a final version later.”
WND’s request for comment from Healy concerning his news ranking methodology and expertise in evaluating news organizations hadn’t been returned at the time of this report.
He appears to have some anti-Trump views. On Election Day, Healy tweeted: “Anyone who voted third party should hold their head high. They didn’t vote for a horrible candidate. That they voted their conscience. 
In May 2016, he tweeeted his support for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson , who was the Libertarian Party nominee in the race for the White House: “I side 82% with @GovGaryJohnson. Just reaffirms my choice this November.”
And on Jan. 22, he tweeted: “Aren’t #alternativefacts just bulls–t? #Trump administration already off to a poor start.”
Healy also praised the Womens March on Washington, D.C., tweeting Jan. 21: “The fact that around this country we can have massive peaceful protests after a peaceful transition of power is awesome #WomansMarch.”
Media Bias Fact Check
MediaBIasFactCheck.com describes itself as “the most comprehensive media bias resource in the Internet.” The site is owned by Dave Van Zandt from North Carolina, who offers no biographical information about himself aside from the following: “Dave has been freelancing for 25+ years for a variety of print and web mediums (sic), with a focus on media bias and the role of media in politics. Dave is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence based reporting” and, “Dave Van Zandt obtained a Communications Degree before pursuing a higher degree in the sciences. Dave currently works full time in the health care industry. Dave has spent more than 20 years as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political influence.”
WND was unable to locate a single article with Van Zandt’s byline. Ironically, the “fact checker” fails to establish his own credibility by disclosing his qualifications and training in evaluating news sources.
Asked for information concerning his expertise in the field of journalism and evaluating news sources, Van Zandt told WND: “I am not a journalist and just a person who is interested in how media bias impacts politics. You will find zero claims of expertise on the website.”
Concerning his purported “25+ years” of experience writing for print and web media, he said: “I am not sure why the 25+ years is still on the website. That was removed a year ago when I first started the website. All of the writing I did was small print news zines from the ’90s. I felt that what I wrote in the ’90s is not related to what I am doing today so I removed it. Again, I am not a journalist. I simply have a background in communications and more importantly science where I learned to value evidence over all else. Through this I also became interested in research of all kinds, especially media bias, which is difficult to measure and is subjective to a degree.”
WND asked: Were your evaluations reviewed by any experts in the industry?
“I can’t say they have,” Van Zandt replied. “Though the right-of-center Atlantic Council is using our data for a project they are working on.”
Van Zandt says he uses “three volunteers” to “research and assist in fact checking.” However, he adds that he doesn’t pay them for their services.
Van Zandt lists WND on his “Right Bias” page , alongside news organizations such as Fox News, the Drudge Report, the Washington Free Beacon, the Daily Wire, the Blaze, Breitbart, Red State, Project Veritas, PJ Media, National Review, Daily Caller and others.
“These media sources are highly biased toward conservative causes,” Van Zandt writes. “They utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Sources in this category may be untrustworthy.”
His special notes concerning WND link to Snopes.com and PolitiFact.com, websites that have their own questionable reputations and formulas as so-called “fact checkers.” (See the “Snopes” and “PolitiFact” entries below.)
Van Zandt says he uses a “strict methodology” in determining which news sources are credible , but his website offers vague and typo-ridden explanations of his criteria, such as the following:
Asked if his own political leanings influence his evaluations, Van Zandt said: “Sure it is possible. However, our methodology is designed to eliminate most of that. We also have a team of 4 researchers with different political leanings so that we can further reduce researcher bias.”
Bill Palmer of the website Daily News Bin accused Van Zandt of retaliating when the Daily News Bin contacted him about his rating. Palmer wrote :
“[I]t turns out Van Zandt has a vindictive streak. After one hapless social media user tried to use his phony ‘Media Bias Fact Check’ site to dispute a thoroughly sourced article from this site, Daily News Bin, we made the mistake of contacting Van Zandt and asking him to take down his ridiculous ‘rating’ – which consisted of nothing more than hearsay such as ‘has been accused of being satire.’ Really? When? By whom? None of those facts seem to matter to the guy running this ‘Media Bias Fact Check’ scam.
