Fact-Based Expression ≠ Free Speech

The New Censorship Euphemism

Fact-based expression.

That is what the once vaunted now openly vile Poynter Institute - a pivot point of the international censorship-industrial complex - wishes to “strengthen … around the globe.”

Pointedly not “free speech,” but “fact-based expression.”

This absurd term, floated through the institute’s annual and recently released “Impact Report,” may at first blush seem to be yet another silly woke wiggle, like “birthing person (mother,) or “involved in the criminal justice system” (a felon,) or “experiencing homelessness” (vagrant.)

Like many obfuscative Orwellian neologisms, it might, if you hear it only once or twice, seem to make a tiny bit of sense because “fact-based expression” implies telling the truth.

But like so many other progressive re-wordings, it is purely an attempt to sound reasonable so as to mask a deeply ominous intent.

That intent?  To control speech and public discourse by being the lone decider as to what is factual and what is not and those decisions are being – and will be – made based on the sociopolitical outlook of the progressive woke elite, the socialite socialist statist global drivers that fund Poynter.

But the Poynter Institute – once the premier media/journalism teaching and thinking, for lack of a better term, organizations – made a significant error in rolling out the term:  it appears right after “free press,” inviting the clear comparison.

“…meaningful achievements we have made to help strengthen a free press and fact-based expression around the globe,” is how the email introduction to the report read.

So why not simply say “free speech?”

Because that’s not what they want at all (they don’t really believe in a free press either, noting the importance of the press being “responsible,” i.e.. housebroken.)

To the contrary, “fact-based expression” demands both self and external censorship, a political social, and cultural censorship that will drown out and drone on.

And that is now the point of Poynter.

Poynter is now in the fact checking business.  So Poynter will be telling the world what is “fact-based expression.”  And Poynter has the connections to make it stick.

How convenient for Poynter, how wonderful for the globalists, how terrible for everyone else.

Just nine years ago, Poynter had a budget of $3,8 million and, unless you worked in the media, you had no idea it even existed.  Today, thanks to massive support from the likes of Google, Meta (Facebook,) Poynter is a $15 million dollar a year nexus point for those who wish to control the press and, more importantly, what everyone else says.

Poynter runs PolitiFact, a media outlet that pretends to be in the business of checking facts.

But it does no such thing. It is global elite swamp third-party validation  machine that twists and turns and backflips to put its “FACT” stamp of approval on just about anything that needs to be buttressed.

Or, more importantly, it stamps “FALSE” on a statement or story or concept that is at odds with the current popular narrative that keeps that same global elite in power (a litany of Poynter’s obfuscation and the tricks it uses can be found here  .)

It runs MediaWise, an outfit that claims to train (largely) younger people how to spot “misinformation,” something that does not actually exist  but is a pillar of the censor’s claim to their right to exist.

If Poynter were honestly trying to stop misinformation, it would not practice the art so well.  

And Poynter is the home of the International Fact Checking Network, a group of global media and other fact checking organizations that is dedicated to “fighting repression and misinformation.”

To quote the IFCN chief:  “Misinformation is on the march. The politically powerful are using disinformation to confuse the public and control the agenda. And fact-checkers and other journalists face attack and harassment simply for doing their jobs,” said Angie Drobnic Holan, IFCN director. “Yet our work continues. We are on the side of truth. We are on the side of information integrity.”

And the IFCN determines what is the truth, what information has the requisite “integrity” to pass muster.

In other words, doing to the world what it has done to the United States: work with social media and government agencies to stamp out dissent.

Google and Meta (Facebook) and TikTok are, as noted, Poynter funders and use its products to help decide what is or is not allowed on their platforms.  That actual fact does not bode well for the neutrality of Poynter’s fact checking efforts.

Specifically as to TikTok, Poynter proudly claims that “(T)hrough innovative fact-checking partnerships with Meta and TikTok, PolitiFact is slowing the spread of thousands of pieces of false or harmful online content each month — reducing future views of false information by 80% on average.”

And Poynter decides what is “harmful” and ‘false.”

Because of its vaunted past, Poynter is the respectable (actually becoming less respectable with each passing million) face of the international movement to determine what the public can talk about.

And it seems being in the “fact” industry is good for business – budget tripled, staff doubled, got far more notoriety, and getting a bit of actual global power, all in the past decade.

Google, Meta, the Omidyar network (lefty media funders,) The Just Trust (a spinoff of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative that focuses on “criminal justice,) TikTok, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Stanford Impact Labs, which “invests in teams of researchers working with leaders in government, business, and communities to design, test, and scale interventions that can help us make progress on some of the world's most pressing and persistent social challenges” are some of the major funders of Poynter.

All of the above are powerful progressive/woke companies and foundations and are intertwined with  the global movement to muzzle the freedom of the average person, to create a rental world in which people will simply interchangeable cogs to be watched, fed, and placated.

Another funder of Poynter is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED,) one of the most caustic – and powerful – members of the international “civil society” behemoth that lay somewhere between government and private industry and is now more powerful than either.

Note:  NED was specifically founded in the 1980s to do in public what the CIA could no longer do in secret: play international politics, foment revolutions, buy supporters, and influence foreign media.

Expect to see “fact-based expression” more often in the very near future.  Expect to hear “Are you in favor of lying?” arguments if you say you are worried about the new rubric.  Expect to see ‘fact-based expression” in law books soon as an appropriate mitigation of free and unfettered speech.

The concept is already making headway – see the Online Harms Bill proposed in Canada - which “authorizes house arrest and electronic tagging for a person considered likely to commit a future (hate) crime.”

Poynter is a far far distance away from its original mission, but in theory still understands the actual news business.  We asked them what exactly what is “fact-based expression:’

“What is 'fact-based expression' exactly?  What does that term mean? It has to be different from ‘free speech’ because (the report intro) would have read ‘free speech’ just as it did ‘free press.’”

The response from the transparent media training foundation?

“We have seen your message and I have shared it with the team. We did see your deadline note in the subject line and in the body text. We'll try to respond as soon as we can, keeping your deadline in mind.”

That was two days ago – nothing at all since.

I guess “the team” didn’t want to answer the question, and I think I know why.