Last Updated on March 5, 2024
Mediabiasfactcheck.com ran a blatantly false report smearing National File, which is the outlet you are reading. National File is the outlet where I broke the Ashley Biden diary, the Cal Cunningham affair scandal, and “The Zelensky Leaks.” As National File ramps up our campaign coverage, we’d like to take a moment to address the silly little hit piece that some critics post on social media to try to discredit our world-renowned reporting.
Mediabiasfactcheck is a website owned by a man named Dave Van Zandt, who has a communications degree and “currently works full time in the health care industry,” according to his bio on his website.
Van Zandt’s website categorized National File as a “Conspiracy-Pseudoscience” website with “Low Credibility,” “a strong white nationalist anti-immigration position,” “Far Right” bias, and called us a “Tin-Foil Hat Conspiracy website.” However, Mediabiasfactcheck’s review of our news organization is blatantly and brazenly false.
Mediabiasfactcheck’s review of us (we won’t link to it) has a section called “Failed Fact Checks” that includes fact checks we did not actually fail. Mediabiasfactcheck places a big “FALSE” marker next to a fact check from PolitiFact headlined “Was Nancy Pelosi’s son an executive for a Ukrainian gas company?”
In reality, I exclusively reported for NATIONAL FILE in 2019: “Nancy Pelosi’s Son Was Exec At Gas Company That Did Business In Ukraine.” My headline was correct. I reported, accurately, that the company did business in Ukraine. I did not say that the company was based in Ukraine. The supposed “failed” fact-check is not even about me or National File, it refers to a headline by conservative commentator Wayne Dupree on a totally different website, which came out after I broke the story at National File.
That’s not the only flat-out dishonest smear job that mediabiasfactcheck pushed against us. Van Zandt’s website also has a “FALSE” note next to another PolitiFact fact check entitled “Says the sons of Nancy Pelosi, Mitt Romney, and John Kerry are all on the boards of “energy companies doing business in Ukraine.” Oh yeah, but guess what? I never said that, and neither did National File. They are lying about what I actually reported.
I reported on Ukraine accurately. I noted Ukraine connections involving Nancy Pelosi’s son, who was an exec at a company that did business in Ukraine. I noted John Kerry’s family’s connection to the Hunter Biden Ukraine scandal, and I noted a Ukraine connection between Mitt Romney and a political adviser.
Yet again, the PolitiFact fact check that I supposedly “failed” was not even about me, it was a fact check on “Facebook posts.” Yeah, not even National File.
Mediabiasfactcheck also faults us because “Articles frequently use loaded emotional language.”
So? Have you ever heard of a great populist newspaperman by the name of Joseph Pulitzer?
“The website also features a section dedicated to immigration that routinely portrays immigrants negatively, such as this: FLASHBACK: Swedish Boy Beaten by Migrant for Having Blue Eyes,” mediabiasfactcheck states.
It seems like the migrant was the one at fault there, not us.
Mediabiasfactcheck also disparages us for reporting on Clinton connections to human sex trafficking and for questioning the official narratives on climate change and 9/11.
“Finally, they promote anti-vaccine propaganda: Parents Take To The Streets To Save Vaccine Exemptions From Political Elites,” mediabiasfactcheck states, referring to our pro-parent headline.
We are not ashamed in any way to report on parents trying to get vaccine exemptions. Human freedom gives them that right, and so does the First Amendment.
So-called “fact checkers” are oftentimes very shady. Behold the case of FactCheck.org, which is actually hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, which hosts and funds Joe Biden’s think tank. The University of Pennsylvania collects milestone payments for mRNA Coronavirus needles sold, based on licensing agreements that UPenn has. UPenn has licensing agreements with BioNTech and Moderna.
As we exposed: NATIONAL FILE’s source told us: “Even in FactCheck.Org’s seemingly extensive “A Guide to Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine,” they omit info about their host university’s contributions to mRNA and payments from BioNTech specifically. There is no mention at all of UPenn’s mRNA licensing agreements.”
FactCheck.org, which claims to be “nonpartisan,” states the following on its website: “FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels.”
The Annenberg Public Policy Center, which owns FactCheck.org, is based on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia and also in Washington, D.C. and is funded with an endowment from the Annenberg Foundation, which partners with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Annenberg Foundation is FactCheck.org’s top funder according to its most recent financial disclosure. FactCheck.org also takes funding from Facebook and Google and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation but claims that its donors “have no control over our editorial decisions.”
FactCheck.org has an extremely close working relationship with its host university. FactCheck.org states that “FactCheck.org receives in-kind support from the Annenberg Public Policy Center including some infrastructure costs as well as supervisory, technical, and administrative support from APPC faculty and staff. We do not attempt to assign a dollar value to these in-kind services, which are funded from the APPC’s own resources.” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the co-founder of FactCheck.org, is a University of Pennsylvania professor. FactCheck.org’s director emeritus Brooks Jackson gave birth to FactCheck.org shortly after joining the Annenberg Public Policy Center. FactCheck.org also states that “Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page, which is managed on our behalf by the University of Pennsylvania.” The University of Pennsylvania runs a donation fund for FactCheck.org.
