A fact-checking organization utilized by Facebook to moderate political content responded to the news of revamping its fact-checking process to mitigate bias. Their reaction was expressed in an article showcasing disappointment and disagreement with the decision.
“Lead Stories was taken aback and disheartened to discover the end of the Meta Third-Party Fact-Checking Partnership, a program Lead Stories has been a part of since 2019,” Lead Stories editor Maarten Schenk stated on Tuesday in response to Meta’s announcement of significant changes to its fact-checking methods to uphold “free expression.”
Lead Stories, a key Facebook fact checker staffed by former CNN personnel like Alan Duke and Ed Payne, has emerged as one of Facebook’s prominent fact checkers in recent times.
Fox News Digital reported initially on Tuesday that Meta is discontinuing its fact-checking program and easing restrictions on speech as part of efforts to “restore free expression” across Facebook, Instagram, and Meta platforms, acknowledging that their content moderation practices had become too restrictive.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks about the new Facebook News feature at the Paley Center For Media on October 25, 2019 in New York City.
“After Trump first got elected in 2016 the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a video message on Tuesday. “We tried in good faith to address these concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S..”
“What political bias?” enquired the article from Lead Stories before highlighting, “It is disappointing to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse the organizations in Meta’s U.S. third-party fact-checking program of being ‘too politically biased.'”
“Especially since one of the requirements Meta imposed for being part of a partnership included being a verified signatory of the IFCN’s Code of Principles, which explicitly requires a ‘commitment to non-partisanship and fairness,'” the article conveyed. “In all the years we have been part of the partnership, we or the IFCN never received any complaints from Meta about any political bias, so we were quite surprised by this statement.”
Meta announced its shift towards a moderation system more aligned with Community Notes at X, a move that seemed to be a point of contention for Lead Stories.
“However, In our experience and that of others, Community Notes on X are often slow to appear, sometimes downright inaccurate and unlikely to appear on controversial posts because of an inability to reach agrement [sic] or consensus among users,” Lead Stories stated. “Ultimately, the truth doesn’t care about consensus or agreement: the shape of the Earth stays the same even if social media users can’t agree on it.”
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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, arrives to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2024. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Lead Stories pointed out that Community Notes lacks transparency about its contributors, leaving readers speculating about bias, funding, allegiance, sources, or expertise, with no provision for appeals or corrections. In contrast, fact-checkers, as mandated by the IFCN, are required to offer complete transparency regarding their identities, funding sources, methodologies, and sources used to derive their conclusions.
Schenk emphasized, “Fact-checking aims to provide verified and sourced information for individuals to form their opinions. It is a crucial aspect of free speech.”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Duke affirmed that Lead Stories intends to continue its operations.
“Lead Stories will persevere, even with decreased output due to no support from Meta,” Duke stated. “Our reach is global, with a majority of our operations outside the USA. We publish content in eight languages apart from English, which will be impacted.”
Certain conservatives expressed their discontent on social media towards Lead Stories for their article lamenting the changes at Meta following years of conservative resistance to Facebook’s fact checkers, particularly regarding significant news stories, including the suppression of reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“Of all the fact-checking firms, Lead Stories is the most problematic,” British American conservative writer Ian Haworth shared on X. “Couldn’t be more delighted that they will soon fade away.”
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(Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The executive director of Politifact, another fact-checker used by Facebook, castigated Zuckerberg following Tuesday’s announcement.
“If Meta is unhappy with creating a tool for censorship, it should introspect,” Aaron Sharockman stated in a message posted on X in response to Zuckerberg’s declaration.
Sharockman remarked, “The choice to remove independent journalists from Facebook’s content moderation program in the United States has no connection to free speech or censorship. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision is anything but subtle.”
Sharockman refuted Zuckerberg’s accusation of political bias, asserting that Meta’s platforms, and not the fact-checkers, were the actual entities engaging in censorship.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once claimed Facebook had suppressed 18 million posts that contained “misinformation” about COVID-19. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Let me be clear: the decision to remove or penalize a post or account is made by Meta and Facebook, not fact-checkers. They created the rules,” Sharockman clarified.
In conclusion of the Lead Stories article, Schenk expressed, “Despite our disappointment with this development, Lead Stories extends gratitude to the many individuals at Meta we have collaborated with over the years, and we remain committed to our fact-checking mission. To echo the slogan on our main page: ‘Just because it’s now trending without a fact-checking label still won’t make it true.'”
Fox News Digital’s Gabriel Hays and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
