Fact-Check Blog ‘HealthFeedback’ Is Punishing Balanced Journalism
By
Joe Martino
5 minute read 
It happened like it has happened many times before, we wonder why our Facebook reach is suddenly cut to virtually nothing only to find out another fact check has arrived. “What is it going to be this time?” We often ask. It’s become frustrating. We tirelessly spend time as journalists checking our facts, gathering different perspectives, seeking experts and putting it into a story. Then we’re told “you can’t say that.” But why?
In case you assume that we’re just upset and that the fact check was valid, let’s look at it and get this out of the way.
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Iria Carballo-Carbajal one of the team members at Health Feedback has used her many years in academic training to strike down a piece we wrote discussing the claims of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche. In our piece, we focus on claims Bossche has made about the COVID-19 vaccines and his theory that the current vaccines could potentially create stronger variants. In the article we clearly lay out:
- Bossche’s claims and state them as his theory
- We lay out the fact that other doctors and scientists don’t agree with him and cite their reasons
- We lay out that his claims have already been fact checked and ‘debunked,’ and provide quotes from fact checkers
- We make no personal claims in the piece other than that we feel science is having a tough moment with COVID as only some scientists are allowed to talk, while others have to just stay quiet or be ridiculed
This is the hallmark of a well written and balanced journalistic piece. This is how you would be taught to write a piece that’s honest and transparent. Just because this is no longer common in journalism today, doesn’t mean it’s not how it should be done. So why was it fact checked by Iria Carballo-Carbajal? Did she even read the piece? Or did she just assume that it was ‘bad’ based on the title and shut it down? The fact check article she leads our audience to is not even about our article, it’s about other pieces of content that make different claims and that may not have been fully balanced. So why are we getting punished?
I can’t say we know. We have reached out to their team to get an answer from them as to how such a dishonest and defaming decision could have been made. We will certainly update you when we know more, but for now this story is yet another example of how over the last 5 years fact checking is only sometimes about checking facts, while other times it appears to be about stopping certain narratives from spreading. Typically, narratives that support establishment rules, decisions and products.
Is HealthFeedback more concerned with shutting down a topic than supporting honest journalism? Do they think readers can’t look at different perspectives in an article and inform themselves on the fact that yes, there are experts who have different opinions right now? How could trained scientists be operating so unscientifically?
As you can see below, we received a ‘partly false’ rating. But of course, as usual, there is no clarity on what is false because the fact check has nothing to do with our content and we have made it abundantly clear in the piece that Bossche’s claims may in fact be false.
Many have been losing trust and faith in our institutions, primarily because there is often a lack of transparency, honesty, and the fact that it responds to differing perspectives through force. Instead of listening, allowing scientific dialogue to occur, government, Big Tech and their armed fact checkers are literally shutting down journalism.
I debated writing this piece. I do not want to get further into the ‘bad books’ of fact checkers as they already seem to have a watchful eye on what we do and, at least in my perspective, are complicit in creating an incredibly unfair marketplace for journalism today that has absolutely crippled our business – I don’t want them to come after us even harder. But I feel that if I don’t say something people won’t know the type of stuff that we’re facing, the stuff that is affecting the information they see and the perspectives they have access to.
Decisions made by the general public are not as informed as they should be due to the overreaching power fact checkers have. We see this as a huge problem. Journalists are the ones there to help expose dishonesty in government and hold them accountable, that’s how it has always been. But now, those journalists aren’t allowed to speak, and long time journalists like those at NewsGuard have even joined in the fight against their own professions. Perhaps it’s because they see where culture is headed and they might as well join the side who has all the power – for now.
We are being pushed into manufactured echo chambers, not because people love them, but because speech is being silenced so aggressively that there is no way to have public discourse on important topics without having to go to the fringes to find a new perspectives. Unfortunately, mainstream perspective doesn’t live on the fringes to challenge alternative perspectives, and vice versa, so echo chambers emerge by nature.
In my view, these echo chambers are the result of an authoritarian mindset and culture that is arming fact checkers with way too much power, not realizing the long term damage they are causing.
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