The Highwire with Del Bigtree - FACEBOOK “FACT-CHECKERS” EXPOSED

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

Just opinions!! After all the censorship, shadowbanning and warnings about misinformation, court documents now reveal that Facebook (now Meta) admit that their third-party fact checkers are only giving opinions on content.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

What holiday would be complete? Wouldn't be complete without Mark Zuckerberg, when he's not busy trying to put VR goggles on your face or upload your consciousness into a USB stick. He's being taken to court. This is what the headline looks like. Facebook admits in court that fact checks are just opinion. Now, this is something that a lot of people already knew, but now it's coming out in court papers. And this was a lawsuit by John Stossel. John Stossel, if anybody remembers, he's the ex-ABC News and Fox Business.

network correspondent and journalist. And so it's about a month ago now, just at the end of November, and here's the lawsuit. John Stossel versus Facebook, science feedback and climate feedback. Those two are the fact checkers. And it says in there, this is what Facebook wrote. For one, Stossel fails to plead facts establishing that meta, that's what Facebook is now called meta, acted with actual malice, which as a public figure he must. For another, Stossel's claims focus on the fact check articles written by climate feedback not the labels affix through the Facebook platform.

The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory. To the contrary, they constitute protected opinion. So what they're saying here is Facebook hires these third-party fact-checkers or allows them to look at this moderated content on the platform, and then Facebook affixes these labels. But these are just opinions, just like everyone else's opinion on there, whether it's a scientist's opinion or a doctor's opinion, even research is looked at his opinion on there.

So it's just a bunch of people throwing opinions at each other, apparently on Facebook's platform. And this is what Stossel wrote back in the New York Post. So he wrote an opinion column. He says, here's where the facts about me lie. Facebook bizarrely claims is fact checkers are opinion. And he says, quote, it was Facebook, not just a third party that declared my post, quote, partly false, end quote. Facebook's warning was created by Facebook and posted in Facebook's voice.

As Facebook's own website says, we apply a warning label. And if we go over to Facebook, which is now meta again, Facebook's website, this was on vaccine misinformation, science misinformation, and this is their framework for this. And it says here, once a piece of content is rated false by fact checkers, we reduced its distribution and show warning labels with more context. Here, Facebook is intimately involved in, it's not just some third party's opinion, they're intimately involved in removing this content, in throttling its viewership, and really just eliminate it from, I mean, it's like a soft digital book burning is what's

happening online here. Yeah, it's incredible. And as you know, we deal with this here on the high wire. Of course, Facebook cut our channel last year. We also lost our YouTube channel right around the same time within a couple of months of each other. But these fact checkers are just obnoxious. And the question always is, is what scientific body? I mean, they're literally refuting scientists in many situations.

Or in this case, that was one of our most censored videos where all I did was stick a CO2 monitor under the mask of my son and let him breathe and show the world what had said. I mean, I don't know what needs to be fact checked about that. I didn't, you know, wasn't a magic trick. I didn't change how the machine worked. but all of this, the WHO chief scientist caught line to the public. If you remember that video, that went viral. And that one, I wasn't even speaking. That video was literally just two videos by the WHO chief scientist,

Swamonathan, who in a video for the WHO said that we have a robust vaccine surveillance system. And then at the WHO meeting just days later, said we don't have a surveillance system that we can trust. And those two together, those two videos got us fact-checked. And so it really makes you wonder. But for people to understand, I wanted you guys all to understand sort of what it's like to have to deal with this. NewsGuard is one of these fact checkers that has reached out multiple times. You got to take the time to answer like every single question that are threatening to downgrade your website or, you know, whatever their rating is of the website. And on their website, they claim to be funded by, you know, private parties, but also social media platforms.