“But instead of acknowledging that he’d been caught in the act, Van Zandt retaliated against Daily News Bin by changing his rating to something more sinister. He also added a link to a similar phony security company called World of Trust, which generates its ratings by allowing random anonymous individuals to post whatever bizarre conspiracy theories they want, and then letting these loons vote on whether that news site is ‘real’ or not. These scam sites are now trying to use each other for cover, in order to back up the false and unsubstantiated ‘ratings’ they semi-randomly assign respected news outlets. …
“‘Media Bias Fact Check’ is truly just one guy making misleading claims about news outlets while failing to back them up with anything, while maliciously changing the ratings to punish any news outlets that try to expose the invalidity of what he’s doing.”
But Van Zandt accused Palmer of threatening him , and he said MediaBiasFactCheck welcomes criticism. If evidence is provided, he said, the site will correct its errors.
“Bottom line is, we are not trying to be something we are not,” he said. “We have disclaimers on every page of the website indicating that our method is not scientifically proven and that there is [sic] subjective judgments being used as it is unavoidable with determining bias.”
Fake News Checker
FakeNewsChecker.com is another self-appointed “fact checker” run by anonymous individuals. The website offers no contact information.
As WND reported , the site is publishing “fake news,” specifically “fake news” about WND. It claims that WND’s founder and CEO, Joseph Farah, “received donations from the Donald Trump superPAC “Great America “PAC” (sic) calling into further question the motives behind the ‘fake’ and conspiratorial nature of the content.”
But there’s one major problem with the site’s purported “fact.”
WND didn’t get any donations from any superPACs, “not this one or any other,” company officials confirmed.
FakeNewsChecker.com effectively categorizes as “fake” virtually all news resources except those in the “mainstream media,” which surveys reveal are enjoying less and less consumer trust these days.
The website states:
Fake news has become a catchall term for news sources that lack journalistic integrity. These sites use sensational headlines, make false claims, exaggerate the editorial spin to reflect a bias, are misleading, are conspiratorial, are anti-science, promote propaganda, are written in satire or just plain hoaxes. Many of the sites are untrustworthy because they begin with a premise that is close to a truth and build a false story around it. Please check your sources and your emotions as you read the articles on these sites.
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MediaBIasFactCheck.com describes itself as “the most comprehensive media bias resource in the Internet.” The site is owned by Dave Van Zandt from North Carolina, who offers no biographical information about himself aside from the following: “Dave has been freelancing for 25+ years for a variety of print and web mediums (sic), with a focus on media bias and the role of media in politics. Dave is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence based reporting” and, “Dave Van Zandt obtained a Communications Degree before pursuing a higher degree in the sciences. Dave currently works full time in the health care industry. Dave has spent more than 20 years as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political influence.”
WND was unable to locate a single article with Van Zandt’s byline. Ironically, the “fact checker” fails to establish his own credibility by disclosing his qualifications and training in evaluating news sources.
Asked for information concerning his expertise in the field of journalism and evaluating news sources, Van Zandt told WND: “I am not a journalist and just a person who is interested in how media bias impacts politics. You will find zero claims of expertise on the website.”
Concerning his purported “25+ years” of experience writing for print and web media, he said: “I am not sure why the 25+ years is still on the website. That was removed a year ago when I first started the website. All of the writing I did was small print news zines from the ’90s. I felt that what I wrote in the ’90s is not related to what I am doing today so I removed it. Again, I am not a journalist. I simply have a background in communications and more importantly science where I learned to value evidence over all else. Through this I also became interested in research of all kinds, especially media bias, which is difficult to measure and is subjective to a degree.”
WND asked: Were your evaluations reviewed by any experts in the industry?
“I can’t say they have,” Van Zandt replied. “Though the right-of-center Atlantic Council is using our data for a project they are working on.”
Van Zandt says he uses “three volunteers” to “research and assist in fact checking.” However, he adds that he doesn’t pay them for their services.
Van Zandt lists WND on his “Right Bias” page, alongside news organizations such as Fox News, the Drudge Report, the Washington Free Beacon, the Daily Wire, the Blaze, Breitbart, Red State, Project Veritas, PJ Media, National Review, Daily Caller and others.
“These media sources are highly biased toward conservative causes,” Van Zandt writes. “They utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Sources in this category may be untrustworthy.”
