Censoring the Voice Debate By James Reed
You didn’t expect the Voice debate to be free and fair, as section 128 of the Australian constitution requires, did you? As reported by Skynews.com, two Australian universities and one big Tech giant are working to “silence news coverage of the Voice to influence the referendum.” And, to boot, there is a foreign financed attempt to stifle the political debate. Yes, it is Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s entity becoming as annoying as the Soros-backed NGOs. As the report notes: “In one case, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has been allowed by Facebook parent company Meta to block and deplatform Australian journalism, despite the platform knowing it was a breach of the rules Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg established to distance himself from fact checking responsibilities. Meta maintains its fact-checking operation is at arm’s length and independent, but Sky News can reveal the tech giant signed a secret commercial contract directly with RMIT which allows the fact checking unit to be paid up to $740,000 a year from an Irish Meta subsidiary.”
“The university used the powers Facebook has given it to throttle Sky News Australia’s Facebook page with false fact checks multiple times this year, breaching the Meta-endorsed IFCN Code of Principles and preventing millions of Australians from reading or watching Sky News Australia’s journalism.
Fact checkers employed by RMIT have led to numerous code breaches, including one fact checker using her social media account to label Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a fear-mongering racist for his views on the Voice.
That same fact checker has published multiple Voice fact checks which were paid for by Meta and resulted in Australian journalism being censored on the platform.
This matter needs to be taken up by the leader of the Opposition, for it is election interference, contrary to section 128 of the constitution which requires that the public be given a “free and fair choice.” That hardly is the case as Skynews describes.
“Two of Australia’s most powerful universities and a multi-billion dollar tech giant are fronting campaigns to silence news coverage of the Voice to influence the referendum, writes Jack Houghton.
Two of Australia’s most powerful universities and a multi-billion dollar tech giant are fronting campaigns to silence news coverage of the Voice to influence the referendum.
A Sky News Australia investigation has uncovered a disturbing foreign-financed attempt to block political debate and news coverage around the Voice, which exposes the global fact checking system used by tech giant Meta as non-compliant with its own rules of impartiality and transparency.
In one case, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has been allowed by Facebook parent company Meta to block and deplatform Australian journalism, despite the platform knowing it was a breach of the rules Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg established to distance himself from fact checking responsibilities.
Meta maintains its fact-checking operation is at arm’s length and independent, but Sky News can reveal the tech giant signed a secret commercial contract directly with RMIT which allows the fact checking unit to be paid up to $740,000 a year from an Irish Meta subsidiary.
Zuckerberg has given promises globally that Meta does not seek to be the arbiter of truth on the internet and has insisted his platform is policed by an opaque entity known as the International Fact Checking Network.
However, while RMIT was certified by the IFCN at the time the contract was signed, Sky News can reveal the certification expired in December, leaving the operation free to censor Australian journalism with no oversight at all.
It is just one of 55 fact checking operations around the world which remain signatories of the IFCN despite having expired credentials.
The commercial contract between the Melbourne university and Meta has strict clauses which allow Meta to tear up the agreement if RMIT ever loses certification, but the tech giant has not done so despite being aware that the prominent fact checker is deplatforming journalism while expired.
The university used the powers Facebook has given it to throttle Sky News Australia’s Facebook page with false fact checks multiple times this year, breaching the Meta-endorsed IFCN Code of Principles and preventing millions of Australians from reading or watching Sky News Australia’s journalism.
Fact checkers employed by RMIT have led to numerous code breaches, including one fact checker using her social media account to label Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a fear-mongering racist for his views on the Voice.
That same fact checker has published multiple Voice fact checks which were paid for by Meta and resulted in Australian journalism being censored on the platform.
An audit of RMIT Voice fact checks showed the 17 Voice checks between May 3 and June 23 this year were all targeting anti-Voice opinions or views.
Revelations contained in this investigation raise questions about Meta’s global fact checking operation which appears to have been hijacked by activists.
The Meta communications team attempted to downplay the issue and continued to outsource responsibility for fact checking certification processes to the IFCN.
The IFCN claims it “does not dictate to fact-checkers how they abide by the principles” and compared Sky News Australia’s questions to a sports fan complaining about a referee’s decision in a “football match”.
In another case of an academic-driven censorship campaign influencing the Voice, a University of Adelaide academic has partnered with an activist group to publish inaccurate statistics on news coverage to falsely claim the Voice is being killed off by journalism.
This investigation will reveal how media research by University of Adelaide academic Victoria Fielding is being funded by the Australians for a Murdoch for a Royal Commission group.
The university and activist group are working together to create an argument that journalism, and so-called misinformation, is to blame if the Voice fails.
As the name of the university’s funding partner suggests, the research is designed to bolster arguments for hauling journalists before a royal commission for the crime of reporting the news.
Both of these fact checking operations are run by academics who work at taxpayer-funded institutions which each claim hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer payments and grants each year.
Both operations seek to influence how Australians will vote at the upcoming constitutional referendum.
Inside the RMIT Fact Checking Operation – Who are the internet’s arbiters of truth?
Former ABC journalist Russell Skelton now heads the RMIT Fact Lab which has a commercial contract with Meta to police content on its chief platform, Facebook.
Skelton is unashamedly partisan on social media, and has published dozens of tweets criticising conservative viewpoints and the journalists he has been tasked with fact checking.
Skelton is an ABC veteran, married to high-profile presenter Virginia Trioli, and was once in charge of the national broadcaster’s own fact checking operation.
His brash style of partisan politics is nothing new.
While at the ABC he often earnt the ire of Senators who complained of bias and in 2013 the Sydney Morning Herald wrote this of Skelton’s fact checking credentials.
“By the time Mark Scott (former ABC managing director) left the Senate committee hearing into the ABC on Wednesday he smelled. An unpleasant odour had attached itself to the testimony and credibility of the ABC's managing director. The source of odour could be summed up in two words: Russell Skelton,” the SMH article said.
“That Skelton has had several ethical collisions, is a fierce political partisan, and has left an unedifying trail of puerile smears, would not matter to the public at large if Skelton had not just been appointed the chief fact-checker of the ABC”.
Despite Skelton’s controversial, and very public history, the RMIT put him in charge of its powerful fact checking operation.
More recently Skelton has campaigned directly for the Voice and re-published Labor’s political slogans which were tweeted by Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney.
These actions alone put RMIT Fact Lab in breach of fact checking rules, particularly section 2.5 of the IFCN’s Code of Principles.”
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