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

New York CNN — 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. “In fact, we would have lost our contract if they suspected it.” Duke said his website will stay in business – it has other sources of funding, including TikTok’s parent company ByteDance – but Meta’s decision affects some of its work in the United States, and “sadly, this will mean some very good journalists will be looking for work elsewhere.” “Without fact checking on Meta, disinfo spreaders will be partying like it’s 2016,” Duke added. Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said the decision “will hurt social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information to make decisions about their everyday lives and interactions with friends and family.” Holan, the former editor of PolitiFact, challenged Zuckerberg’s claim about bias, saying “that attack line comes from those who feel they should be able to exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction.” Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. Science Feedback, another one of Meta’s fact-checking partners, said “the public faces an ever-growing risk of being misled by powerful actors prioritizing their own interests over the well-being of their audience or the public good.” Meta said it will adopt a “community notes” system for fact-checking, modeled on X’s program, which encourages unpaid users with different points of view to agree on corrective notes for misleading content. Science Feedback recently published an analysis finding that X’s community notes system failed to address “most of the misinformation identified by fact-checkers on the platform” around last year’s European Parliament elections.