UK Journalists to Use George Soros’ ‘Fact Check’ Software

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Virginia Hale

Journalists in Britain will be the first to use ‘fact-checking’ software funded by globalist billionaire George Soros, whose creators liken the project to an “immune system” against fake news.

According to The Guardian, broadcast, print, and online journalists in the UK will begin using the automated fact-checking system after an early version is rolled out for testing from October.

The software is being developed by Full Fact, with what the British organisation called a “game-changing investment” of a $500 (£380) million backing from Hungarian financier George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and liberal eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network.

Dubbed the “bullshit detector” by its creators, the system monitors politicians’ statements through real-time sources such as TV subtitles, in order to instantly provide a verdict on whether what they are saying is true.

“Journalists would have that transcript in real time and they would be able to say, for example, ‘I can see here that you’ve said poverty is down, but actually there are two measures of poverty – one is going up and one is going down, so why did you choose to pick that one?’”, explained Full Fact communications manager Mevan Babakar last month.

Connected to the organisation’s database, the software version being made available to journalists later this year will flag instances when a claim that has already been checked is repeated, connecting to Full Fact’s most recent article.

In addition to the subtitles of live news programmes and broadcasts of Parliament, the current version of the tool also goes through the Hansard parliamentary record, and articles published by newspapers in order to find examples of politicians repeating claims Full Fact has already examined.

But researchers, who are cooperating with the Official of National Statistics, said that in future the tool will be able to automatically access official data to inform its fact-checking.

Another version of the software, a demonstration of which was witnessed by The Guardian, had “fact checks” pop up on a television screen as politicians were speaking and giving instant verdicts on the veracity of their claims — a feature the newspaper pointed out could transform the experience of watching politics programmes like the BBC’s Question Time.

“Modern technology allows misleading claims to be spread at a faster rate than ever before,” said Full Fact director Will Moy, adding: “The next step is to develop a global infrastructure for automated fact-checking.”

A spokesman for Soros’s international grantmaking network, Open Society Foundations, said: “Independent, reliable journalism is the cornerstone of open societies and through these new, transformative tools Full Fact will make a vital contribution to defending and strengthening this work.”

Stephen King, a partner at the Omidyar network, said the tools  — which will be available to journalists across the globe in 2018  — “will expand the reach and impact of fact-checkers around the world, ensuring citizens are properly informed and those in positions of power are held accountable”.

A non-profit investment firm established by Omidyar, the liberal, billionaire founder of eBay, the Omidyar Network has granted huge sums helping organisations to fight “hate speech” on the internet.

Open Society Foundations documents which were leaked last year revealed that Soros spent $6 million (£4,644,000) to influence the 2014 European Parliament elections, his foundation hoping to “mitigate the feared populist surge” and “limit the damage” it believed was caused by “xenophobic” and Eurosceptic campaigns.

Breitbart London reported how the open borders fanatic funded numerous projects to “monitor”, “shame”, and “ridicule” what his organisation called “hate speech” across Europe.

 

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