“Everyone is entitled to his own view, but not his own facts,” the late recent York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan memorably wrote four decades ago.
That seems like a simpler period — especially when you consider Meta’s selection to complete a truth-checking program on social media apps Facebook, Instagram and Threads and what the ramifications might be for an industry built to bring clarity and to seek truth itself.
Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement this week was widely seen in information verification circles as a genuflection to president-elect Donald Trump, whose first term in office popularized the phrase “alternative facts.”
Meta is replacing its truth-checking with a “throng notes” structure reminiscent of X, where it depends on users to correct misinformation on its platforms. In a way, that hearkens back to “he said-she said” journalism, or the view of some political debate moderators that it should be the role of opponents, not journalists, to point out falsehoods. It also hints at something else: the concept that the loudest voices and the best-told stories can triumph the day.
The instant is a crossroads for the truth-checking industry, which will view its influence sharply curtailed when Trump takes office for his second term.
“In the short term, this is impoverished information for people who desire to leave on social media to discover trustworthy and accurate information,” said Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International truth-Checking Network. Her organization started in 2015 with about 50 members and now has 170, some of whom face staff cuts and potential closure because of Meta’s shift.
“In the long term,” she said, “I ponder it’s very doubtful what this will all cruel.”
truth-checking is an odd industry, particularly when you consider that it’s a function of all journalism. The concept bubbled up about three decades ago in part to counter “he said-she said” stories and monitor claims in political ads. The organization FactCheck.org, whose primary aim was to assist reporters, started in 2003 and the more community-facing PolitiFact four years later.
PolitiFact, started by then-Tampa Bay Times Washington bureau chief invoice Adair in 2007, won a Pulitzer Prize for its 2008 campaign coverage. It called out politicians for bending or breaking the truth in ways often challenging for reporters who were protective of the sources whose voices populated their stories.
By 2012, truth-checkers were under attack, primarily by Republicans convinced many were biased and researched voting records to try and prove the point, said Adair, now a Duke University professor. Trump, he said, “sped up a pattern that had already begun.”
Some conservative suspicion of truth-checkers has been warranted because of mistakes that have been made, although there were some Republicans who uttered falsehoods and just didn’t like being called out for it, said Steve Hayes, CEO and editor of the center-correct site The Dispatch.
“The people who habit truth-checking are in some ways saying, ’We are the arbiter of truth, period,” Hayes said. “And anytime you do this, it invites scrutiny on the work that you do.”
Labeling systems largely didn’t assist, either. Giving a misstatement the label of “pants on fire,” as some truth-checkers have, may be a catchy way of attracting attention but also fostered resentment.
Holan resists the view that truth-checkers have been biased in their work: “That attack line comes from those who feel they should be able to exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction.”
GOP suspicion still quickly took root. Journalism’s Poynter Institute, in a survey taken in 2019, found that 70% of Republicans thought the work of truth-checkers was one-sided. Roughly the same percentage of Democrats thought they were fair. Poynter hasn’t asked the same question since. Yet last year, Poynter found that 52% of Americans declare they generally discover it challenging to determine whether what they’re reading about elections is factual or not.
In a column Wednesday on the conservative watchdog site NewsBusters.org, Tim Graham wrote that during the first nine months of 2024, PolitiFact criticized Republican officials for delivering “mostly untrue” facts 88 times compared to 31 times for Democrats. To Graham, this proves that the concept the site is independent or nonpartisan is laughable.
But is that bias? Or is it checking facts?
Adair used to be reluctant to declare what is now the title of his recent book: “Beyond the large Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do it More, and How it Could Burn Down Our Democracy.” He’s not hesitant anymore.
“Trump is unmatched as a liar in American politics,” Adair said. “I’m not the first to declare that. I ponder he has capitalized on the truth that there has been this pushback on truth-checkers, and showed other politicians that you can get away with lying, so leave ahead and do that.”
Tension about truth-checking played out during the recent presidential campaign, when Trump’s throng was furious with ABC information for calling attention to untrue statements by the former president during his only debate with Democrat Kamala Harris.
Trump’s second win has changed the equation at Meta. Already, X has curtailed its independent truth-checking under owner Elon Musk, a Trump friend. The moves are significant because it removes truth-checking from venues where many users might not otherwise be exposed to it.
On its own, truth-checking “doesn’t reach those exposed to misinformation,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the University of Pennsylvania, who started FactCheck.org. “It tends to reach audiences that were already knowledgeable and wary.”
On social media, truth-checking also became part of the algorithms that drove information to people, or away from them. Material labeled as untrue would often be downgraded so it received less exposure. To Republicans who have criticized large Tech, that amounted to censorship. Yet to Jamieson, successful truth-checking is not censorship — “it’s the procedure of arguing.”
Jamieson expressed some optimism that other intelligent social media users will step up to prevent the risky spread of falsehoods. But for truth-checking as it is today to continue to thrive and, even, exist as a journalistic endeavor, Adair said it will likely receive influential Republican figures to publicly stand up for the importance of truth.
NewsBuster columnist Graham, in an interview, had a more pointed piece of advice. “My remedy in all arguments about media depend,” he said, “is that modesty is required.”
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. pursue him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
