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Facebook Using Company Run by Former CNN Staffer to Target Conservatives

EDITOR’S NOTE: Social media is cracking down on Conservative content. Many of you have complained that you never see our content in your news feeds. There’s only one way to fight back — and that’s by subscribing to my FREE weekly newsletter. Click here.

Facebook is using an organization run by former CNN staffers to target conservative journalists and opinion pages.

Over the past several months ToddStarnes.com has been hit by false allegations from a company called LeadStories.com. 

Their defamatory actions have resulted in a significant crackdown on our social media traffic.

That’s why we are urging all of our readers to sign up for our free newsletter. It’s the only way that we can get around the third-party censors employed by Facebook. Click here to sign up. 

LeadStories.com advertises their organization as “an innovative fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015.”

In 2019 they became one of Facebook’s third-party fact checkers and that’s when they launched an aggressive war on the social media platform’s conservative content.

“Under the terms of this partnership we get access to listings of content that has been flagged as potentially false by Facebook’s systems or its users and we can decide independently if we want to fact check it or not,” LeadStories.com wrote on its website. “In addition to this we can enter our fact checks into a tool provided by Facebook and Facebook then uses our data to help slow down the spread of false information on its platform.”

One of the co-founders of Lead Stories is Alan Duke. Mr. Duke, who is also the website’s editor-in-chief, worked at CNN for 26 years.

Other former CNN staffers include Mary Acosta, Anne Brown, Jessica Ravitz, David George, and Wayne Drash.

Ryan Cooper, CNN International’s former director of programming, is also a staff writer and fact-checker. He’s the guy who targeted one of my most recent stories.

Last week we posted an item on our Facebook page regarding a conversation Michael Bloomberg had about healthcare and the elderly. Click here to read the story.

There’s no disputing what Bloomberg said because we posted video of the conversation.

However, Mr. Ryan, the former CNN employee, labeled our story as fake news and as a result – our Facebook traffic was greatly diminished.

“Fake News: Bloomberg Did NOT Say Elderly People Should be Denied Care Past Certain Age When Ill,” read the headline written by the former CNN staffer.

Mr. Ryan flat-out lied and Facebook bought that lie hook, line and sinker. All you have to do is watch the video and you will see that we quoted Bloomberg accurately.

Even Snopes, a notorious anti-conservative fact-checking website, determined that the Bloomberg video was accurate. Click here to read their story. 

Facebook leadership has been in touch with us over this matter. And so far they have been sympathetic to our plight. However, the problem has not been resolved. And as a result our Facebook page has basically been neutralized.

Hiring an organization run by former CNN staffers to crack down on fake news is like hiring Planned Parenthood workers to run a daycare center.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Social media is cracking down on Conservative content. Many of you have complained that you never see our content in your news feeds. There’s only one way to fight back — and that’s by subscribing to my FREE weekly newsletter. Click here.

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