Fact-checking the "fact-checkers"
What's new: Heritage is calling out PolitiFact and Facebook for abusing the social network's fact-checking program.
Why this matters: Partisan groups are abusing their fact-checking roles to suppress conservative political ads and other content.
Key points:
Facebook uses a network of outside "fact-checkers" to review and to rate ads to identify and remove false information and "fake news." These fact-checkers include groups from across the political spectrum.
If an ad is rated as anything less than "truthful," it will not be allowed to run on Facebook as an ad, but may be allowed as an "organic post."
Earlier this week, PolitiFact rated a proposed ad campaign by The American Principles Project (APP) as "missing context," which spiked the ad from being run on Facebook.
The APP ad targets Sen. Gary Peters' support of The Equality Act and asserts that, if passed, the act would "destroy women's sports."
PolitiFact justified their rating of the ad as "missing context," by saying, "That's a prediction we can't fact-check." But in essence, that's precisely what they did.
On Wednesday, The Heritage Foundation issued a joint press release with Heritage Action for America calling attention to this politicization of the fact-checking program and calling on Facebook to suspend PolitiFact's participation and for a full review for any other abuses.
What we're thinking: First, Heritage does not endorse or oppose candidates, or otherwise support the content of any ads mentioning candidates.
Klon Kitchen is a managing director at Beacon Global Strategies and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
