Editorial: Meta Pulls the Plug on Fact-Checking
By • January 14, 2025 0 10
Last week, Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced that it would end its eight-year fact-checking partnership with independent American journalists to identify misinformation on its platforms.
Calling the election of Donald Trump “a cultural tipping point,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would move to “a Community Notes model” to avoid mistakes and censorship and promote free expression.
The Poynter Institute, which owns PolitiFact (which assisted with Meta fact-checking), called Zuckerberg’s statement “disappointing.” In an article on poynter.com, President Neil Brown said, “Facts are not censorship. Fact-checkers never censored anything,” adding that “it’s time to quit invoking inflammatory and false language in describing the role of journalists and fact-checking.”
Meta’s decision is yet another blow to ethical journalism, with significant consequences for the fact-based understanding on which democracy relies. Coordinated attacks on “fake news,” a term popularized during the 2016 election, are increasingly used to suppress accurate information on issues such as climate change, vaccine safety, international conflicts and the behavior of government officials and other public figures.
Most journalists, including the fact-checkers Meta is doing away with, take very seriously the role of helping readers wade through the murky waters of digital journalism (not to mention social media, which is now embracing AI). Over its 71-year history, The Georgetowner has sought to be an unbiased source of local news, while also taking stands on issues and sharing the opinions of others, always indicated as such.
Today, as major legacy media and social media owners step back — for political as well as financial reasons — from a commitment to accuracy, transparency and the calling-out of misinformation, it is incumbent on all of us, as consumers of information, to “fact-check” for ourselves.
