Facebook is relying on highly dubious claims by a former CNN “news” man to attack GOP U.S. Senate candidate and biological engineer Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (shown), who has four degrees from MIT, and to censor interviews with the prominent scientist shared on the social-media network. Without having even seen The New American magazine’s live interview with Dr. Shiva, Facebook falsely claimed the segment was a “violation” because a supposed “independent fact-checker” had rated the content as “Partly False.” That independent fact checker, it turns out, is a former CNN political hack funded by Facebook to help silence conservative and Republican voices. Dr. Shiva, who has a Ph.D. in bioengineering, said this was an obvious example of liberal racism run amok.
In its quest to silence the prominent Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, Facebook even appears to have colluded with a biased political operative in violation of its own guidelines. “Posts and ads from politicians are generally not subjected to fact-checking,” the company claims on its website. “In evaluating when this applies we ask our fact-checking partners to look at politicians at every level. This means candidates running for office, current office holders — and, by extension, many of their cabinet appointees — along with political parties and their leaders.” Of course, even the former CNN “fact checker” acknowledged that Dr. Shiva is running for the U.S. Senate, so it was not clear why his comments were targeted.
Dr. Shiva, the victim of Facebook’s phony attacks, vowed to retaliate. “The #FakeNews colludes with #FakeScience to create #FakeProblems, #FakeSolutions and #FakeHistory to drive us into slavery and fascism,” he said in a post on Facebook after the censorship campaign began. “Each day I will be exposing a #FakeJournalist and/or #FakeScientist. It’s time these scumbags and parasites got some serious bitter medicine.”
In a follow-up interview with The New American after Facebook’s attempt to censor his views, Dr. Shiva explained that the fact checker, who previously worked for CNN, was himself part of the Deep State. “Just look at his history,” the MIT-trained scientist told this magazine. “Clearly he has a conflict of interest in defending the Deep State that he is associated with.” Dr. Shiva also suggested that racism might be at play. “What we are witnessing here right in front of our eyes is a white liberal who practices institutional racism,” he explained. “What he cannot stand is that I’m unwilling to be a good Indian, shake my head from left to right and sit in the lotus position. What really bothers him is that I’m not willing to be a ‘good Indian.’”
On top of that, Dr. Shiva blasted Facebook as another tool of the Deep State. He told The New American that the social-networking service is being used as a tool by the Communist Chinese Party. And he also accused it of potentially serious violations of federal law. “It’s time for Facebook to be investigated for civil rights violations,” the India-born expert added, saying it was unacceptable to have Facebook meddling in elections and colluding with fringe writers to help elect Democrats to Congress.
On April 14, this writer did a live-stream broadcast for The New American with Dr. Shiva to discuss the hysteria over coronavirus. Among other topics, the biological engineer explored ways Americans can protect themselves, government policy surrounding the issue, vaccines, his campaign for Senate, and much more. Dr. Shiva argued that the government response was highly improper, and that the Deep State was using this crisis to steal the American people’s liberties — something he promised to rectify if and when he wins his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat representing Massachusetts. Thousands of viewers were enjoying it. The reactions from viewers were almost universally positive.
And then, all of the sudden, a Facebook alert warned that The New American magazine had committed a “violation.” Pointing to the interview with Dr. Shiva, the notice said that the “content is being seen by fewer people because it was rated Partly False by an independent fact-checker.” It also warned everyone who shared it that a “fact checker” had rated the information “Partly False” — again, without ever having seen the interview.
The reason the content was rated partly false, it said: Dr. Shiva offers “medically unsound advice.” To support its claim, Facebook links to an article by an obscure outfit called “Lead Stories,” which appears to be a profitable scam funded almost entirely by Facebook itself. Interestingly, none of the founders nor the fact checker appear to have any training in science or medicine. How they determined that Shiva had offered “medically unsound advice” was not immediately clear.
Rather than a fact-checking service, though, the outfit seems to be a liberal smear machine to prop up establishment narratives, demonize conservatives, and make money for its founders. While it had about $300,000 in documented expenses last year, it received about $360,000 from Facebook alone under a “fact checking partnership.” The website was founded by a shady “personal injury” lawyer named Perry Sanders, former CNN hack Alan Duke, and a strange Belgian computer programmer listed as a “trainer” for the U.S. State Department. The “fact-checker” who wrote the bizarre attempt at a hit piece against Dr. Shiva, Ryan Cooper, is also a former CNN operative.
Ironically, CNN’s long and well-documented history of publishing fake news has contributed to CNN being literally the least trusted name in news. Recent polls show that even among the dwindling number of people who actually watch the fringe anti-Trump cable “news” network, just one third say they trust it. Indeed, CNN just recently settled a lawsuit with an innocent child who was endlessly demonized by “fake news” coming from the network.
“Everyone knows that CNN is Deep State media,” said Dr. Shiva. “They have no journalists. What they have are people who write propaganda for the military-industrial-academic complex. Most of the journalists have no background in science, technology, engineering or medicine. They would be unqualified to even enter any class of mine.”
The piece attacking Dr. Shiva, which was cited by Facebook on The New American’s video despite being about an entirely different interview with a separate news organization, makes a number of dishonest and downright false statements. For instance, Cooper said Shiva claimed 60,000 had died from H1N1 swine flu, but that according to the CDC, only about 12,500 people in the United States had died from it. However, Dr. Shiva explained to The New American that according to an analysis by The Lancet, when deaths from complications related to H1N1 are added in, the true numbers are 15 times higher than the already under-reported laboratory-confirmed death totals. In any case, he did not even mention those facts in the interview with The New American that was dishonestly labeled as “Partly False” by Facebook’s fake “fact-checkers.”
