Reuters is now in the business of "fact-checking" Facebook and Twitter posts about COVID vaccines — despite having ties to Pfizer, World Economic Forum and Trusted News Initiative.

From the onset of the pandemic, social media giants, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, have flagged COVID-related posts the social media giants deem "false or misleading."

That's not news — most social media users are aware of the practice, especially amid recent headlines citing increased pressure from Congress and the White House to aggressively crack down on "vaccine misinformation."

But here's a less-publicized fact some social media users — and consumers of online news — may not know: Reuters, owned by the $40 billion international multimedia company, Thomson Reuters Corporation, is also in the business of "fact checking" social media posts.

Reuters publishes its fact-checking commentary online in a format designed to resemble new stories, which turn up in online searches.

Last week, Reuters announced a new collaboration with Twitter to "more quickly provide credible information on the social networking site as part of an effort to fight the spread of misinformation."

In February, Reuters announced a similar partnership with Facebook to "fact check" social media posts.

However, when announcing its fact-checking partnerships with Facebook and Twitter, Reuters made no mention of this fact: The news organization has ties to Pfizer, World Economic Forum (WEF) and Trusted News Initiative (TNI), an industry collaboration of major news and global tech organizations whose stated mission is to "combat spread of harmful vaccine disinformation."