His special notes concerning WND link to Snopes.com and PolitiFact.com, websites that have their own questionable reputations and formulas as so-called “fact checkers.” (See the “Snopes” and “PolitiFact” entries below.)
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Van Zandt says he uses a “strict methodology” in determining which news sources are credible, but his website offers vague and typo-ridden explanations of his criteria, such as the following:
Asked if his own political leanings influence his evaluations, Van Zandt said: “Sure it is possible. However, our methodology is designed to eliminate most of that. We also have a team of 4 researchers with different political leanings so that we can further reduce researcher bias.”
Bill Palmer of the website Daily News Bin accused Van Zandt of retaliating when the Daily News Bin contacted him about his rating. Palmer wrote:
But Van Zandt accused Palmer of threatening him, and he said MediaBiasFactCheck welcomes criticism. If evidence is provided, he said, the site will correct its errors.
“Bottom line is, we are not trying to be something we are not,” he said. “We have disclaimers on every page of the website indicating that our method is not scientifically proven and that there is [sic] subjective judgments being used as it is unavoidable with determining bias.”
And this is the best we have?
A fake news web site calling other sites fake news. Hilarious... Also, thought that conspiracy sites were banned here? Just sayin..
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These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.
Factual Reporting: MIXED
Notes: Based on reviews by all of our researchers, WND is an online news source that has a far right bias and dabbles in right wing conspiracies such as President Obama’s birth certificate . They also use misleading clickbait headlines that do not always match the content of the article (See M. Allen’s review below). WND also has a mixed track record with fact checkers: here and here (D. Van Zandt 6/19/2016). Below is the detailed reviews of each researcher.
Update: On 2/20/17 WND wrote a retaliation article due to not liking our rating of their website. Our response is found here as well as a link to their article.
WND is deceptive in that their news articles appear moderate and not overtly sensational. However, Snopes has slammed them on many an occasion for parsing of facts, and using inaccurate data. In my opinion, this site with respect to news, is pretty deceiving as on their outward appearances seem well-balanced (scam ads notwithstanding). When you take a look at their Opinion page, their true colors are more evident. This is not a reliable site by any measure for news, and the rest of the site is pretty much a rag (F. Locke Siewert (2/25/2017).
WND is a decidedly right bias site that does carry some center and slightly left content. This is through linking to reports from less biased sources. For example: The story regarding Black students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The actual article is a fairly well balanced look at the issue by Todd Richmond of the Associated Press. The lead-in line WND used for the article was somewhat misleading, however. By using white supremacists in quotes it seems to imply that it isn’t a factor in the students demands when it is. Where the real bias on the site is evident is on the editorial pages and staff generated articles. Although mostly factual, the wording is heavily weighted and misleading. Carrying some moderate content is not enough, balanced against the editorial stance, to rate WND anything other than right bias. It did prevent them from being rated Questionable or worse though (D. Kelley 2/25/2017).
WND is far right/alt-right. This story just came out. Direct quote “The story, nevertheless, was issued by the AP, which explained it obtained an 11-page document that “calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.”
The issue here is it doesn’t link to the source but another news outlet that is using the source that then links to the source there. This is something you might find in a typical badly cited essay in college. Always cite original sources when referencing material.
Second issue in article –
“ On Thursday, activists protesting Trump’s effort to enforce immigration law carried out a “Day Without Immigrants” protest in which immigrants were to stay home from work or school.
In Denver, some parents left work to take lunch to their children in public schools when the lunchroom workers took part in the protest.”
This is minor but it shows a significant downplay of how wide spread and national the “Day Without Immigrants” was. It shows clear bias in how they view said protest when you marginalize like this. Better solution is to not reference it at all to limit bias in reporting.
Screen capture of their headlines as of 2/17/2017
“Although mostly factual, the wording is heavily weighted and misleading. Carrying some moderate content is not enough, balanced against the editorial stance, to rate WND anything other than right bias. It did prevent them from being rated Questionable or worse though (D. Kelley 2/25/2017).” So it’s not questionable nor hate nor pseudoscience. Their reporting regarding MEDIA bias fact check as the 2nd most fraudulent and dishonest checkers out there and that it’s a biased vindictive one man show is spot on. The bottom line is that we new stalkers conservatives as a unified group do not recognize any legitimacy from this so called bias checking site and will be pointing out its anti Christian anti conservative bigotry and bias forever as long as it is used here.
