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The Poynter Principle
Reference: Meet the Censors
If the International Factchecking Network (IFNC) run out of the Poynter Institute in St Petersburg Florida was sticking to the facts it might not be posing the existential threat to our society that it currently does. Neither would the Mainstream media (MSM) in general. But, neither of them have ever let the facts get in the way of their mission. Both are fond of saying “we can disagree on how we view the facts, but we cannot disagree on what the facts are.” The truth is, MSM and IFNC and the Censorship Industrial Complex (CIC) they pimp for are really concerned with the conclusions people make and will manipulate the ‘facts’ to implant those conclusions in their minds. I witnessed Poynter and its Times do this for decades in order to smear and marginalize a group of people it took issue with, the Scientologists. Now, they practice their trade on political opponents on an international level.
Fact checking has been foisted upon us as a pseudo-scientific process for determining what our minds ought to process and ought not to. MSM and IFNC have invented the title ‘factchecker’ and incessantly used it as if it were a profession for which one took a prescribed university course of education to earn a degree. In fact, certified IFNC factcheckers have zero credentials. Worse, in most cases they have anti-credentials. That is, their only claim to entitlement is that they are reporters. Think about it. Reporters are literally the least trusted profession in the world when it comes to facts. A recent Gallup poll found that the percentage of Americans who have a great deal of confidence in the media is 7%. That is about the same percentage of Americans who own more than 50% of its wealth. That is about right – the media, by survey, is the tool of the Plutocrats to keep the real people ignorant so that they remain in their peasant places.
What reporters do have that hard-working honest people do not, is practiced expertise in the art of deception. They are expert at sophistry. (Sophistry: a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning. – Dictionary.com)
When you combine that trick with the sleight of hand of calling opinions, theories and ideas ‘facts’ that can be judged on an objective basis by some authority on high, an upside-down Orwellian world obtains. No longer are they banning falsehood, they are banning prohibited ways of thinking. They are controlling thought.
Let us take an example from IFNC itself to show the depth of deception with the unelected thought authorities at Poynter.
The media industry loves to shower itself with honors and credentials with which to lord over its subjects. The pinnacle of MSM self-love is the Pulitzer Prize. Poynter Institute won one in 2009 for the handiwork of its IFNC predecessor and now partner Politifact. The Prize was awarded for its fact checking work during the 2008 Presidential election. As you may recall one of the most contentious issues in debate in 2008 was whether Obama’s universal healthcare proposal would include the right to keep the plan you were already on. An army of health care analysts claimed that under the vague campaign health care proposal of Obama it was very likely impossible that one would retain the right to choose his own doctor; and that it was very clearly impossible to confirm it without the entire proposed system set forth in detail.
Nonetheless, Politifact’s (and later IFCN) head Angie Holan decided as a matter FACT that Obama’s unlikely promise was a ‘fact’, publishing on October 8, 2009:
“Under Barack Obama’s health care proposal, “if you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it…
…we rate his statement True”
First realize that clearly this was not a factual dispute. It was a matter of opinion. And an opinion about whether someone would do what he promised despite a slim probability. But, as noted in the last post, the New Liberal Order – through IFNC – treats opinion as fact when it suits its purpose. And the NLO decided Obama was the chosen one, and so had factchecking central (Poynter’s Politifact – now IFNC) turn Obama’s promise into a fact. It was for this type of flat-out partisanship that Pulitzer awarded its prize for “factchecking.”
So wrong was Poynter’s Politifact that it became a huge campaign issue in 2012. By then everybody seemed to understand the Pulitzer-prize winning fact confirmation was fraudulent, except for its perpetrator Politifact. The political hack nature of Politifact is evidenced by the fact that it remained silent about its fraud until after the 2012 election. Only when the chosen one was back in office did they deign to acknowledge the error.
When it no longer mattered to its political purposes, Politifact (and IFCN) head Angie Holan finally penned the article “Lie of the Year: ‘If you like your health care plan, you can keep it’’
Holan had the chutzpah to call the Pulitzer-prize winning FACT verification of the year 2008 “a catchy political pitch” and a “breezy assurance”, instead of the fact it had certified. Instead of even acknowledging her and Poynter’s error (and fraudulent Pulitzer) she condemned Obama for intentional dishonesty. Like the psychiatrist who can never lose an argument by use of the device of judging his opposition “crazy”, such is the arrogant nature of the Censorship Industrial Complex. It is never wrong, and you are never right if you do not slavishly go along with its certified narratives. Opinions (even potentially fraudulent misrepresentations) are fact when it suits their purpose. And when they become debunked, the self-appointed judges of thought rewrite history.
In 2013, Avi Roy found and exposed these very facts in Forbes magazine. For a deeper dive into this sham, see Pants On Fire: Politifact Tries To Hide That It Rated ‘True’ Obamacare’s ‘Keep Your Health Plan’ Promise
Roy observed that “It’s more than a bit precious for Holan—a self-appointed Arbiter of the Truth—to declare as a “Lie” a statement that she herself once declared to be “True” without even acknowledging the fact that she had done so… That we can’t count on PolitiFact to even admit it was wrong tells you everything you need to know about the group.”
Indeed. And yet 11 years after the exposure, Holan and Poynter have been rewarded for dutifully calling false promises fact when it suits the New Liberal Order’s purposes. They have been granted millions of tax-exempt dollars to serve as the global Ministry of Truth and as the “certifier” of truth arbiters across the world. This is something even worse than the Peter Principle, wherein incompetence is rewarded by promotion in a bureaucracy. This is not mere incompetence. This is promotion for carrying out intentional fraud and deceit for the New Liberal Order: The Poynter Principle.
For our purposes, the event captures opinion checking in the name of fact checking. The former is in no fashion objective. It chooses ‘proper’ ways to look at things or think about things while banning others. In that regard it monitors and controls how you think, your very thought processes. It is beyond mere deception and dishonesty. The CIC through Poynter has entered the realm of thought policing and mind control.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 