The decision by Meta to remove third-party fact-checking from its platforms in the US and revise content rules is a setback for information integrity and the thousands of professional journalists dedicated to upholding it. It is also a dangerous moment for democracy, but it is not a surprise.
Social media platforms have resisted the accountability that we as an industry live by. In response, recognising the danger to society that unverified content causes, news brands, fact-checking organisations and the journalists working for them have striven to persuade disengaged audiences of the value of good journalism.
Ultimately, professional media have fulfilled the public interest role that platforms refuse to do in an attempt to safeguard against weighted algorithms. As we have come to understand, when platformed alongside brut opinion, news content often loses out to the anger, hate and fear so prevalent across social media.
Billions of people around the world receive news and information via these platforms. Fact-checking attempts to counter mis- and dis-information, and brings the professional standards of our industry into the digital town square.
That Meta’s systems are not up to the task of ensuring effective content moderation should not be a reflection on the journalists employed by third-party organisations to fact-check, or the important role they play in the broader online ecosystem.
Ultimately it has been a losing battle, one that reached its climax this week with the announcement from Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Important as these mass distribution channels have become, not least as a means to reach new audiences, each news brand must surely now review their engagement and question whether it is in their interests to maintain an active presence.
We go into this new era with eyes wide open. Our news is not valued by these companies, our professionalism is consistently denied. They are free to make business decisions, but conflating fact-checking as something akin to censorship is both offensive and just plain wrong.
War is not peace. Opinion is not fact. Fact-checking is inconvenient only to those who wish to avoid scrutiny.
With aims of promoting free expression, the decision by Meta risks negating existing international legal standards governing free speech and emerging legislation around harmful content. Meta appears to be prioritising profit, power, conspiracy and hate over accuracy, fact and accountability – the very foundations that distinguish professional journalism.
The gulf in values between media organisations and social media platforms has perhaps never been greater.
Our newsrooms are guided by professional standards, ethics and codes of conduct that uphold legal norms. Every day, journalists expose their interpretation of these to public scrutiny. As an industry we are not perfect; mistakes are made. But we rectify, we adjust, we strengthen and we do better work as a result.
It is time to double down on what we do best – reliable, fact-based, great journalism.
We call on news professionals to maintain the highest standards in the face of this challenge and reaffirm the principles that define us. Fact-checking remains the core of journalism. Our audiences demand it; democracy depends on it.
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