You are using a conspiracy web site to try and point out biased web sites? Are you serious? LOL
Even the hater bigot Van Zandt specifically did not rate them a conspiracy or pseudoscience site. So, drop it already. MBFC is a shameful smear campaign against conservative and Christian news and religious web sites.
No I am pointing out what a fraudulent fake the so called rating site Media Bias Fact Checkers is and how they stand by nothing they write about and admit they have no scientific method for smearing and blackballing that they do to people who disagree with them on key political, social conservative , and religious matters with libelous smears. There is nothing about MBFC that is objective, fair , or reasonable. Mr. Van Zandt is a terrible human being. Of all the sites that claim to fact check, MBFC is almost the very worst, least reliable and most bigoted of them all.
Pailin for XXX with Cornhuskers is a gift that keeps on giving. The concept of irony elludes him.
Check out the Palmer Report on Metafied and Heated discussion and you will see the truth about the sick fraud that MBFC is from the political left and that one is much harder hitting on the idiot Van Zandt than this seeded article from WND is. MBFC has no redeeming value.
Some things never change….
The fact is that WND is nowhere near as biased a source as Media Bias Fact Checkers is. MBFC is one of the most bigoted hate filled fascist sites on the entire internet.
WND was all up in birther hysteria back in the day. I think they were trying to make money off the dumb slugs who fell for that nonsense. You know, the typical Trump voter today.
Democrats In Panic After Vatican Secret Exposed?
July 21, 2018
WASHINGTON,DC — A damning new video has sparked a wide-ranging scandal that implicates everyone from Pope Francis to John Podesta and even Hillary Clinton.
The video, leaked earlier today, details a batch of secret John Podesta emails which expose a shadowy relationship between the Vatican, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party in general.
Adding fuel to the video’s shocking allegations, the New York Attorney General’s office today issued subpoenas to every single Catholic diocese in the state.
The one-two punch of the shocking video coupled with the subpoenas has left Democrats scrambling to answer numerous allegations and protect their advantage in the upcoming 2018 congressional midterms.
Party insiders secretly fear the evidence revealed in this leaked video is so incriminating it could disintegrate their advantage in House racesonce thought to be solidly in the Democrat’s column.
In a move seen largely as an attempt to stem the bleeding, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced today it will dispatch former President Barack Obama to campaign for 8 different Democrat candidates throughout September.
The video also couldn’t come at worse time for Pope Francis and the Vatican who are currently ensnared in their own scandal involving child abuse throughout the Catholic Church.
Among other things, the leaked video reveals the secret flow of dark money into Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign as well as the campaign’s attempt to influence the Vatican on a host of previously undisclosed issues.
The charges are seen as so explosive they could take down both the Vatican and the Democratic Party at once. Which means both organizations may use their considerable strength to take the video down permanently.
Watch it right now by clicking any of the links above or here while it’s still available. We may be asked to take it down.
Watch the shocking presentation:
The above is an ad I found on the Media Bias Fact Checkers site. https://www.omnivistahealthreport.com/logicalmiraclesreport/1mob/general-health/vatican-demsinpanic.html?cep=0QlU4XD6Dzrcv2PFE-TaMjYA47v65qFiQj4-Hu-8dY6FkqAZG9W8Tj7fNc3OAPu3OnYxb1IeMwby6buShbkh5VNaGCGuhNRbiYSxsAheejgFyISFVenPisrTUTfAaWt0hqMSpsZc53ROJKVyo7l5MZBZ9tb6KdW94cy7kCItbIQCh8OzT2UQySgp4l6AgR2vhGBI8hzWKKSBGRW0Dynu8vmKUdXyv5JO2CPMiZzJNVwA6FirEsF2vWB6KLxone_Z&creativeid=11159728114090764&clickid=1_11235873052321820
A place that claims to expose conspiracies takes advertising from them. Real balanced and objective there.
I wonder if the quack sites that advertise on MBFC get a break from them regarding their rating the advertisers own sites?
That was a decade ago and is no longer an issue with anyone at all.
So, let me get this straight...he says that anyone that didn't fall for either Trump's nor Clinton's bullshit should be proud and you show that as "anti- Trump" ....
This is why fact checkers are needed...because of lies like that.
