Fitting the ‘facts’ to push their agendas
WHO is fact-checking the “fact checkers”? That’s a question being increasingly asked as comically named “factchecking” units run by certain universities and publications are exposed as hopelessly partisan and more interested in pushing certain agendas than verifying truths and falsehoods.
The latest Twitter Files revelations concerning Hamilton 68 and false claims of Russian influence show that, too often, media outlets and factchecking units that shout the loudest about “misinformation” are guilty of spreading it or turning a blind eye.
But it’s not just Russian conspiracy theories that saw fact-checking units beclown themselves. Nothing sees these activists rendered deaf, blind and mute quicker than climate alarmism.
Conversely, just about any positive claims about the state of the climate, whether it concerns record coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef or the growing polar bear population, will see these biased operators launch into action. Last week, Bjorn Lomborg, Copenhagen Consensus Centre president and former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute, called out those charged with reducing disinformation for, ironically, promoting disinformation.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Lomborg explained how “partisan ‘fact checks’ are undermining open discourse about important issues, including climate change”. Lomborg has recent personal experience with this phenomenon.
“Earlier this month, I wrote an accurate post on Facebook about the growing polar bear population. The post undercut alarmist climate narratives, so it was wrongly tagged as a falsehood,” he wrote.
Marine physicist Peter Ridd has also been a victim of activist “fact checkers” who bend over backwards to dismiss any positive news about the Great Barrier Reef, preferring catastrophist predictions to verifiable facts.
“I’ve been fact-checked probably three or four times by Australian Associated Press – they always come to the same conclusion that the reef is doomed,” Dr Ridd told me on Sky News last year. “They’ve been proven to be wrong again and again and again, and these fact checks are just a form of covering up all the dodgy predictions they’ve made in the past.”
In his Wall Street Journal piece, Lomborg methodically fact-checked the AFP “fact checkers”, exposing them to be ill-informed activist hypocrites who bend over backwards to have their findings fit their preferred narrative.
“The result is that the public is denied access to accurate data and open debate about these very important topics,” Lomborg concluded. “Ridiculous points on one side are left standing while so-called fact-checking censors inconvenient truths. If we’re to make good climate policy, voters need a full picture of the facts.”
And if you want some recent examples of “ridiculous points on one side” being ignored by the “fact checkers”, then look no further than the 2023 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Former US vice-president Al Gore has long been guilty of making doomsayer climate predictions that never come close to eventuating – and he was at it again, predicting that there’d be “one billion” climate change refugees this century.
He also claimed that we are pumping so much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere that the “accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on Earth”, and that the oceans are “boiling” and creating “rain bombs” and “droughts” which are causing “waves of climate refugees”.
These statements were widely mocked by the centre right but did not inspire many “fact checks”. I think you know why. Indeed, when it comes to Gore, it’s easier to find “fact checks” trying to protect him from his own crazy statements.
Likewise, John Kerry, the other man who managed to lose a presidential election to George W. Bush, is allowed to make absurd claims without fear of troubling the “fact checkers”.
President Joe Biden’s climate envoy was also in Davos and made a number of startling claims, including this: “You look at what’s happening with species, half the species of the planet (have) been already killed.”
Now, that is not true, not even in the same ballpark as the truth, not even in the same suburb, state or country as the truth. According to Lomborg, the figure is less than 1 per cent – but don’t expect a flurry of fact checks to comfort the young ’uns who think they’re inheriting a dead planet.
ANTHONY Albanese spent more time enjoying the premium hospitality at the Australian Open than he did in Alice Springs where violence and mayhem continue despite restrictions being placed on the sale of alcohol.
While the PM was downing beers and ice creams at Rod Laver Arena, pub patrons in Alice Springs were terrorised by dozens of violent youths. Remember when Scomo was skewered for a week-long family holiday during the bushfires?
Don’t expect a Labor PM to be held to the same standard by the bulk of the media, not even as Labor policies cause untold damage.