First Draft

First Draft   (Fact checkers)
Formation	June 2015
Founder	•  Andy Carvin •  Sam Dubberley •  UK Deep State?
Leader	First Draft/Director
Interests	COVID-19, “misinformation”, “disinformation”
Sponsored by	Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, Google News Initiative
Subpage	•First Draft/Board and members •First Draft/Director
Membership	•  Facebook •  Twitter •  Open Society Foundations •  John S. and James L. Knight Foundation •  Ford Foundation •  Craig Newmark Philanthropies •  Google News Lab
"Anti-disinformation" organization founded in 2015, when NATO started a drive to control the news narrative.

First Draft News is an "anti-disinformation" organization founded in 2015, i.e. at the same time as NATO's drive to control the news narrative. Its purpose is to give a sheen of credibility to propaganda stories by creating an array of seemingly scientific tools and methods.

Own Words

"First Draft’s mission is to empower societies with accurate information in critical moments. We work to ensure the integrity of the world’s information ecosystem, developing and delivering pioneering techniques, tools and training for how information is discovered, shared and presented to the public."

Military/intelligence founders?

First Draft formed as a coalition with nine founding partners in June 2015.

One of the founding organizations is the NATO-close Bellingcat; and Eliot Higgins and Aric Toler are specifically thanked for their help.

Another founder, Andy Carvin, works for the NATO-close Atlantic Council, in its Digital Forensic Research Lab, which also collaborates closely with the Integrity Initiative

Another founding member is Sam Dubberley, who is an "advisory board member for the Syrian Archive - a non-profit that aims to support human rights investigators, advocates, media reporters, and journalists in their efforts to document human rights violations in Syria"...through " open source tools"., an activity that dovetails smoothly with what the British government was financing at the time (see: White Helmets)

Laundering black propaganda

First Draft may be used to launder propaganda, using "human rights investigators" in Syria, e.g. the White Helmets to collect or make videos and storylines etc for social media; this material is passed to 'laboratories' like Bellingcat, who use 'forensic tools' as required and declare that they are highly credible. These stories and videos are then passed to commercially-controlled media, who can claim to have done due dilligence and present a "fact checked" atrocity story. All the steps in this process, from the making, collecting, analyzing to finally the spreading in media of this propaganda, may be aided and funded by intelligence services or other deep state actors, using cutouts for plausible deniability.^{[Speculative]}

Activities

The project draws on experts and organisations working in the field, including reported.ly, Eyewitness Media Hub, Storyful and Meedan.

First News left Harvard University after just over a year "citing problems with brand control".

Fake news

Full article: Fake news

Sharyl Attkisson attributes the first usage of the the phrase "fake news", in its modern context, to articles published on First Draft's website.

Reporting

In 2020 the group published a lot of information about COVID-19.

COVID-19

Full article: COVID-19

"Lockdown could last for months. It is likely this is only the beginning of a new trend in falsehoods as people come to terms with a new lifestyle. We all play a role in keeping each other safe from the virus and the impact it has on our lives. The information we share plays a big role here too. Let’s apply the same level of care in not spreading viral misinformation as we do to the virus itself."

Funding

The network is lavishly financed by big corporations (Google,Twitter, Facebook) and foundations historically known to be close to the CIA (Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and bears all the hallmarks of a covert government effort.

A giveaway for this is that Bellingcat, with close ties to NATO, was one of the founding partners.

It might be designed as an internal disciplining network, to steer the "primary target audience" journalists and academics to the 'right' kind of information sources, which might include easily twisted "open source" content a là Bellingcat.

An this internal reinforcing function works with politics as well. "For example, We recognize the value in sharing our knowledge with policymakers. First Draft works to inform all who have a stake in the dissemination of accurate information, including governments".

Collaborating partners

The partners include the bulk part of corporate media.

 

Known members

6 of the 7 of the members already have pages here:

Member	Description
Craig Newmark Philanthropies	Grantmaking organization by billionaire sugar daddy Craig Newmark to influence journalism, fight "disinformation" and create "cybersecurity" by among other things rebooting social media.
Facebook	The world's most popular social network, with over 1,000,000,000 users in 2014.
Ford Foundation	In addition to its own billionaire agenda, also known to have been $$$ middleman for covert CIA funding.
Google News Initiative	Google and the deep state buying domination over corporate media and creating tools to censor independent voices.
Open Society Foundations	A NGO operating in more countries than McDonald's. It has the tendency to support politicians (at times through astroturfing) and activists that get branded as "extreme left" as its founder is billionaire and bane of the pound George Soros. This polarizing perspective causes the abnormal influence of the OSF to go somewhat unanswered.
X	Twitter is a social media service.

 

Sponsors

Event	Description
Democracy Fund	Finances numerous organizations as part of effort to control the narrative. Founded by Pierre Omidyar in 2011.
Ford Foundation	In addition to its own billionaire agenda, also known to have been $$$ middleman for covert CIA funding.
Google News Initiative	Google and the deep state buying domination over corporate media and creating tools to censor independent voices.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Description
Call to Action: CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation	19 October 2020	19 October 2020	Strategic public-private master plan for medical censorship and vaccine persuasion.

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