Oklahoma State Sen. Casey Murdock doesn’t trust Facebook.
The rancher from northwest Oklahoma calls the social media site “biased” and “one big gossip column.”
But, like many conservatives who routinely criticize the social media platform, that hasn’t stopped him from using the site as a platform to share district updates, the latest happenings at the state Capitol and even information that Facebook — or specifically its independent fact-checkers — does not trust.
An Oklahoma Watch investigation into the spread of misinformation, which looked at how frequently state political parties and politicians shared content flagged by fact-checkers on Facebook this year, found Murdock, R-Felt, was one of the most prolific sharers of posts identified on the site as false or misleading.
Among the 16 flagged posts he shared was a debunked claim that Trump was personally responsible for rescuing 600 missing children from pedophiles, a made-up statistic that Black Lives Matter protests caused 36 deaths and 1,000 police injuries, and a fabricated quote attributed to Kamala Harris that falsely claimed she said she would send police to confiscate citizens’ firearms.
Oklahoma Watch’s review of hundreds of Facebook pages and thousands of posts revealed that state and local political parties, lawmakers, and legislative hopefuls have shared at least 85 posts that were flagged as false or misleading information — with the vast majority coming from Republican voices.
Flagged posts, including debunked medical advice about the COVID-19 pandemic and conspiracies theories involving pedophilia rings, were directly shared 2,700 times. Experts say it’s especially dangerous when they come from trusted sources and people in positions of authority.
“It is my fear that we are losing trust in government as an institution,” said Bill Adair, director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy at Duke University and the founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website PolitiFact. “I think politicians have an obligation to check things out before they repeat them or retweet, and I think that has often been forgotten in these hyper-partisan media wars that we are in.”
Oklahoma Watch’s review found both parties were guilty of sharing posts, articles or memes deemed false or missing context by nonpartisan fact-checkers, such as PolitiFact or The Associated Press, who work with Facebook to flag misinformation.
But it is not an equal split.
Republicans were responsible for all but six of the 85 posts that Oklahoma Watch’s review found were flagged as false, partially false or missing context.
Two of the misinformation posts shared by Democrats came from a pair of county party Facebook groups that shared the same viral post blaming the U.S. Postal financial woes squarely on a 2006 bill, and not on additional factors as the fact-checkers clarified when they rated it partially false.
Democrats were also flagged for sharing a fabricated tweet from President Donald Trump and a debunked claim that federal agents in the Portland protests were mercenaries provided by Erik Prince, founder of the private security firm Blackwater.
Flagged posts from Republicans targeted the Black Lives Matter movement, presidential candidate Joe Biden’s tax plan and conspiracy theories, including false claims that Hillary Clinton covered up “an elite pedophile ring” while leading the U.S. Department of State or that U.S. Attorney William Barr ordered a federal investigation into whether former President Barack Obama was behind ANTIFA (which came from a satirical news site).
More than a dozen of the flagged misinformation posts included debunked or unverified information about the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes a post shared by Rep. Kevin McDugle, R-Broken Arrow, from a fringe right-wing alternative medical site that claimed a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, which has been discredited for spread misleading claims about treating the virus with hydroxychloroquine and the effectiveness of masks, was being wrongly silenced for its statements.
Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, was among the other sitting lawmakers who shared misinformation about the virus. Earlier this month, he shared a post that falsely claimed the New York Times had reported that up to 90% of people testing positive for COVID-19 were wrongly diagnosed. Fact-checkers, however, showed that was just a misinterpretation of the article and that the claim had no basis in fact.
Murdock said that he wanted to push “the limit on Facebook to see how fact-checking worked.”
“If there was a post on my page that was indeed fake, I deleted them at that time,” he said. “If I disagreed with the fact-checkers, I did not delete it.”
Murdock added social media is “hiding stories and censoring conservative voices,” and that “somebody should stand up to the fake news machine that is Facebook.”
After Oklahoma Watch contacted Murdock, the flagged posts disappeared from his Facebook page.
Leaders of the Oklahoma Republican Party did not respond for requests for comments, but party leaders have been vocal about their opposition to Facebook’s fact-checking on the platform.
On Oct. 16, the Oklahoma Republican Party posted an image on its Facebook page that read, “Wanna know how you can tell when the truth is being told? Facebook Blocks it, Twitter Deletes it and YouTube Bans it.”
Misinformation can spread beyond the posts that have been reviewed by Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers.
Andrew Beers, a graduate research assistant who studies misinformation at the University of Washington, said there remains a lot of work before Facebook or other social media sites get a handle on how to consistently and thoroughly identify misinformation.
Beers is part of the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of academics and researchers who hope to detect and combat attempts to deter people from voting or delegitimize election results. He said one of his top worries is unfounded reports that cast doubt on previous results.
“Someone might not trust the outcome of (the presidential elections) if they hear untrue stories about past elections,” he said. “That’s why we are working to make sure people know they’re able to vote, do vote if they can and that they trust the results after the election to the maximum extent that facts allow.”
Oklahoma Watch looked at how frequently state political parties and politicians shared content flagged by fact-checkers on Facebook. Rep. Casey Murdock, R-Felt, was one of the most prolific sharers of flagged posts in 2020, an analysis found.