From the article by Leonard Goodman , bold added:

A case study in how allegedly neutral analysts hired by publications or social media can effectively cancel good-faith questions and opinions because they challenge dominant narratives.

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Opinion columnists are familiar with the traditional role of the fact checker. Prior to publication, an editor checks accuracy of quotes and the sources for factual assertions. Erroneous or unsupported assertions are removed or revised.

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But times have changed. Today, an entire fact-checker industry has emerged to check your opinions, making sure you have not strayed beyond acceptable limits for public discourse. These professional fact-checkers are often brought in after publication of a controversial article, opinion piece or podcast to quell a controversy. Acting more like business consultants, they help media platforms large and small stay on the right side of government officials and corporate sponsors.

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COVID-19 has been a boon to the fact-checking industry. Big outfits like Politifact and Factcheck.org have special divisions just to police COVID “misinformation.” Like the Ministry of Truth imagined by George Orwell in his epic novel, “1984,” these outfits will tell you what you can and can’t say about the lockdowns, masks, and the mRNA vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna.

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I got a window into the world of professional fact checkers last November after I published an op-ed for the Chicago Reader called, “Vaxxing our Kids, Why I’m not rushing to get my six-year-old the COVID-19 vaccine.” In it, I considered the arguments for and against the official policy to vaccinate every child. And I apparently crossed a line by including opinions held by a significant number of prominent scientists and physicians who believe healthy children don’t need the vaccine because their risk of severe COVID is minuscule, the vaccine may do more damage than good to children, and it does little to stop the spread of COVID.

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Like all my columns, Vaxxing our Kids was submitted on deadline, fact-checked and edited. At publication, my editor thanked me for taking on the difficult topic and pronounced my research to be “bulletproof.” She predicted that the piece would be controversial, but that many parents of young children would appreciate hearing a different point of view.

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Scheerpost co-published Vaxxing our Kids. But the way Scheerpost and the Chicago Reader handled the exact same content and the ensuing controversy could not have been more different. Scheerpost put the column front and center on its website and invited readers to comment and debate. Last I checked, there were 105 on-line comments and a robust debate, for and against the policy of mass vaccination of children. Many of the posters on Scheerpost shared knowledge, research and expertise on the questions raised in the op-ed, a shining example of how the First Amendment is supposed to work.

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The Chicago Reader took a different approach. Rather than embrace the controversy and welcome a debate over an important issue of public health, the Reader let “the mob ha[ve] the final edit” as one journalist remarked in the Chicago Tribune. After disabling all comments on its website, Reader management hired an external and anonymous “fact checker” to rewrite my column and issue a report with nine points of disagreement, later expanded to fifteen points of disagreement. The publisher offered me two options: either remove the column from the Reader website, or replace it with the new version that was “extensively modified” by the fact-checker, to be followed by the fact-checker report. I asked to publish a rebuttal to the fact-checker report and was told: “As for rebuttal: Your side is the actual column. The rebuttal is not a ‘side’ it is a fact-checker’s report.”

More at the link.