PARIS: Media outlets around the world have been left scratching their heads over the future of their fact-checking operations after Meta’s shock announcement that it will halt its US programme.

Here are the key facts about how the practice has developed and what could lie ahead for the sector.

Years of growth

Fact-checking emerged in the United States in the early 2000s to become a genre of journalism all its own.

The practice rode the rising wave of internet usage and was the lifeblood of new media operations pitting politicians’ statements against reality.

PolitiFact, a landmark of the sector, was launched in 2007 and won a Pulitzer prize in 2009.

Methods like live corrections to figures provided on TV or online articles marked up as true or false spread around the world, providing the foundation for the next stage.

Social media giants were already labouring under allegations that their platforms were being used to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories when scrutiny increased following 2016’s shock Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.

Meta and other web firms stoked the spread of fact-checking beyond politics, enlisting media organisations that saw the activity as a welcome new revenue opportunity in a sector struggling to stay afloat.

Vital revenue stream

Ten organisations are affected by Meta’s announcement that it will end fact-checking in the US.

Some, such as Check Your Fact, are totally dependent on income from the tech firm, US outlet Business Insider reported.

Others including PolitiFact are less exp­o­sed, with the outlet receiving a little over five per cent of its revenue from the Meta par­tnership, according to the New York Times.

African media appear particularly exposed should Meta’s worldwide fact-checking programme be stopped.

“There are business models that are more or less dependent on Facebook” such as the Johannesburg-based Africa Check, said Laurent Bigot, a journalism professor who also vets applications to join the Interna­tional Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

Several media were founded purely to join Facebook’s scheme, including Data Check in Cameroon, Balobaki Check in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or TogoCheck, Bigot pointed out.

He warned that “this verification work will never be done anywhere else, while disinformation kills people every day in these countries”.

Pushback

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said in announcing the pullback that “the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US”.

His company would be “restoring free expression on our platforms”, he added.

Elon Musk, who owns X and has Trump’s ear, and many Republican politicians have for years accused fact-checkers of “censoring” conservative voices.

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2025