Similar observations here in Germany. Those fact checkers pick the facts that supports their agenda and leave out others. Framing is in place just the same. And it does not matter if you look at left or right journalists or left or right fact checkers, it is all the same.
As usual, what looks great on paper often falls short in reality because humans are involved. Who could argue that the concept of fact checkers is inherently bad? After all, they're supposed to chase down all the "disinformation" you mention, and they're there to ensure "factual discourse" to prevent "malicious intent." But if someone opposes fact checkers, they must be a pesky leftie/rightie/whatever label fits, and surely they're against the truth... because how could a fact checker have an agenda? It's not possible, they're just checking facts!
In reality, though, why are there so many fact-checking organizations? Shouldn't there be just one, holding all the truth? Oh, right... some are fact checkers, and others are just fakers. Because only organization X does real fact-checking, why cannot everybody agree with me?
You see, the whole system starts to fall apart the more you reason about it. To me, it was just journalism in disguise, pretending to be more neutral, but it's really business as usual.
> because how could a fact checker have an agenda? It's not possible, they're just checking facts!
Of course a fact checker has an agenda. How else do they decide which fact checking to prioritize? It's not like a single person or organization has the ability to fact check everything about every topic.
A fact checking group with an emphasis on correcting mistakes about Catholic teachings is very unlikely to provide fact checking about water rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo nor fact checking statements about British tank production during the Second World War.
> Shouldn't there be just one, holding all the truth?
I can't make sense of that argument. Which organization could that even be?
> To me, it was just journalism in disguise
It can also be journalism. Newspapers, magazines, and even podcasts can have staff fact checkers. The origin story for The New Yorker's famous fact checkers was to avoid libel after printing a false story about Edna St. Vincent Millay.
That is, the clear agenda of the New Yorker's fact checkers is to minimize lawsuits and enhance the reputation of the magazine among its current and future subscribers.
I therefore see no problem in fact checkers having an agenda as I can't make sense of how it would be otherwise.
Nobody is going to give a singular example because their entire position rests on them being unbiased, but fact checkers are biased. But if you point out what you believe the fact checker's bias might be, that in it of itself is a bias, and now you're no longer trustworthy by the metrics you yourself set forward.
>(...) because their entire position rests on them being unbiased, but fact checkers are biased
Sorry but this completely misses the point. I can't speak for everyone who dislikes the whole fact-checking thing but I can speak for myself since I'm the OP. What I'm saying is that nobody is truly unbiased, not that fact-checkers are biased.
In fact, I go further and openly state that not only are they biased, but many of them even have an agenda. Yes, media outlets have an agenda, and that agenda may go against your interests - why is this a shocking point on this forum? @wakawaka28 has expressed this much more clearly than I have below, anyway:
Nobody is actually free of bias. That absurd pretense of impartiality is only in the conversation because "fact-checkers" claim to have it, and that claim is used to promote censorship. Though it matters when journalists are biased by personal views and their funding sources, that is inescapable and consistent with their rights to free speech. Censorship is not.
And the hole fact checking concept falls apart when you prematurely conclude a dialog. This is the most valid critique to any political participant and way more on point: botched online discourse.
I am not concluding that fact checker are bad by nature, they are at worst, incomplete, imbalanced ... biased like any other political participant. Shutting them down with visas or labeling them as malicious will not foster the dialog.
The fact is that people were censored based on so-called fact-checkers. It's not as innocent as some jackasses online calling themselves "fact-checkers"... It is so far beyond that, I feel sorry for you for seemingly not knowing. Go start with the Twitter Files as reported by Matt Taibbi.
I'm not going to argue the point that the man is perfectly impartial on everything. But of the people who reported the story of the Twitter Files, I trust him the most. He doesn't need to be perfectly impartial to convey what you need to know.
Nobody is actually free of bias. That absurd pretense of impartiality is only in the conversation because "fact-checkers" claim to have it, and that claim is used to promote censorship. Though it matters when journalists are biased by personal views and their funding sources, that is inescapable and consistent with their rights to free speech. Censorship is not.
> Shouldn't there be just one, holding all the truth?
How do you hold the truth? Even if there was only a single fact-checking organization, and they had no institutional or personal biases, they still wouldn’t own the truth.
The fact-checking organization "Correctiv" (which was one of the first that got the privilege of marking shared links on Facebook as "disinformation") falsely claimed the right-wing AfD party planned to deport millions of non-Germans in a secret "Masterplan" ("Remigration") which of course did not happen which was confirmed by a court and later by Correctiv themselves.[1] This false report was repeated on every TV station, print and online magazine but the correction was not as widely shared (most people don't even know that the report was fabricated). Keep in mind that the Correctiv report lead to mass protests against the AfD and reactions from a lot of companies and government officials, so it had a HUGE impact.
The government also funds projects from Correctiv (a common pattern for these "N"GO's).
