Who will watch the watchmen? Who will check, these very checkered, "fact-checkers"?

Honesty, disclosure and "fact-checking" have been acting as if they were incompatible. m/r:

Indeed, conservatives have long claimed that fact-checking was riddled with anti-conservative bias and even conflicts of interest (as when PolitiFact, one of Facebook’s six United States-based fact-checkers, shot down a critique of a Clinton Foundation initiative without disclosing that one of that program’s principal funders was a major donor to PolitiFact’s parent organization, the Poynter Institute).

Who will check Facebook's 'fact checkers?'

     By Cathy Young, contributor - 12/16/16

In response to recent concerns about “fake news” and opinion-swaying hoaxes, Facebook has unveiled new measures to address the issue. But unless done right, these steps may create more problems than they solve — and boost claims that the “fake news crisis” is an attempt to impose political controls on the media.

One Facebook measure gives power to consumers themselves: Anyone will be able to report a hoax by clicking the upper right hand corner of a post.

This may accomplish some good, but the potential for abuse is immediately obvious. People can flood the system with fake reports of fake news, either to punish websites and news organizations they dislike or to subvert the fake-news-flagging process itself.

More than a few people on the right and the “anti-establishment” left will get a huge kick out of slapping the “fake news” label on The New York Times, The Washington Post or CNN.

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