Our trip to the Poynter Institute, followed by an email to the person I met at Poynter carrying a forwarded email from Aug. 9, 2023, ended up bearing some fruit.
This page documents our email outreach thanking Alex Mahadevan for greeting us at Poynter, IFCN Director Angie Drobnic Holan’s reply, my reply to Holan and company and Poynter president Neil Brown’s automated reply.
Update pre-republication, March 4, 2026: We blacked out the emergency email address from Brown’s autoreply, then got rid of the URL because our effort to hide an email address wasn’t fully effective.
Dear Alex Mahadevan,
Thanks again for welcoming me at the Poynter Institute last Thursday.
Under the assumption that you delivered the message that the zebrafactcheck@gmail.com account owner was hoping for a response to a correction request, I have follow up questions.
From appearances, the IFCN seems to have no intention of fixing a set of errors that has been brought to their attention multiple times. Is the IFCN, under the Poynter Institute umbrella, answerable to the Poynter Institute? To whom should I inquire about holding the IFCN accountable for the repeated falsehoods? And on what day am I likely to find such persons present at the Poynter Institute?
Thanks!
Bryan,
Many of the staff at Poynter have been reluctant to deal with you in the past. This is because you seem intent on filing as many complaints as possible, never accept any sort of evidence that contradicts your preconceived viewpoints, and consistently argue in bad faith even when given thoughtful and meaningful answers. No answer has ever satisfied your concerns, and indeed, our answers seem to inspire you to make more complaints with the intent of wasting the time of Poynter staff and frustrating our extremely important work. By all appearances you seem to be a classic case of what is known as a “vexatious litigant.” I am telling you this so you understand the reason that so many of your missives to Poynter have been ignored. They’ve been ignored because of your long track record of poor behavior over many years and with many different members of the Poynter staff.
I would be open to engaging with you if there were some reasonable accommodation to be made to your numerous complaints on all Poynter work -- perhaps you could streamline your current complaints into a single one-page letter that Poynter staff could answer within 90 days, alongside a written promise of to limit yourself to no more than two complaints per calendar year. If that is not agreeable to you, I am not sure what is left to discuss. I am also highly concerned that you are now confronting Poynter staff in person. Please consider this a formal request to limit your communications with Poynter staff to email, in order to ensure the dignity, safety and security of our employees.
Finally, for your information, I report directly to the president of the Poynter Institute. I am cc’ing him on this email so he can be fully apprised of this latest communication.
Angie Drobnic Holan
Director, International Fact-Checking Network
Dear Angie Drobnic Holan (and co.),
Thanks for the reply, albeit not a word of it addresses my complaint of false claims about me in IFCN documents, and you neglected to support so much as one of your personal attacks against me with a specific example. For example, my supposed confrontation with Poynter employees was none other than a cordial and brief discussion with Alex Mahadevan. Indeed, I assumed he was unknown to me until he identified himself as “Alex” when I asked him his name as he was leaving. We had no words after that, perhaps with the exception of a friendly parting salutation, until the email I sent.
When it is impossible to prompt an email reply from anyone at Poynter (save for the good Enock Nyariki), that effectively leaves the supplicant no choice but to appear in person. And so I did, at the cost of some personal inconvenience.
I don’t argue in bad faith. It is reasonable to expect a journalism organization that counts accuracy and transparency among its core values to correct false information it has published, even if the documents are mostly hidden from public view. The responses from Poynter seem to indicate you (collectively) feel that is far too tall a task. That, in turn, would suggest that Poynter’s core values are optional. That’s a bad look. There’s no good excuse for leaving these falsehoods intact.
Cheers, and please see the attachment to review an example (source page) of the IFCN publishing a false report about me.
