Conflict of Interest: Reuters ‘Fact Checks’ COVID-Related Social Media Posts, But Fails to Disclose Ties to Pfizer, World Economic Forum
https://awakecanada.org/conflict-of-interest-reuters-fact-checks-covid-related-social-media-posts-but-fails-to-disclose-ties-to-pfizer-world-economic-forum/
Conflict of Interest: Reuters ‘Fact Checks’ COVID-Related Social Media Posts, But Fails to Disclose Ties to Pfizer, World Economic Forum
From the onset of the pandemic, social media giants, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, have flagged COVID-related posts the social media giants deem “false or misleading.”
That’s not news — most social media users are aware of the practice, especially amid recent headlines citing increased pressure from Congress and the White House to aggressively crack down on “vaccine misinformation.”
But here’s a less-publicized fact some social media users — and consumers of online news — may not know: Reuters, owned by the $40 billion international multimedia company, Thomson Reuters Corporation, is also in the business of “fact checking” social media posts, and publishing its fact-checking commentary online in a format designed to resemble new stories, which turn up in online searches.
Last week, Reuters announced a new collaboration with Twitter to “more quickly provide credible information on the social networking site as part of an effort to fight the spread of misinformation.”
In February, Reuters announced a similar partnership with Facebook to “fact check” social media posts.
However, when announcing its fact-checking partnerships with Facebook and Twitter, Reuters made no mention of this fact: The news organization has ties to Pfizer, World Economic Forum (WEF) and Trusted News Initiative (TNI), an industry collaboration of major news and global tech organizations whose stated mission is to “combat spread of harmful vaccine disinformation.”
Reuters also failed to provide any criteria for how information would be defined as “misinformation” and did not disclose the qualifications of the people responsible for determining fact versus false or misleading “misinformation.”
Physician kicked off LinkedIn for calling out Reuters’ ties to TNI, Pfizer, WEF
Dr. Robert Malone, a physician and inventor of mRNA vaccines and RNA drugs, said he thinks anyone reading Reuters “fact check” articles about COVID-related content should know about, as Malone says, the obvious conflicts of interest.
On June 28, Malone tweeted this:
regarding the “Trusted News Initiative” and censorship of information regarding COVID vaccine safety, please be aware of the link between Pfizer and Reuters. I would call that a journalistic conflict of interest. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/qQCysxnPX6
— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) June 28, 2021
In the tweet, Malone showed the LinkedIn profile of Jim Smith:
“Jim Smith, who sits on Pfizer’s board, is also former president and current chairman of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, and CEO and director of Reuters parent company, Thomson Reuters Corporation — a $1.53 billion publicly traded “provider of financial information … to businesses, governments and individuals worldwide.”
Twitter didn’t censor or remove the post. But when Malone posted the same information on LinkedIn, he was banned from the platform the next day for violating LinkedIn’s “User Agreement and Professional Community Policies against sharing content that contains misleading or inaccurate information.”
LinkedIn was purchased in 2016 for $26.2 billion by Microsoft, when the company’s co-founder Bill Gates was still at the helm. Microsoft’s COO and corporate vice president, Kirk Koenigsbauer, also serves on the board of Thomson Reuters.
Gates, who is set to profit substantially from COVID vaccine sales, still owns stock in Microsoft — about $5.1 billion, according to recent estimates. In March, Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board, but he continues to serve as technology adviser to the tech firm’s CEO, Satya Nadella.
Malone’s LinkedIn profile was eventually restored, but only after a series of emails, initiated by Malone, between him and LinkedIn executives.
Whistleblowers Welcome! Help Humanity – Securely Share COVID-19 Corruption
In an interview last week with The Defender, Malone discussed his Twitter and LinkedIn posts — why he made them, the reactions they elicited and why it matters that Reuters is partnering with social media companies to call out what its fact-checkers decide is “misinformation.” Continue…