The Fact Checker rose in an era of false claims. Falsehoods are now winning. When 400 fact-checkers from around the world gathered in Rio de Janeiro in June for an annual conference, the mood was tense. After years of exponential growth, political fact-checking was in retreat and under fire. And somehow, even as fact-checking surged in the past decade, so had the wave of false claims and narratives swamping the world. Meta, which after 2016 spent more than $100 million to fund 100 fact-checking organizations, ended a partnership with U.S. fact-checkers to highlight false claims and signaled it would cut back across the world. Google announced it would end its ClaimReview program — which I helped foster — that elevated fact checks in search results. Meanwhile, the Trump administration's abrupt dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development cut off additional funding for fact-checkers in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. In reviewing many of the some 3,000 fact checks I have written or edited, there is a clear dividing line: June 2015, the month Donald Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator and announced he was running for president. "Businessman Donald Trump is a fact-checker's dream … and nightmare," I wrote in the fact check of his announcement speech. How little did I realize that would be true. Trump decreed that mainstream news organizations were "the enemy of the people," undermining faith in traditional reporting, and insisted to his followers that he was the best source of information. To read the full report, please click this link. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment