Lead Stories, the foreign-run, fact-checking platform used by Facebook, has censored a National Pulse article highlighting Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s acknowledgement of a U.S. government report which concluded that “China prefers that President Trump does not win reelection.” Lead Stories recently announced a partnership with the CCP-linked TikTok app.
The fact-checker was recently enlisted by TikTok to “monitor misinformation about the 2020 election,” despite TikTok itself being routinely used to influence the election.
Just days after this announcement Lead Stories began to censor stories on Facebook that harm the Chinese Communist Party’s interest.
National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam commented on the censorship: “Ostensibly, the job of Facebook’s fact checkers is to highlight fake news. Not to challenge the editorial positions or news direction of reputable Western news organizations. Lead Stories is a group of Democratic donors and Chinese Communist Party collaborators demanding Western news sites bow to their editorial preferences. We never will.”
FAKE NEWS?
When Facebook users interface with the National Pulse story “Pelosi Confirms ‘China Would Prefer Joe Biden,” they’re met with veil cloaking the article accompanied by a “partly false” brand as decided by “independent fact-checkers.”
But the “independent” fact checkers are actually overtly in partnership with TikTok, owned by ByteDance, the founder of which recently committed to using his companies to further the goals of the Chinese Communist Party.
Lead Stories says the Pulse story falsely identified Pelosi as “confirming” the findings of a recent National Counterintelligence and Security Center intelligence (NCSC) report which posited China supported Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden in the upcoming election.
According to Lead Stories, Pelosi fell short of offering confirmation of the NCSC’s findings, instead alleging she only “quoted” the report.
While the distinction may appear trivial, the original article was clear in conveying that Pelosi reiterated the NCSC’s findings, highlighting that she readily accepted China as backing Biden. Not once did she reject the claim.
While endorsing another finding of the NCSC report – that Russia prefers President Trump in the 2020 election – Pelosi professes that China and Russia are not “equivalent” in the severity of the threat they pose to the U.S. election. While each country’s willingness to act in favor of their preferred candidate may differ, Pelosi is still confirming that China backs Biden.
ELECTION INTERFERENCE.
Lead Stories is hardly the “independent” fact-checker it purports to be.
Lead Stories staff, including Editor-In-Chief and co-founder Alan Duke, have extensive histories of working for establishment media outlet CNN. Collectively, employees at the outlet have over 120 years of experience working for the left-wing outlet which has extensive links to the Chinese Communist Party.
Lead Stories also counts up to a quarter of its staff, including its Chairman and co-founder, as recurring Democratic donors candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Per the Federal Election Commission, not a single donation from a Lead Stories board member or employee was pledged to a Republican candidate. For example, writers have donated to a plethora of overtly anti-Trump Democratic campaigns and activist groups such as Swing Left, a hard-left political group which proclaims:
And beyond collaborating with Chinese Communist Party proxy TikTok, Lead Stories’ potential for foreign election interference is only augmented by the fact it counts Belgian national Maarten Schenk as its Chief Operating Officer, Chief Techincal Officer, and as responsible for “actually making the editorial decisions.”
The foreign national also controls the company’s sole source of revenue.
The National Pulse has reached out to Facebook for comment about their “independent” fact checker but has, at the time of publication, received no response.
