Fact-checker back-pedals after ‘spreading misinformation’ on Joe Biden's watch check

i want to take you through a story about how the word misinformation is being used as a weapon to censor legitimate reporting and criticism of leaders last week we discussed the fact check usa today had placed on news stories that joe biden had checked his watch during a ceremony at dover air force base the fact checker pictured here told the world these crane claims were false fake news and misinformation social media companies use fact checks like this to police news organizations and facebook in particular actually purely relies on third party fact checkers to police its platforms these fact checkers have immense power and responsibility we have seen what happens to sky news if someone thinks that what we have published is misinformation it can result in suspensions or even terminations of the right to enter the town square of digital debate and discussion in this case daniel funk became the spreader of misinformation he supposedly dedicated his career to stamping out soon after daniel funk declared the watch-checking claims to be false families of the soldiers killed during joe biden's botched afghanistan exit had spoken of the heartbreak and pain of seeing their president do what funk described as misinformation in reference to the checking of his watch that didn't happen just once that happened on every single one that came out of that airplane it happened on every single one of them they would release the salute and he looked down his watch on every last one all 13. pretty conclusive not to mention last week on this show we played the raw footage of the event which clearly supports the family's version of events us today eventually downgraded the claim on their fact check from partly false to missing context disgraceful and what did the fact checkers say whose tweets of the original verdict were retweeted thousands of times on social media as many of you already know this story has been corrected biden checked his watch multiple times during the ceremony i regret my error and when the social media pylon didn't slow down he further hit back with this it's easy to dunk on journalists when we get things wrong i get it to many we're just another name on the screen but behind that screen is a person trying to do their best ah so you're the victim now daniel not the families of dead soldiers you insinuated were lying and just a wish-washy assurance that you were trying to do your best your best is clearly inadequate and any power you have to police speech and news story should be revoked immediately the fact you haven't yet been sacked and you continue to publish fact checks discredits your entire fact-checking operation [Music] caleb what do you make of the way that fact-checkers over in the u.s are policing speech of news organizations in other countries in australia but then also specifically how they tend to get it wrong so very often well i mean if you can't take the heat you've got to get out of the kitchen don't you and i find the whole concept of fact check is quite unquote quite interesting because i mean isn't that what a journalist is meant to do anyway i mean if i put out a story that i knew was false or i hadn't done my due diligence to check the facts that i was putting forward in the story i'm not doing my job i don't know why we have these supposed fact checkers i mean that's just what every journalist ought to be doing all of the time with anything they are publishing or saying or writing or whatever and it would seem clear here that this fellow had a preconceived notion um he wanted to prove you know falsely of course uh that biden had not been looking at his watch when in fact that was completely wrong and you have to look he's owned up to it that's something he's owned up to it but time and again what happens particularly on social media is that someone spreads misinformation and it's worse when it comes from a journalist but someone spreads misinformation that takes hold very quickly gets lots of retweets and likes on facebook and shares and whatever that takes off everyone then believes it then when it is found to be wrong they put out this meek and mild apology which no one retweets and no one shares on facebook and and very few people actually realize that what they were feeding the first place was wrong so it's all good and well to say well i'm sorry it was wrong but you've already done the damage and it's very difficult to come back from that it's too late isn't it and and rebecca the other thing that i think we always see in america the fact checks always seem to be using semantics to soften the blow on joe biden or using semantics to then punish a conservative opinion absolutely i mean the partisan nature these should be called you know party policy checks or ideology checks uh it's been going now really ever since the election and even the candidacy of uh when donald trump presented himself to be candidate and it's just an ongoing story so um anything that a conservative says it's always every possible way that you can stretch it or look at it to say that it's not true and then when it is found to be true as you've pointed out a number of times on the program you know that the police were just doing their job or whatever it is uh then oh well let's just admit my goodness we got that wrong you know the it's they can't even do that rebecca they they put missing context on it after it they can't even say no this is true and and by the way just just for the record politifact has done the same fact check they say it's true every single other organization has admitted it happened these guys have a missing context label on it that's how ridiculous it is so they can they half apologize

Channel: Sky News Australia

Views: 861,057

Keywords: 6271902529001, fb, msn, opinion, yt

Id: meqDXetNG4w

Length: 6min 17sec (377 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021