Fact-checkers, targeted by MAGA loyalists, blast Zuckerberg’s assertion their work was ‘biased’

Meta’s surprise decision to scrap its fact-checking partnerships – blindsiding journalists involved in the program and putting some out of work – is part of a much bigger shift in media and politics.

Meta’s surprise decision to scrap its fact-checking partnerships – blindsiding journalists involved in the program and putting some out of work – is part of a much bigger shift in media and politics. The very notion of fact-checking is under assault by a wide array of fact-challenged politicians and interest groups. Particularly on the right, “fact-check” has been turned into a dirty word, one that presupposes the fact-checker is actually suppressing some inconvenient truth. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg played right into that assumption on Tuesday when he insulted fact-checkers as “too politically biased” and said they “have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.” Destroyed trust among whom, exactly? Zuckerberg didn’t say. But President-elect Donald Trump, who keeps fact-checkers busy and hates being corrected by them, welcomed Meta’s changes. So did the wide world of pro-Trump media. “Trump gets results,” Fox’s Laura Ingraham said Tuesday night, touting Meta’s “major shakeup.” As CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan found through his interviews with Trump rallygoers, MAGA loyalists bristled at the existence of fact-checks on Facebook and objected to content moderation that they described as censorship. They trusted Trump over any attempt to fact-check him. But for a wider audience, Meta’s support for outside fact-checking outlets helped make the internet a little bit less polluted by lies and propaganda.