Google suspends part of its fact checking operation after mistakes, blames algorithm. Critiqued article didn't claim all 17 Mueller attorneys were Hillary supporters, just that at least 9 of the 17 were-Poynter

"Disclosure: Both Poynter and the International Fact-Checking Network receive funding from Google."
 
1/19/18, "Google suspends fact-checking feature over quality concerns," Poynter.org, Daniel Funke 

"Google is suspending a search feature that displayed fact checks associated to publishers after receiving criticism from conservative news outlets. 

“We launched the reviewed claims feature in our Knowledge Panel at the end of last year as an experiment with the aim of helping people quickly learn more about news publications,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Poynter. “We said previously that we encountered challenges in our systems that maps fact checks to publishers, and on further examination it’s clear that we are unable to deliver the quality we’d like for users.”

A spokesperson for Google further clarified to Poynter on Friday that the tech company isn’t ending its fact-checking efforts altogether — just the Reviewed Claims section of its Knowledge Panel feature. Fact checks from independent organizations will still appear alongside articles in search and Google News. (Disclosure: Both Poynter and the International Fact-Checking Network receive funding from Google.)

Google launched the Knowledge Panel feature in November [2017] on mobile and desktop in an effort to display information about specific publishers in search. Part of that feature included a Reviewed Claims column that matched outlets’ disputed claims with fact checks contributed by independent fact-checking organizations to the Schema.org ClaimReview markup. 

That feature came under fire last week, as Poynter reported, when The Daily Caller published a story lambasting Google for wrongly appending a Washington Post Fact Checker debunk to one of its stories about Robert Mueller’s investigation team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Google's algorithm erroneously linked a Washington Post fact check to a Daily Caller article about Mueller's investigation team. The claim in question was never made in the piece. (Screenshot from Google)."

Several other right-wing outlets picked up the story, which also took issue with the publishers that Google was — and wasn’t — applying the Reviewed Claims feature to. Google told Poynter on Friday that the decision to suspend Reviewed Claims resulted in part because of The Daily Caller’s complaint, as well as feedback from other users. 

Going forward, Google’s spokesperson said that they’re working to figure out how to improve the Reviewed Claims feature before re-launching it, adding that the company conducts about 150,000 experiments like that a year. While the feature won’t be scrapped entirely, they could not provide a timeframe for its reinstatement."

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Added: 1/19/18, "Google Suspends Fact Check Project, crediting TheDCNF Investigation With Decision," Daily Caller, Eric Lieberman 

"Perhaps most importantly, many of the fact-checks were wrong. One of the purported reviewed claims was for an article [excerpted below] that straightforwardly reported that yet another member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team was a donor for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.

Google attributed the fact-check to The Washington Post, something it’s vice president of communications took issue with....

Google removed that single purported fact-check at the time of TheDCNF’s initial inquiries, but there were several others that were also false, if not all of them."...

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Excerpt from Daily Caller article linked above: 17th attorney, Freeny, hired for Mueller team as of 9/16/17 is a former Hillary donor as are at least 8 others on the team. Freeny also worked in the Obama White House for 7 months in 2011:

9/16/2017, "Mueller Picks Another Clinton/Obama Donor For Russia Probe Team," Daily Caller, Chuck Ross

"Freeny is the 17th attorney identified as a member of Mueller’s investigative team....

(RELATED: Mueller Hires Yet Another Democratic Donor [Aug. 2017])

Freeny, who joined DOJ in 2007, has something in common with at least eight of her Mueller team members.

According to documents maintained by the Federal Election Commission, Freeny has donated in each of the past three presidential elections to Democratic nominees, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

She donated $250 on three separate occasions, on Sept. 13, 2008, June 30, 2012 and Sept. 9, 2016.

For seven months in 2011, Freeny worked as an attorney in the Obama White House on security clearance issues....

The nine lawyers who have given to Democrats have shelled out nearly $65,000 in donations altogether."...


 

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