Free Republic

The liberal Poynter Institute for Media Studies seems to have an obsession with conservative media outlets getting put on blacklists. The Washington Examiner exposed how the State Department and liberal Big Tech giant Microsoft actively bankrolled the leftist British group Global Disinformation Index (GDI). GDI was reportedly “feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down” conservative websites “peddling alleged ‘disinformation.”’ GDI's blacklist included news sites like The Daily Wire, RealClear Politics, Breitbart, Newsmax, One America News, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, the Examiner and Blaze Media. The former associate director for Poynter’s George Soros-funded...

New documents reveal how the United States government used a secret Twitter portal to censor COVID-19 content that contradicted the government’s narrative. In its ongoing probe into Twitter’s censorship practices, America First Legal has obtained a fourth set of documents (pdf) exposing a secret Twitter portal, which U.S. government officials used to censor dissenting COVID-19 views in violation of the First Amendment. It’s a revelation Elon Musk described as “extremely concerning.” The documents reveal that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was collaborating with UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and Mafindo to mitigate “disinformation.” Mafindo is a Facebook...

An international network of so-called “fact-checking” organizations funded by massive liberal organizations called on YouTube to censor more content the network disagrees with. The leftist International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), a project of the Poynter Institute, published an open letter whining that YouTube “is allowing its platform to be weaponized by unscrupulous actors to manipulate and exploit others, and to organize and fundraise themselves.” In the IFCN’s draconian view, “Current measures are proving insufficient.” IFCN exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to decry how “destructive disinformation and misinformation can be for social harmony, democracy, and public health; too many lives and livelihoods have...

For a year, many media outlets — including Poynter — complained about the lack of official White House press conferences. Sarah Sanders didn’t hold one for the final three months of her tenure. Stephanie Grisham didn’t hold one at all in her nine months as press secretary. So when Kayleigh McEnany, who took over in early April, began having press conferences again, it was a welcome change. But in the category of “careful what you wish for,” McEnany is off to a rough start. In her very first official White House press conference, McEnany told reporters, “I will never lie...

A journalism watchdog has been forced to scrap a list of “unreliable” news sources because, as it turns out, the list wasn’t reliable. The Poynter Institute, a journalism nonprofit organization, initially released a list of more than 500 “unreliable” news outlets purportedly “built from pre-existing databases compiled by journalists, fact-checkers and researchers around the country.”But a number of prominent conservative-leaning outlets were included in the “unreliable” category, including The Washington Examiner, Washington Free Beacon, Daily Caller and other publications that employ scores of journalists covering Congress, elections, the White House and more. The index was created with the help of...

So it all comes down to, who are the fact-checkers? A Facebook employee stated at the press conference that approved fact checkers will be those who have signed on to Poynter’s international fact checking network principles. You can see the list of signatories at the link; the only one that I recognize as more or less conservative is the Weekly Standard. Facebook has already said that it will use Politifact and Snopes, both left-leaning, as fact checkers. At the press conference, it got even worse: In the US, we recently announced a partnership with The Associated Press to use their...

An outspoken New York civil rights lawyer who represented clients ranging from small-time criminals to radicals and was released early from prison three years ago because she was expected to die of cancer has died. Lynne Feltham Stewart was 77. Her husband, Ralph Poynter, says Stewart died Tuesday in the Brooklyn home where she lived after receiving a "compassionate release" from prison in January 2014. Stewart was disbarred after she was convicted of helping a terrorist client communicate with followers.

The organization partnered with Facebook to help determine whether a certain story is “disputed” is financed by billionaire George Soros and a slew of other left-wing funders. The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook yesterday announced it will work with “third-party fact checking organizations” that are signatories to the code of principles. Facebook says that if the “fact checking organizations” determine that a certain story is fake, it will get flagged as disputed and, according to the Facebook announcement, “there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining...

he St. Petersburg Times is perhaps the finest daily newspaper south of The Washington Post and east of The Dallas Morning News. It is also an invaluable corporate citizen in the Tampa Bay, Fla., area, both as the region's leading news source and as a sponsor of many worthy cultural and civic institutions. But there's one thing that the Times, my former employer, probably isn't: a practical model to be emulated by a newspaper industry desperate for a new game plan. It's a familiar refrain in many newsrooms: The St. Petersburg Times and its owner, the Poynter Institute for Media...

Hugh Hewitt takes Rathergate CBS Memo apart piece by piece and with every blogger that played any important role in the story. LISTEN LIVE HERE. Hugh is offering wall to wall analysis of the CBS Report.

I have a clipping in my files dated January 13, 2003. It's from a British newspaper, the Guardian. Here's the headline: "With war looming, it is no good the American public looking to its newspapers for an independent voice. For the press have now become the president's men." This morning (Thursday), The Washington Post ran a remarkable story on its front page, responding to months of charges like that one in the Guardian: charges that the Post and other media failed the public in covering the buildup to war in Iraq. The story, by media writer Howard Kurtz, says the...

Poynteronline Posted, Feb. 1, 2003 Updated, Feb. 2, 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster Coverage Resources, Story Ideas and More By Al Tompkins Shuttle Links and Overview WFAA's coverage includes an extensive webpage with video, slideshows, online user feedback pages and a "what witnesses saw" page, as well, at http://www.wfaa.com/ See an online shuttle enthusiasts' blog on FreeRepublic, which tracked the re-entry of the Columbia before during and after the incident: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/833885/posts    This is such a remarkable way that the online experience sews together people in times like this.  Some newspapers, such as the Washington Post, are allowing online readers to share their thoughts:...