These fact checkers are not needed at all. They are all biased against Christians and conservatives. They are serial sweeping generalizers and they have no value. Just because an anti Trump guy was also anti Hillary doesn’t make him not anti Trump. The bigot also gave away his hate bias in his discription of various media on the left and on the right. MBFC though are the worst of the worst. They have no redeeming value are biased in everything they rate and their hate filled bigotry toward religious people, conservatives, and those who don’t agree with them on climate, origins, and angels. They are the human debris of the internet.
Let's seeeee. If I put Trump's name at the begining of that....yep
And then the rubes jump all over it chanting "FAKE NEWS! FAKE NEWS!"
Funny how the "Fake News" sites have gotten it right while right wing rubes are still chanting the parroted "FAKE NEWS!"
The only thing that is fake around here is any personal integrity that Dave Van Zandt might think he has manipulating the ratings of sitesrun by people he disagrees with at his fraudulent scam site.
Just facts took MBFC to the cleaners over their initial crappy ratings of their site. Totally backed Van Zandt down. It was a great read seeing that incompetent butthead taken down.
HT/1st
Really? First SP makes reference to the article on another of my seeds today and I thought about commenting here about it but didn’t and now you post about it? Interesting. Well the seed above is right on and I proudly stand by every word of it.
I wouldn't expect any different from you.
The seed is a circle jerk.
The WND reports on WND, Frontppage says, a reddit forum said, a twitter user said, Sean Hannity said, Red State said, Washington Free Beacon said, New York Post said, Pamela Geller said, the Daily Mail said, Breitbart said, Media Research Center said.
Fucking hilarious.
BTFW, that seed is NOT News/Politics, it's comedy.
That’s the folly of using MBFC and SPLC and the like. They libel, slander, defame a site and its people simply write another article for a site that hasn’t yet been hate slimed. What’s the point. MBFC is not a community standard to be complied in general on line with but rather an obstacle for conservative and Christian media to find work around for. The media sites on the religious right have and are going to co mingle and intermingle their sites and their contributors to the extent that the so called fact checkers will have to ban them and my opinions/beliefs all or none at all. [Deleted]
READ MORE CAREFULLY. Your seed is merely a gathering of neo-nationalist bolstering each others opinions.
I hope that you realize that you just made the best argument for ENDING your crusade.
Since the same authors can just post on another site, what is YOUR point?
Not ONE of the critiques of ANY of the fact checkers in your seed is about them being anti Christian. You're fabricating shit AGAIN.
MBFC is blatantly anti evangelical Christian and so is the SPLC and BOTH openly brag about it. Again if the targeted sites via being wrongly labeled as questionable, pseudoscience, or hate get their spokes persons and leaders to write for another site or another site writes an article about the efforts of a defamed and libeled site, what’s the point? And I’m not just talking about here on NewsTalkers. I’m talking about the liberal social media I mentioned above who use these so called fact checker hacks to censor content on their sites to. Like I said, the fact checkers on the internet are not something to be obeyed or complied with but simply an obstacle requiring multiple work arounds to frustrate their efforts across the entire social and media internet. The conservative and evangelical Christian sites will be heard one way or another. I’m saving for a donation for Alliance Defending Freedom or Liberty Council for their lawsuit against 3rd party companies and groups who use the SPLC hate list against non violent Christian groups over ideological differences. GuideStar already backed down from that and the pressures of legal action for seven to eight figure damages may well coax others to do so too before a court case.
Post a link to MBFC or SPLC 'bragging' about being anti-evangelical Christian.
They don’t brag about it. They simply label social conservative evangelical Christian sites as hate sites because the terrorist inspiring bigoted partisan hate group the SPLC does. They label Christian sites whether they also deal with news and political stories as well or not as pseudoscience if they are Biblical literalists, if they advocate for Creation science and or believe in the great flood and Noah’s ark, or if they believe in the Biblical accounts about the existence of angels. [Deleted] It is a flat out and deliberate act of religious bigotry what MBFC and those who use it engage in. [Deleted] So, yes the bigotry against certain religious belief at MBFC is quite real.
So your admit that your comment claiming that they "BOTH openly brag about it" was a LIE!
You've just given up any 'high ground' you may have had claim to. Well done...
