US America's fact fight fades - Professional fact-checking went mainstream during the first Trump administration, but it's since become politicized.

America's fact fight fades
Axios (archive.ph)
By Sara Fischer
2025-04-22 09:00:08GMT


Data: Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer; Note: Coverage includes just the time taken to say the words and does not include related discussion; Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals

America's obsession with countering mis- and disinformation has withered as society grows skeptical of institutions once trusted with facts.

Why it matters: Professional fact-checking went mainstream during the first Trump administration, but it's since become politicized.

• Americans are less enthusiastic about policing information today than they were two years ago, and the trend is bipartisan, per Pew Research Center.

State of play: Institutions once seen as critical to providing facts about history and current events, such as public schools and news media, are experiencing record-low trust levels, in addition to financial challenges.

• A February YouGov poll found that U.S. citizens are far more likely to trust information coming from the Trump administration "a great deal" or "a fair amount" (44%) than they are the news media (28%).
• In 2017, that gap was much smaller, with 43% of Americans saying they trusted the Trump administration "a great deal" or "a fair amount" on facts, compared to 38% for the news media.

By the numbers: Mentions of the terms "misinformation" and "disinformation" across the country's three biggest cable news networks, MSNBC, Fox News and CNN, have declined considerably since the pandemic, according to data from Stanford's Cable TV News Analyzer.

• The politicization of fact-checking has contributed to a decline in the number of fact-checking sites globally over the past year, according to data from Duke Reporters' Lab. The number of global fact-checking sites increased 140% from 2016 to 2022, before starting to level off in 2023.

Between the lines: Government bodies once focused on combating mis -and disinformation are being gutted by the Trump administration.

• The State Department's Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub is being eliminated, State Secretary Marco Rubio confirmed last week. The office was responsible for tracking and countering foreign disinformation campaigns.
• Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation has canceled research grants related to misinformation and disinformation.

Reality check: Even Democrats, who have for years pushed tech companies to take action against falsehoods, have begun to lose their truth-seeking appetite amid broader political battles.

• In a new Pew Research Center survey, 58% of Democrats say they support government restrictions on false information online, down from 70% two years prior.

The big picture: Facing less progressive pressure, tech platforms have largely replaced fact-checking with community policing.

• TikTok last week said it would test a new feature called Footnotes that lets users add context to videos. The feature is reminiscent of Community Notes on X, which was also adopted by Meta to police speech.
• Meta ended its fact-checking program this year. The company reportedly told teams responsible for ranking content to not penalize misinformation, per Platformer.
• Google in January told the European Union it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking and removing content, despite the requirements of a new EU law.

What to watch: Research shows the rise of AI-driven content is contributing to more mis- and disinformation online, but American appetite for fact-checking doesn't appear to be growing in tandem.

 

[Wicky Wicky WoW]

I recall it being revealed several lefty state governments were funding these "fact" checkers so in other words propaganda, how many of them were getting USAID bucks, most or all?

For the fact checkers like everything every authoritative institution has to be contorted to push whatever ideological schlock, cover up corruption, and serve as propaganda. Going scorched earth with the necrotic tissue is preferable. The xitter community notes system is preferable since a top down priestly system is easy to corrupt for malevolent intentions.

 

[Bland Crumbs]

If crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fires...what do fact fighters fight?

 

[Hitman One]

I don't think WaPo will ever beat calling the head of ISIS an "austere religious scholar" in his obituary, but they came damn close with that one.

>pious Muslim
>Conservative adherent
>traditionalist interpretation of the Koran

 

[Death of an Ego]

Could it be that they were trying to "combat misinformation" by simply trying to flood media with their own misinformation garnered from their own stale and bogus political perspective? Nahhhhh, they're on the right side of history, don'tcha know. Now shut your mouth and ignore your lying eyes, chud/nazi/racist/sexist/transphobe/Islamophobe/homophobe/whatever we came up with in a haze of pot smoke and condescending smugness.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

Total Fact Checker Death! Seriously, the people responsible for Snopes would be jailed in a civilized country for their naked incitement of violence.

