"If Google seriously makes such a suggestion, then attention should be paid to the mainstream media. If fact checking is conducted properly, then probably half of the mainstream media will be closed… Who decides what is truth? This entire story is moving in the direction of media censorship," Mueller, who has been identifying fake news on public broadcasters and filing relevant complaints for years, said.
She added that the Fact Checking Initiative had no future and offered to establish a media testing foundation.
"The idea is to establish a media testing foundation… It would be possible to assign a quality mark to those media outlets that cover the events truthfully, rather than follow the dominant narrative of the government or NATO allies," Mueller concluded.
According to Google, the new feature was introduced as a part of its efforts to help combat the spread of misinformation and fake news. Fact checks would not be provided by the company itself and would instead use fact-checking findings from such web sources as PolitiFact and Snopes. According to the company's blog, the international fact-checking community currently consists of 115 organizations.
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