But this is a typical set of questions. I just sort of grabbed the last set of questions I dealt with. I think there's just about a month ago. by NewsGuard. Now, they had already re-asked me all the questions they asked me the first time, which I answered right away, said I hadn't sent it. We had. But here were their new questions. This is one on Bears. This August 2021 article claimed that VAERS data proves that there have been 13,000 deaths due to COVID-19 vaccines. The article did not mention that bears consists of unverified reports that can be submitted by anyone without including their name or contact information or

any proof that the vaccine was responsible for an adverse effect. In fact, the CDC, website that contains VERS report states, while very important in monitoring vaccine safety, Baers reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. They're threatening us saying that basically we use VERS to make our points and state BERS as facts. And so I respond to that. Here's my response that I sat down and wrote. We have never used the word proves when discussing specific data regarding death or injury on the VERS system. That would be a inaccurate. It is clear that these are only reports, which is exactly how we described them.

We always mention the fact that VERS system was determined to be unreliable by multiple organizations, including a study funded by the CDC and conducted by Harvard Medical School that determined VERS appears to be capturing less than 1% of the total amount of actual adverse events that should have been reported. This serious problem of underreporting was understood by the CDC in 2015. Yet they appear to have done nothing to address the issue. In no other time America has a robust and capable vaccine injury capture system been needed, more than at this time where a nationwide release of a brand new MRNA vaccine technology that never finished its long-term safety review due to emergency use authorization. The high wire is clearly more alarmed

by this clear act of negligence by the CDC than NewsGuard is. Who is not negligent is the Highwire and our parent company, I Can, which will continue to report and bring attention to this glaring issue. They sum it all up with the final question. Are we going to make a change? Here's what that question look like. Does this site stand by these reports or is a correctional retraction warranted, although as though they've somehow forced us into a retraction? The highwire stands by all of our reports, just as we stood by reporting last year, when NewsGuard accused the highwire promoting the lab origin theory when we interviewed guests who described how they believed the SARS-CoV-2 virus was developed in a laboratory. At that time, Newsguard wrote,

This is what they said to us. This claim was found to be false by health feedback. A March 2020 study in nature medicine refuted the claim that the virus was created or genetically modified. I wrote clearly our reporting integrity on this issue of lab origin is aging better than that of health feedback or NewsGuard. We are confident that all of our reporting will age equally as well. Perhaps there should be an organization that fact checks NewsGuard and in order to avoid these types of critical errors. Just a thought, CEO Del Big Tree. And so that's how I deal with them.

I like to, in the end, point out what a ridiculous bunch of clowns they actually are. And if they watch the highway, they would learn how to do good journalism. And certainly, if they would just sit through one or two Jackson reports, they would know the difference between what they're doing and actual fact-checking. Actually, the truth is I consider us a fact-checker. We've been fact-checking the CDC and fact-checking the FDA through this entire COVID pandemic. We've been fact-checking the WHO, we've been fact-checking the President of the United States of America. So I guess it's only right that they would send their fact-checkers after us.

But I think we're winning this battle. And I think more and more people, when they see that warning label, is creating almost a badge of honor. I think we're so tired of being lied to, so tired of manipulation by social media, that when we see these flags, I know at least for me, I say, man, that must be a video I need to see. And so I go ahead and I'm not terrified to just go into the box anyway and watch the video if it allows me to. So we'll take it. Yeah. And in a way, it kind of has freed us here at the highwire because we're not bound by the constraints of these third parties that are trying to control speech, control thought, control what we report.

And we talk about this all the time. It's almost like an emancipation, if you will, of information. So it's helpful. And our numbers have only grown since that's happened. So I guess thanks Facebook for that. You know, I don't know if I share this with the audience. We were sitting down in a business meeting with our accountant who was going through all the numbers from last year. And we're just looking at the donation numbers.

And there was this clear spike where like this one, like almost like one day where our donations shot up. And I was like, wow, what did we talk about on that day? I mean, that must have been, what was that subject matter? My CEO, Catherine, said, oh, that was the day we got kicked off of YouTube. And so it was pretty amazing. July 29th, we got kicked off of YouTube. I think it was July 30th was, I think, one of the record-breaking donation days we've ever had. So take that, YouTube.

Go ahead. We'll take all that advertising, so it seemed to work. If you like that clip, then be sure to check out our live broadcast of the High Wire every Thursday morning at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. You can watch it on iTunes. and Twitter. We'll see you there.