Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler announced this week that he was offered a buyout as the paper continues to purge staff. In his parting message, he took a shot at the era of false information, warning that he fears those pushing it are winning.
Writing on Thursday, he recalled a recent international conference of 400 fact-checkers meeting to discuss the work they do. “After years of exponential growth,” he said, “political fact-checking was in retreat and under fire.”
He cited Meta’s decision to stop funding U.S. fact-checkers and Google’s announcement that it will end the ClaimReview program. President Donald Trump’s ongoing government cuts killed the U.S. Agency for International Development, which had funding for fact-checkers across the world.
Kessler pointed out that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made false claims in his announcement that fact-checking was ending on his social media sites. Zuckerberg alleged that fact-checkers censor free speech and that disputing false information is “too politically biased.”
It harkens back to a Stephen Colbert segment in which he portrayed a far-right conservative and announced, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
“Many fact-checkers would liken their work to nutritional labels on snack foods — providing more information about online content. People are free to ignore the warnings, just as people can ignore nutritional labels,” wrote Kessler.
There’s also a concern that Trump might use tariffs to retaliate against the European Union after it enacted the Digital Services Act, mandating that online platforms combat misinformation. The Trump administration has already made a similar move with Brazil, where online platforms are regulated.
“Before Trump entered politics, I found that many politicians spun or dissembled, but most tried to keep their claims tethered to the truth. Our fact checks covered a range of topics, such as the accuracy of government statistics on students dying from alcohol or exaggerated claims about sex trafficking, which led lawmakers to stop using them,” wrote Kessler.
He recalled the lie that Trump parroted that Muslims were celebrating on 9/11. Trump frequently invents statistics and numbers, continuing to repeat them despite fact-checks.
“But Trump didn’t care. He kept rising in the polls and eventually won the presidency. Other politicians took notice and followed his lead,” said Kessler.
He blamed social media for Trump’s rise and for making it so easy to spread false information. In Trump’s second administration, Kessler said he’s watched Trump’s penchant for false information spread to once-respected agencies like the State Department.
He closed by throwing his hands up that fact-checks have “become the norm.” Meanwhile, fact-checkers are more easily ignored.