Correctiv

Correctiv   (Fact checker)
Formation	2014
Founder	• David Schraven • Simon Kretschmer
Headquarters	Germany
Staff	20
Interests	fake news, conspiracy theories
Sponsored by	Adessium Foundation, Luminate, Open Society Foundations
German-based officially private and corporate-financed "fake news" "fact checker".

Correctiv is a German-based officially private and corporate-financed fake news fact checker. The effort was started at the same time as state cutouts started similar efforts in other countries, and is part of an international network of fact checkers, the IFCN of the US Poynter Institute.

Activities

Labels from Correctiv is also counted as an authoritative source in Wikipedia, and is virtually impossible to contest or appeal there.

The assessments from Correctiv does not deal with illegal acts, but is a frequent go-to source for corporate media to get an authoritative source for labeling of conspiracy theories, hate speech and fake news.

Correctiv describes itself as an organization that is "one of the many answers to the media crisis," and was founded 2014, the year the corporate media lost control of the narrative in major events, like the coup in the Ukraine, MH17,etc.

Correctiv releases its reports in English, German and Russian languages via its web site to media outlets throughout Europe and around the globe.

Since 2018, Correctiv has managed an education program for journalists.

Financing

Correctiv is paid by Facebook, which automatically sends it notifications of possible misinformation. Items deemde False news are provided with a forced warning label. On the question "Does Correctiv delete content on Facebook?", the answer is disingenuously "No. Censorship can only come from government agencies.", without mentioning how Facebook uses their work for shadow banning and other censoring techniques".

The first chairman of its "Ethics Council", which oversees Correctiv's work, was Bodo Hombach, former head of the Chancellery of PM Gerhard Schröder, chief architect of the Thatcherite Agenda 2010 and currently the board of directors of the influential Brost Foundation, which is by far the largest financier of Correctiv. The rest of the council largely consists of representatives from corporate media.

The Brost Foundation also gave it three million euros in the first four years as start-up funds.

Other important sponsors are the Rudolf Augstein Foundation, the Schöpflin Foundation, Luminate (part of the Omidyar Group), Deutsche Bank, the Mercator Foundation, the Adessium Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Open Society Foundations. There was also support for specific projects from the Google Digital News Initiative and the German federal government.

 

Sponsors

Event	Description
Adessium Foundation	A secretive Dutch foundation that donates to projects backed by Western governments.
Luminate	Pierre Omidyar's foundation for financing global media and civil society groups. It is unknown how close it aligns to certain US government agencies.
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.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Upskilling to Upscale: Unleashing the Capacity of Civil Society to Counter Disinformation	project plan	June 2018	Integrity Initiative	A central II-document. The master plan for a huge network of British-directed NGOs in Europe. ‘Disinformation’ refers to everything not fitting the Western government narrative...