Free Republic

A new study from a liberal law school claims that global warming, also known as “climate change,” has a greater impact on LGBT couples than on normal couples. As reported by Fox News, the study from the UCLA School of Law claims that “same-sex couples are more likely to reside in communities with poorer infrastructure and less access to resources. They are, therefore, less prepared to respond and adapt to natural hazards and other climate disruptions.” The report, authored by analyst Lindsay Mahowald and senior fellow Ari Shaw, goes on to claim that the solution to this “problem” is for...

Scientific American has published a piece claiming that “misinformation,” such as the notion that there are only two sexes, is “being used against transgender people” and in order to target “gender-affirming medical care.”The article states that there are three types of “misinformation,” and they are “oversimplifying scientific knowledge, fabricating and misinterpreting research, and promoting false equivalences.”Three types of misinformation are being used against transgender people: oversimplifying scientific knowledge, fabricating and misinterpreting research, and promoting false equivalences. https://t.co/1AOp6Bk6A2 — Scientific American (@sciam) April 20, 2024The piece asserts that “Many of the arguments against trans rights center on the idea that transness...

If someone says, “Trust the science!” these days, it’s usually an effort to short-circuit debate over weighty policy issues. “Trust the science” has been deployed in the past five years to prevent debate over COVID school closures and mask mandates, over electric-car subsidies, and over sex changes for boys and girls. For my entire time in Washington, though, “trust the science” has been used to oppose a missile defense system for the United States. For my first 20 years as a journalist, I was told that a missile defense system simply cannot work and that anyone who disagreed was a...

Jury selection has concluded in The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. After a long voir dire, six jurors have been selected: three men and three women. Here’s the brief summary, per media pool reports of the prospective jurors.

As Israel has continued its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, its restrictions on journalists' access to the region have drawn scrutiny. New data released Thursday suggests Israel's tactics are fueling an "information war" with perverse incentives for hate-mongers and conspiracy theorists. The Committee to Protect Journalists' preliminary estimate counts 95 journalists and media workers who have been killed in Gaza since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and the vast majority of those journalists are Palestinian. At the same time, Israel's decision to prevent international journalists from entering has enraged activists and the Foreign Press Association. The Israeli Supreme Court...

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the entire story of President Biden declaring March 31, 2024, Easter Sunday, the “Transgender Day of Visibility” is “misinformation.” “For folks who understand the calendar and how it works, Easter falls on different Sundays every year and this year, it happened to coincide with Transgender Visibility Day,” Karine Jean-Pierre began, deeming the entire story line “misinformation” which she asserts was done “on purpose.”

The media and other Democrats know that Joe Biden and his policies are unpopular, so for the last eight years, they’ve sought to destroy Donald Trump, no matter how much they have to intentionally lie and mislead the public, and this latest iteration is beyond absurd.While speaking at a recent campaign rally, Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” in the auto industry if China flooded the American market with cheap electric vehicles flowing through Mexico—but instead of showing the full quote, much of the media, along with Biden campaign workers and Democrats like Pelosi, decided that with polls as...

The U.K. has a new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Tech and the Digital Economy, Conservative MP Saqib Bhatti, and the politician seems very enthusiastic when talking about things like “cooperation” with Big Tech, particularly in terms of elections. That’s because, critics will say, those in power want to absolutely control the conversation, what can and can’t be said online, and thus directly influence the vote; whereas those in power say, it’s all just a perfectly benevolent effort to make sure misinformation plays no part in the campaign.

When U.S. news outlets' lucrative peddling of Chinese propaganda was exposed in 2019 and 2020, it was a scandal. Human rights groups condemned the practice, and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal swore off Chinese Communist Party money. In the years since, however, a number of major U.S. newspapers and magazines have kept at it—accepting hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for publishing content by China Daily, a state-owned English-language paper. China Daily's Foreign Agents Registration Act filings show that between October 2020 and October 2023, the CCP mouthpiece paid...

A group of 20 leading tech companies on Friday announced a joint commitment to combat AI misinformation in this year’s elections. The industry is specifically targeting deepfakes, which can use deceptive audio, video and images to mimic key stakeholders in democratic elections or to provide false voting information. Microsoft , Meta , Google , Amazon , IBM , Adobe and chip designer Arm all signed the accord. Artificial intelligence startups OpenAI, Anthropic and Stability AI also joined the group, alongside social media companies such as Snap , TikTok and X. Tech platforms are preparing for a huge year of elections...