I’ve already shown in my SPLC seeds where the leaders of that organization openly admit to targeting conservative Christian and social conservative sites as hate sites over ideological disagreement with the intent of destroying them. The direct quotes are in those seeds. As to MBFC, they openly label Christian sites as pseudoscience and say so in their reviews as to why. It’s almost always over Angels and or belief and advocacy of the Genesis account of origins.
Another false comment. Why persist?
In short, they support their ratings with facts.
BTFW, YOU are the one that stated that they 'openly brag'. Then you immediately admit that THAT was a LIE. All the equivocation in the world doesn't change that...
Facts according to who? Labeling entire church denominations and their religious beliefs and the sources we express our beliefs as pseudoscience because he hates us and allows his site to be used as a tool to censor our beliefs on those issues and the sites on every issue because of our religious beliefs? That is what is going on here with MBFC.
Facts are facts.
Really? Cite which 'entire church denomination' MBFC labels or censors. Please be specific so that I can look up their rating on the MBFC site.
Or do you just want to admit that you pulled that BS out of your nether regions too?
“Obviously the hate label is a blunt one,” Cohen concedes when I ask whether advocates like the FRC, or proponents of less immigration like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or conservative legal stalwarts like the Alliance Defending Freedom, really have so much in common with neo-Nazis and the Klan that they belong in the same bucket of shame. “It’s one of the things that gives it power, and it’s one of the things that can make it controversial. Someone might say, ‘Oh, it’s without nuance.’ … But we’ve always thought that hate in the mainstream is much more dangerous than hate outside of it. The fact that a group like the FRC or a group like FAIR can have congressional allies and can testify before congressional committees, the fact that a group like ADF can get in front of the Supreme Court — to me that makes them more dangerous, not less so. … It’s the hate in the business suit that is a greater danger to our country than the hate in a Klan robe.”
But in recent years, as the list has swept up an increasing number of conservative activists — mostly in the anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim categories — those conservatives have been fighting back. Boykin, of the FRC, recently sent a letter to about 100 media outlets (including The Washington Post) and corporate donors on behalf of four dozen groups and individuals “who have been targeted, defamed, or otherwise harmed” by the SPLC, warning that the hate list is no longer to be trusted. Mathew Staver, chairman of the Christian legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel, told me 60 organizations are interested in suing the SPLC.
There are signs the campaign is having an impact. Last year GuideStar, a widely consulted directory of charitable organizations, flagged 46 charities that were listed by the SPLC as hate groups. Within months, under pressure from critics, GuideStar announced it was removing the flags. The FBI has worked with the SPLC in the past on outreach programs, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled a very different attitude. At a meeting of the Alliance Defending Freedom in August, Sessions said, “You are not a hate group,” and condemned the SPLC for using the label “to bully and to intimidate groups like yours which fight for religious freedom.”
Along the way, the SPLC undermined its own credibility with a couple of blunders. In 2015, it apologized for listing Ben Carson as an extremist (though not on the hate list), saying the characterization was inaccurate. Then, this past June, the group paid $3.4 million to Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam organization to settle a threatened lawsuit. The SPLC had listed them in a “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” (again, not on the main hate list). The SPLC apologized for misunderstanding Nawaz’s work to counter Islamist extremism. ....
“It’s a stranglehold on conservative and religious groups that is just hovering over us and that can continue to constrict and limit our ability to simply voice our opinion,” Tedesco told me. “This hate label shuts down debate. … It creates enmity towards people that are just on the other side of an issue from you. That’s not something we need in our culture.”
Later, when I met with Cohen, he noted that far from being shut down, groups like the ADF have more power than ever, given the friendly remarks by top administration officials like Sessions......
To some extent, it was similar to my experience at the FRC and ADF. They simply saw those positions as admirable, or at the very least defensible, expressions of truth — whereas, to the SPLC, they were expressions of hate.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2018/11/08/feature/is-the-southern-poverty-law-center-judging-hate-fairly/?utm_term=.febe985ca1b8
I thought the topic of this seed was fact checkers.
Now you go off on another SPLC rant and post a link that comes right back here.
The SPLC is involved because some of those so called objective fact checkers use the SPLC hate groups hate list as if it’s their own.
There isn't a word about SPLC in your seed Xx. You're just pulling that out of your nether regions.