Cooper also takes issue with Dr. Shiva’s discussion of the “Deep State,” a term that the MIT-trained scientist carefully defined in The New American magazine’s interview. “At the start of the interview, Ayyadurai opined that Fauci was planted by the ‘Deep State,’ wants to mandate vaccines, and is working for ‘Big Pharma’ — though he offered no evidence to support any of these claims,” the former CNN “journalist” claimed. “On its face, the suggestion makes little sense. Would President Trump continue to be advised by someone who he believes is actively working against him in the so-called ‘Deep State’?” Of course, Cooper never actually offered a shred of evidence to dispute Shiva’s view. And as Shiva pointed out, CNN is a “Deep State” operation itself, and so Cooper has a major conflict of interest. Polls reveal just a tiny fringe minority of Americans do not yet realize there is a “Deep State” in America.
The next supposedly false claim identified by Cooper revolves around Dr. Shiva’s view about a dysfunctional immune system being the source of many coronavirus-related problems. But Cooper never actually provides evidence that Dr. Shiva’s view is wrong. Instead, he simply claims “scientists know very little” about the subject, as if that was evidence of Shiva being wrong. Cooper also takes issue with Dr. Shiva’s views on the HIV/AIDS controversy, something that is still hotly debated in the scientific community and a subject in which Cooper and “Lead Stories” have no apparent expertise.
The former CNN “journalist” also states multiple times that Dr. Shiva is not a medical doctor — something the India-born scientist has never claimed to be. However, Cooper’s concern over Dr. Shiva’s lack of a medical degree apparently does not extend to the Marxist chief of the disgraced UN World Health Organization, who also does not have a medical degree. The WHO repeatedly peddled false claims about coronavirus from the Communist Party of China for months, without ever being attacked or “fact-checked” by the hyper-partisan “Lead Stories” operation.
“The viral video and social media posts of this interview have been viewed and shared by millions of people, but the opinions Ayyadurai offered contain bad science that contradicts years of research and medical understanding,” said Cooper, who has no background in science or medicine.
Finally, Cooper attacked Dr. Shiva’s claim that he invented “EMAIL.” However, the facts seem relatively clear. Even liberals such as Dr. Noam Chomsky have backed Dr. Shiva. “There is no controversy here, except the one created by industry insiders,” said Chomsky, noting that the then-14-year-old Shiva did what he said he did. Gawker Media ended up having to pay Dr. Shiva $750,000 in a settlement over the issue. “The fact of email being invented outside of the military-industrial-academic complex really bothers them,” Dr. Shiva said. “They like to attribute all great inventions to war. These people are part of a war machine.”
The latest gaffe by Facebook is part of a broader problem that has run rampant through the Big Tech companies of Silicon Valley, many of which were started with key help from the Deep State. Critics have become increasingly outraged by Big Tech’s blatant censorship and its political agenda — almost universally viewed as hostile to conservatives and Christians. Indeed, Facebook has been caught penalizing activists such as prominent Brazilian evangelist Julio Severo merely for quoting Bible verses. Last year, Facebook falsely accused this magazine of publishing “hate speech” despite there being no hate. Eventually, the company backed down, but only after bad publicity and growing congressional scrutiny.
The New American reached out to Facebook, Cooper, and Lead Stories for comment on this story. Only Facebook had responded by press time. But instead of answering questions such as what qualified “Lead Stories” and its former CNN propagandist to fact-check the scientific claims of a world-renowned scientist with four degrees from MIT, a spokesman merely replied by copying and pasting “general information” about its “fact-checking program” that is available online. The spokesman did not address accusations of Facebook bias, dishonesty, manipulation, and more.
The fake “fact-checking” industry appears to be a giant scam aimed at propping up establishment propaganda and discrediting anyone and everything that might contradict that propaganda, while bilking Americans for more money. Snopes, an operation run by sex perverts and scam artists, is perhaps the best known and most widely ridiculed example. But it is hardly alone. Lead Stories is not far behind, it seems.
Fortunately, the American people are waking up in massive numbers to the fake news, and the fake “fact-check” services that seek to prop up false narratives peddled by the true purveyors of fake news. Trump has correctly identified CNN as among the worst offenders when it comes to publishing “fake news.” Perhaps the former CNN hacks pretending to be “fact checkers” could start by fact checking CNN and the World Health Organization. But that would defeat the purpose, which is to demonize conservatives, conceal the truth, tip elections, and provide cover to lies and liars.
Unless and until Facebook quits trying to manipulate Americans and censor the opinions of Christians and conservatives, Americans should continue to find other alternatives to communicate and interact online. Younger Americans have already abandoned the platform. It is time for older Americans to seriously consider doing the same.
Update: On April 17, later in the day after the above story by Alex Newman was published, Lead Stories Editor in Chief Alan Duke emailed Mr. Newman the following letter under the subject “Apology — False rating mistakenly imposed by Lead Stories”:
Lead Stories apologizes for mistakenly labeling a video posted by [The New American] as false. One of our staffers involved in finding content that duplicates a false claim that was flagged previously mistakenly tagged your post — which was not actually making a false claim.
We revised your post’s rating immediately when we realized the mistake. There should be no impact on your content’s distribution beyond that point.
We have also discussed with our staff the importance of taking additional care.
If there is an issue in the future, please contact me directly. We have an appeals email ([email protected]) which should also be copied so that a larger number of our staffers can see and act on it.
Alan Duke
Editor in Chief
Lead Stories
Image: screenshot from YouTube video
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American. He can be reached at [email protected] or through Liberty Sentinel Media. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.
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