'Independent’ Facebook fact-checker exposed as partisan smear factory packed with CNN alumni

Facebook fact-checker Lead Stories is a biased outfit bristling with ex-CNN staffers that presents itself as neutral, despite most of its employees having donated to the Democratic Party, a conservative outlet has revealed.

The National Pulse (TNP), whose story about supposed financial links between Black Lives Matter, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and fundraiser ActBlue was flagged as “partly false” by Lead Stories on Facebook, did some digging on Wednesday to find out who was behind the smear, after their efforts to contest the label were apparently stonewalled.

What they discovered was an organization staffed almost entirely by Democratic donors, half of whom had worked for CNN in the past. A quarter of the employees were recurring Democratic donors, TNP revealed, suggesting an egregious conflict of interest, given the story they’d flagged at the conservative outlet was about contributions to a Democratic presidential campaign.

Lead Stories founder Perry Sanders has donated over $10,000 to Democratic political campaigns, including Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s presidential runs, TNP showed, providing copious links to back up the laundry list of partisan affiliations it had stumbled across. Several other writers had Democratic contributions on their records too. One, Gita Smith, was listed in 99 separate small-dollar donations to various Democratic candidates, as well as some contributions directly to ActBlue and the activism group Indivisible.

‘Independent’ Facebook fact-checker exposed as partisan smear factory packed with CNN alumni