“Well over 300,000 Americans are in graveyards today because of the misinformation, the doubt, the suspicion, the distrust that caused them to say that vaccine is not safe for me. And it continues,” Dr. Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health said in September 2022, citing a KFF estimate.Disinformation not only continues but it’s getting worse. Public trust is declining due to social media, and increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI). As the COVID-19 pandemic showed, distrust can lead to preventable deaths.Confidence continues to declineLast month, the Florida Surgeon General called for a halt to COVID-19 vaccines, saying...

Welcome to the UK where it’s now official government policy that you CAN’T publish “misinformation”, but The Guardian, the BBC, Disney and Netflix CAN. Yes, it’s true – the recently signed “Online Safety Act” brands the publication of “false information” a criminal offense punishable by up to a year in prison… …unless you’re an MSM outlet, when it’s totally fine. Think even the corrupt & bloated criminal class that rules over us would never dare be that blatant? Take a look at section 179 making it illegal to publish false information with intent to cause harm: [GO TO LINKED ARTICLE...

Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat to democracy in the United States in 2024, according to researchers, technologists and political scientists. As the presidential election approaches, experts warn that a convergence of events at home and abroad, on traditional and social media — and amid an environment of rising authoritarianism, deep distrust, and political and social unrest — makes the dangers from propaganda, falsehoods and conspiracy theories more dire than ever. The U.S. presidential election comes during a historic year, with billions of people voting in other elections in more than 50 countries, including in Europe, India, Mexico and South Africa....

The keynote speaker of the World Economic Forum’s 2024 annual conference in Davos was Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President. She stated the top global risk for the EU is disinformation and misinformation, declaring disinformation destroys trust and limits the ability to “tackle the big global challenges.” In plain English, trust can only be restored by censoring inconvenient facts and evidence. Below is a short clip (1:39) highlighting her disinformation sermon. The top risk in the WEF’s 2024 Global Risk Report is disinformation. If not controlled, societies will be polarized, elections will be disrupted, and there will be mistrust...

"Nikki Haley is counting on Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary," Trump said to a small ballroom filled with supporters in Portsmouth Wednesday evening, before blaming New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu for the state's primary system, which allows undeclared voters — which make up 40% of the state's registered voters — to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary on Jan. 23. Trump repeated the same unfounded claims to a crowd of over 1,000 in Atkinson, New Hampshire, Tuesday night, and inaccurately stated that Democrats want to "cancel out" votes for him. By law, undeclared residents may...

Now that it's an election year, the media spotlight on the dangers of "misinformation" and "disinformation" is starting to shine bright, and oddly enough this kind of thing comes mostly from outlets that have ironically helped spread misinformation while running cover for the Democrats: Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat to democracy in the U.S. in 2024, according to researchers, technologists and political scientists. https://t.co/oWF8f2ypXD — NBC News (@NBCNews) January 18, 2024 "Disinformation" can of course often be defined as things that are true but aren't helpful to the Left's desired narrative. One of the most glaring recent examples of that...

I wonder how far all this will go. By “all this”, I mean the headlong push, always in the same direction, always away from the world I recognise. To me it seems as though a pendulum is swinging, has been swinging for years now, but always and only one way – further and further from the point where I stand. I wonder too, how far that pendulum can swing before it must stop and, inevitably swing back the other way, and with a vengeance. Every action, after all, has an equal and opposite reaction. To me there seems no avoiding...

The World Economic Forum, the group of global elites whom those on the political right love to hate, has just issued its report on the biggest threats in 2024 and beyond. And at the top of its list of risks is not the climate, at least not immediately. The WEF, based in Davos, Switzerland, says the biggest short-term risk stems from fake news. "While climate-related risks remain a dominant theme, the threat from misinformation and disinformation is identified as the most severe short-term threat in the 2024 report," the group indicated. "The cascading shocks that have beset the world in...

“It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” Samuel Adams, a son of liberty in every sense of the word, would be proud—the Self-Imagined Elites currently circling the wagons in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum’s annual summit meeting are panicked, thanks to the “irate, tireless minority” lighting brushfire after brushfire of truth (or what the WEF acolytes call “misinformation” and “disinformation”). Men like Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, António Guterres, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and every other unelected globalist bureaucrat moving hell and earth...

I completely missed this when it was published at the end of last month. Fortunately, Jesse Singal did a great write-up about it which I noticed today. As you may know, Bill Adair is the founder of Politifact, a site which has generate a lot of content for this blog over the years. Last month, Adair was asked to share his predictions for 2024 and he wrote a piece titled “Fact-checking needs a reboot.” Part of that reboot would be pressuring social media companies to “suppress misinformation” more often.After I founded PolitiFact in 2007, I often said that our goal...