Reuters ‘Fact Checks’ COVID-Related Social Media Posts, But Fails to Disclose Ties to Pfizer, World Econonic Forum

[TFS]

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Excerpts:

Reuters is now in the business of “fact-checking” Facebook and Twitter posts about COVID vaccines — despite having ties to Pfizer, World Economic Forum and Trusted News Initiative.

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.

Reuters publishes 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.”

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.

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.