Journalism Today. 8 Jan 2025

By Eduardo Suárez and Matthew Leake

🗞️ Our top news story

1. Meta ends its fact-checking programme. Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking programme, and replacing it with a version of X’s community notes. The programme was launched in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, as Sara Fischer explains in this useful thread. The company turned to outside organisations like AP, AFP, ABC News and global outlets vetted by the International Fact-Checking Network, to comb over misleading posts on Facebook and Instagram and rule whether they needed to be annotated or removed.

• Zuck throws fact-checkers under the bus. ”After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Zuckerberg said. “We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US." | Read his statement in full

2. Why now? “Ever since Trump’s victory in November, few big companies have worked as overtly [as Meta] to curry favor with the president-elect, who, during his first administration, accused social media platforms of censoring conservative voices,” write Mike Isaac and Theodore Schleifer at the New York Times. As recently as 2022, Meta was bragging that it had invested more than $100 million into fact-checking, as Sarah Scire explains in this piece.

• Will the decision apply just to the US? The geographical scope of Meta’s decision is not clear from Zuckerberg’s statement. Experts expect the company to apply it beyond the United States, but this may differ from country to country, depending on local legislation and the political will to enforce it. 
• What’s the view of the Oversight Board? The Board’s Co Chairs issued a brief statement welcoming Meta’s decision: “We look forward to working with Meta in the coming weeks to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as possible.” | Read the statement in full

3. How have fact-checkers reacted? Angie Holan is the Director of the International Fact-Checking Network, which reaches more than 170 organisations from dozens of countries around the world. She issued a statement criticising Meta’s decision and stressing the need for professional fact-checkers. “Fact-checking journalism has never censored or removed posts; it’s added information and context to controversial claims, and it’s debunked hoax content and conspiracy theories,” she said. According to this piece, Meta’s fact-checking partners were blindsided by the decision to axe the initiative. 

• A key quote from Holan: “The fact-checkers used by Meta follow a Code of Principles requiring nonpartisanship and transparency. It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters. Fact-checkers have not been biased in their work – that attack line comes from those who feel they should be able to exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction.” This piece she wrote in April is worth reading again. 
• The view from Europe. Ana Brakus, Executive Director of Croatian fact-checker Faktograf, called on the European Union to defend the continent’s information ecosystem: “It is crucial for European institutions to insist on enforcing laws applicable in the EU and to prevent US Big Tech monopolies from doing as they please in our digital space,” she said. | Read

4. Meta is also changing its content guidelines. The company also announced changes to its policy on hateful conduct policy. Users will now be allowed to refer to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section notes Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation” in another sign the company is pandering to Donald Trump. | Read

5. Does fact-checking work? On Tuesday some high-profile academics shared links to their own studies on the programme scrapped by Meta and on fact-checking more generally. This paper by Claes de Vreese and others shows that “fact-checks are successful in debunking misperceptions” and that this debunking effect is consistent across countries.” This thread summarises the findings of this paper by Sandra González Bailón and others, which suggests the actions of fact-checkers helped reduce misinformation from Facebook pages.

📊 Chart of the day

What do people want from the news? In a special chapter of our Digital News Report 2024 we asked people which aspects of the news they considered most important to them in their daily lives. Foremost was news that satisfies the basic needs of knowledge and understanding, qualities that were deemed very or somewhat important by two-thirds (65%) of the population. In particular, news that keeps users updated was seen as most important (72%). Diversion or connection were considered less important aspects of news, perhaps because of the abundance of other sources that satisfy these user needs. | Read

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☕ Coffee break

The Washington Post is cutting 4% of its workforce to deal with hefty annual losses. The cuts affect the newspaper’s business divisions, with the newsroom being unaffected. 240 editorial posts were eliminated through a voluntary redundancy scheme two years ago. | Read

Stock photo giant Getty Images will merge with its rival Shutterstock forming a company believed to be worth $3.7 billion. Both companies provide images and video to news organisations worldwide, as well as advertising and film companies. | Read

A decade on from the Charlie Hebdo massacre where 12 journalists were killed by Al-Qaeda affiliated attackers, Jon Allsop reflects on ensuing debates around satirical cartoons, press freedom and Islamophobia. | Read

“The future of news is not legacy media,” said X CEO Linda Yaccarino in her keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as she announced the hiring of a former Wall Street Journal editor and columnist to head up the platform’s news group and partnership team. | Read

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Are you our next Director? The University of Oxford is seeking a new Director of the Reuters Institute. They will have the strategic vision, academic credentials and public engagement skills to ensure the Reuters Institute continues to thrive. Applications close Friday 17 January, 17.00 UK time. | Find out more and how to apply

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📚 One piece from our archive

🇳🇬 A fearless investigative journalist. A Nigerian reporter, Philip Obaji Jr., who was abducted and tortured while reporting on the private mercenary army the Wagner Group spoke to our contributor Patrick Egwu about his experience of covering the Russia-based group which has a track record of human rights abuses across Africa. “I met a couple of local recruits in Cameroon and they told me that they got orders to get me arrested or even killed,” he says. Obaji Jr advised journalists who wish to follow in his footsteps to “build contacts, have a strong sense of mind and just do what you can to get your story.” | Read the piece

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