 

[Loose Goose]

I don't put much credence into the "they are putting the woke away" narrative, but in this specific case, it makes sense. The powers that be tipped their hands too strongly by trying to build an open censorship apparatus, and fact checking was a pillar of that system. There was always some form of censorship and narrative control over the news and public discourse, and the intelligence community was always deeply involved. But they got greedy and tried to take it to the next level and make it total. You can see terms like "misinformation" and "dangerous disinformation", which are all spook talk, becoming openly discussed. But it produced a major backlash, and now they are melting back into the shadows. They will still be there, and never go away completely, but this one battle is at least won.

The reason it failed wasn't just the fact of censorship, but because they appointed their worst theater kid allies to run the system. Everybody hated Nina Jankowicz from the Disinformation Governance Board, and a lot of people got a taste of obnoxious lower level censorship, whether it was tranny jannies in their video game communities, the HR department at their job forcing some humiliation ritual down their throat, or people getting silenced at their school, church, or just everywhere else. The experience was widespread and visceral, and the power tripping jannies became so hated it now makes sense to offer them as a sacrifice to placate the masses before they come for the higher ups. And honestly, Trump should still go after the higher ups, just to make an example of them, and because it'd feel really good.

 

[Dog-O-Tron 5000v5.0]

"Experts say wolf is attacking, for real this time!"

 

[Yamaha YM2612]

It was always political and it wasn't fact checking, it was literally just propaganda

After libs screaming that Obama was born in Hawaii, I never want to hear them talk about the ideas of "fact checking" again

 

[Snekposter]

It was always political and it wasn't fact checking, it was literally just propaganda

After libs screaming that Obama was born in Hawaii, I never want to hear them talk about the ideas of "fact checking" again

They can fact check deez nuts.

 

[Gottahavemysips]

What to watch: Research shows the rise of AI-driven content is contributing to more mis- and disinformation online, but American appetite for fact-checking doesn't appear to be growing in tandem.

I genuinely don't give a shit. I don't care how frightening the rise of AI mis/disinformation is, they blew their load on this one not because they cared about disinformation, they cared about controlling their own narrative and what was inconvenient to their agenda.
"Fact checking" the way they wanted to do it was the dumbest shit of all time, and I'd say it made people more vulnerable to false information because it encouraged accepting something without thought. If they actually wanted people to build up immunity to this sort of stuff, why weren't they pushing people to actually disseminate information rather than putting a blurb that says "expert says it didn't happen"? A lot of this AI shit wouldn't be a concern if they actually pushed for people to think for themselves rather than outsource their thinking to external sources.
It doesn't help that there were multiple incidents where the "fact checkers" were just lying, like the Hunter Biden laptop story. None of the people who actively lied about that got punished, at most a few had to eat some crow and say "we got it wrong". Why should regular people trust a single thing these fuckers have to say when there are absolutely no consequences for getting things wrong or outright lying? With institutions that are meant to build trust, there needs to be actual consequences for the people who abuse that trust.

 

[GamerGateSurvivor]

Here's the survey data:
Questionaire PDF (archive.org)
Topline PDF (archive.org)

Imagine wanting the government to control what you see and read.

Imagine thinking the same people who want you to believe Jeffery Epstein killed himself should have the power to tell you what's true and what isn't.

 

[draggs]

Yeah unfortunately a majority of Democrats still love anti- and un-American censorship

 

[Fount of BadSpeak]

"Fact checkers" were lying cunts even before I got a red pill suppository in 2020. I remember checking Mother Jones back in the day about the percentage of mass shootings done by whites versus non whites, and they straight up just lied in the article about the data to barely get whites over 50% of the numbers. When I checked the data myself, a solid 80% of the cases were by browns, but they excluded most of them by claiming it wasn't really a mass shooting because they shot a bunch of people while doing a heckin' wholesome drive-by shooting or something. That is because, as we all know, there's definitely a difference between a white guy shooting 5 innocent people because he snapped, and a black guy shooting 5 innocent people because Deq'Uearious dissed him on twitter. The bullets in the latter case are full of enrichment and diversity.

Then after the shit in 2020 and the tranny garbage, I genuinely can not fathom how anybody has faith in the "experts" anymore. Even leaving aside political components, they are simply wrong most of the time, which ensures that nobody honest or intelligent can possibly take them seriously.

 

[TowinKarz]

at most a few had to eat some crow and say "we got it wrong".

They didn't even do that, they just blamed "misinformation" again....... the same misinformation they themselves created. A reverse "we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing"