The right-wing war on fact-checking achieved a major — and disturbing — victory when Meta decided to drop fact-checking at Facebook and Instagram. Tom Olohan wrote the MRC’s corporate press release on it in a Jan. 7 post:
MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell commended Meta following a stunning announcement on free speech by the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Four years after the major social media platforms censored the then-President of the United States Donald Trump, Zuckerberg promised that Meta would “get rid of fact-checkers” at Facebook and Instagram. He also said that the platforms would majorly curtail the frequency and types of automated content moderation (censorship). And Zuckerberg also noted that the Meta platforms will allow more personalization regarding what users see in feeds, including again allowing political content to be seen. Bozell thanked Zuckerberg for taking this step after years of censorship and election interference on his platforms and called on other major platforms such as Google and TikTok to do the same.
“I commend Mark Zuckerberg for doing the right thing and enacting real, meaningful reforms to move Facebook closer to a platform for free speech. I know Mark has long believed that his company should strengthen freedom and democracy around the world. Today, he has taken a giant step toward helping to grow freedom everywhere,” Bozell said in a Jan. 7 post on X.
Bozell also commended Zuckerberg for acknowledging that Meta had made mistakes, noting that MRC Free Speech America has recorded 1,725 cases of censorship from Facebook, Instagram and Threads in its exclusive CensorTrack database.
Bozell went on to note that the Media Research Center and its allies in The Free Speech Alliance have fought for years to bring down the censorship regime at Meta. “Our years-long battle for free speech on the internet has finally borne fruit. I also want to thank my allies in the Free Speech Alliance and all the patriotic Americans who have stood with us for bringing about this great victory for free speech.”
No, right-wingers being given new license to lie and mislead without consequence is not a “great victory for free speech.” And correcting lies and misinformation is not “censorship” no matter what Olohan claims. He went on to gush:
The Free Speech Alliance has been steadily pushing for online free speech since 2018 when it got its first victory in the right direction. As described on the alliance’s website: “In April 2018, the Media Research Center released a groundbreaking report exposing efforts to censor conservatives and silence conservative speech from major online platforms. Our report was so impactful that US Representatives on the House Judiciary Committee cited it four separate times during a July 17, 2018 congressional hearing.”
As Bozell noted, these efforts have now come to fruition. Zuckerberg not only acknowledged mistakes and promised to “get rid of fact-checkers” but also to annihilate “restrictions on topics like immigration and gender.”
In other words: Facebook and Instagram is now fully open to amplifying homophobia and xenophobia — which is exactly what Bozell and the MRC want. And, apparently, Bozell is cool if Meta continues to censor liberals.
The next day, Jorge Bonilla gloated over how media outlets that care about accuracy complained about Meta’s move:
The Regime Media are in mourning, in the wake of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s momentous announcement. Meta platforms are shifting off of fact-checking and censorship and are moving to community notes and more emphasis on free speech.
The evening newscast reports uniformly opened with the mention of the elimination of fact-checking.
[…]ABC’s report was the shortest of the night, but hit all the common notes. Most notably, the double emphasis on the elimination of fact-checkers. That’s the big one for the media. As Erick Erickson notes, the defenestration of the fact-checking grift stands as another lethal blow to an already reeling media.
[…]What none of these reports did was tell you with any detail what changes Meta made. For instance, Meta got rid of pro-censorship Nick Clegg and replaced him with pro-speech Joel Kaplan (formerly of the Bush 43 White House). Meta also opened their algorithms. Among the reported items, Dana White was added to Meta’s board.
This is very obviously a huge deal, and a great day for free speech. In the meantime, we trust and verify that Zuckerberg is going through with implementation of these changes, and we enjoy the media’s ongoing meltdown.
Yes, the MRC still bizarrely thinks that fact-checking is “censorship.”
Tim Graham did a victory lap in his Jan. 8 column:
Since Donald Trump won re-election, the fiercest Trump-bashers in the press have raged against any sign of media titans softening their approaches before the second term begins. Visits to Mar-a-lago? Outrageous! Donating to Trump’s inauguration? Unconscionable!
Then Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced his Meta sites would be abandoning the censorship of “fact checkers,” in place since 2015. NBC reporter Hallie Jackson stuck to fiction when she reported they would be abandoning the “independent nonpartisan fact checking they’ve had in place.”
Anyone claiming websites like PolitiFact are “independent” or “nonpartisan” should get the rating “Pants On Fire.” In the first nine months of 2024, PolitiFact was twice as likely to tag Republican officials as “Mostly False” or worse (82.2 percent) as they were for Democrat officials (41.3 percent). Put aside the percentages for the raw numbers, and there were 88 “false” tags for Republicans, 31 for Democrats — almost three to one.
Graham repeated a right-wing myth about Zuckerberg:
Zuckerberg shifted left to “moderate” content under Democratic pressure after Trump was first elected in 2016, with Democrats accusing his sites of allowing Russian meddlers to install Trump. In 2020, Zuckerberg flooded heavily Democratic areas with millions of dollars to turn out minority voters – “Zuckerbucks” – and that was a yawner to Democrat media outlets. Only now is “making inroads” to an incoming president suddenly scandalous.
That’s a lie. As we documented, more Republican jurisdictions applied for “Zuckerbucks” than Democratic ones to encourage turnout (though Democratic areas received more money). Graham didn’t explain why it’s a bad thing for more people to be involved in the election process.
Comedy cop Alex Christy got mad at Jimmy Kimmel for calling out Zuckerberg:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel did not take kindly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Tuesday announcement that he is ditching the company’s relationship with its fact-checking partners. Naturally, Kimmel assumed that if a self-appointed fact-checker says something is true, it must be true, as he compared the move to a taco restaurant getting rid of health inspectors and declared the truth “as we know it” is over.
[…]As it was, the next Zuckerberg snippet showed him adding, “We’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
That’s a legitimate point. For example, one of PolitiFact’s hobby horses is that left-wing gender revisionism is factually correct. However, Kimmel claimed the opposite, “What did Trump do to this woman? What has happened? Imagine—imagine being one of the wealthiest people in the world and making the decision to announce the end of truth as we know it while dressed as Macklemore in 2014.”
Christy offered no evidence that there was anything false in that so-called “gender revisionism.” He then huffed:
It is easy for Kimmel to attack Zuckerberg’s decision because the fact-checking joke police never came for him despite the factual inaccuracies in some of his jokes or the satirical nature of others.
All the examples Christy cited are of himself serving as “joke police,” so it’s inaccurate to claim they “never came for him.”
Olohan served up more stenography for his boss:
MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell responded to a wild reversal on free speech by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but had a serious warning for users.
Bozell spoke to Newsmax host Carl Higbie about the historical significance and potential road bumps of Zuckerberg’s recent pledge to break with fact-checkers and scale back censorship. During the Jan. 7 edition of Carl Higbie Frontline, Brent pointed out just how far Zuckerberg had gone, admitting wrongdoing and providing specific changes instead of a vague statement about free speech. Bozell didn’t spare the Big Tech CEO, however, saying, “He groveled in this statement. He absolutely groveled. He made admissions of mistakes. He promised, he genuflected.”
Right-wingers are seriously into trying to publicly humiliate people they disagree with. There was more:
However, during the Newsmax segment, Bozell reminded viewers to be cautious. After Higbie warned that Zuckerberg’s apparent turn away from censorship might be temporary, Bozell made the point that Meta employees might not buy into these changes even in the present. “It’s one thing for Mark Zuckerberg to say it. It’s quite another for the tens of thousands of people at Facebook to obey it,” Bozell said, before drawing a comparison to X-owner Elon Musk’s initial struggles to control radical anti-free speech staffers after he purchased Twitter.
Bozell suggested that Meta employees would behave in similar ways and would “try to undermine Zuckerberg at Facebook.” He went on to tell Newsmax viewers, “At the end of the day, it’s trust but verify. This is just the first step.” Bozell added, “I hope that free speech is the rule, not the exception.”
Note that Higbie did not allow anyone to exercise free speech by providing a dissenting viewtp that of Bozell’s — for instance, that it’s not “free speech” to freely spew hate and invective.