Fact-Check — Media, “Fake News” & The Information Ecosystem

Trump used the phrase “fake news” approximately 2,000 times during his first presidency. The term predates his usage as a description of actual fabricated content — false stories with no factual basis — but he repurposed it to mean any reporting he disliked. Mainstream news organizations employ professional journalists trained in verification, have legal and editorial review processes, issue corrections when they err, and are subject to defamation law. They get stories wrong; the New York Times and Washington Post have both published significant stories they later corrected or retracted. Professional journalism’s error rate, while non-zero, is qualitatively different from fabrication. Reporters Without Borders documented that Trump’s use of “fake news” rhetoric was directly adopted by authoritarian governments worldwide to justify jailing journalists for “false reporting.” The U.S. fell from 32nd to 57th in the global press freedom index between 2013 and 2025.

In the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case, internal Fox News communications revealed that: Tucker Carlson privately told Laura Ingraham “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane” — while his network broadcast Powell’s claims. Ingraham responded that Powell was “a complete nut.” Hannity said in deposition he didn’t believe the election fraud claims “for one second.” Rupert Murdoch called the claims “really crazy.” The court found it was “CRYSTAL clear” the claims were false. Fox settled for $787.5 million — the largest known media defamation settlement in U.S. history — and acknowledged the claims were false. Fox was also facing a $2.7 billion suit from Smartmatic for similar claims. Fox’s own Tucker Carlson demanded a fact-checking reporter be fired for tweeting an accurate fact-check, writing: “Please get her fired. Seriously.”

The First Amendment was written specifically because the Founders — many of whom had experienced government censorship of the press under British rule — considered a free press essential to democratic governance. The phrase “enemy of the people” has a specific historical pedigree: it was used by Stalin to describe political opponents before their execution. Reporters Without Borders documented that Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric was directly adopted by autocratic governments worldwide to justify imprisoning journalists. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker recorded 49 journalist arrests in 2024, up from 15 in 2023. Journalists covering Trump rallies were physically accosted by attendees, received bomb threats, and some hired private security. The Committee to Protect Journalists stated that Trump’s first 100 days in his second term created “a chilling effect” on press freedoms. The Associated Press was banned from White House events. The U.S. ranked 57th in press freedom globally by 2025, down from 32nd in 2013.

Multiple studies, including internal audits commissioned by Facebook and Twitter, found no systematic ideological bias in content moderation against conservative content. The most viral political content on Facebook consistently skewed conservative — Ben Shapiro’s page and similar right-wing outlets regularly topped Facebook engagement metrics. Conservative media accounts had massive followings on all major platforms before and after the claimed censorship. The specific actions most frequently cited as censorship — removing posts about COVID misinformation, election fraud claims, and incitement to violence — were based on platform policies that applied across the political spectrum. The claim that platforms are biased was most prominently promoted by figures with very large social media followings on those same platforms, which is an unusual way to be censored.

PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes, the AP Fact Check, and other major fact-checking organizations were founded by journalism schools, news organizations, and nonprofit foundations. They publish their methodology, sourcing, and correction policies transparently. They fact-check Democrats and liberals as well as conservatives: PolitiFact rated numerous Obama and Biden statements as False or Pants on Fire. FactCheck.org has corrected claims from liberal media, Democratic politicians, and progressive advocacy groups. The International Fact-Checking Network certifies fact-checkers based on methodology, not political alignment. The primary reason conservative claims receive more corrections is that conservative politicians, by external measurement, make more factually false statements at higher rates than liberal ones — a finding that applies to the corrections, not to the political orientation of the checker.

The First Amendment protects all press equally regardless of political orientation. Trump filed lawsuits against the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN — all of which were dismissed. Trump demanded the FCC revoke the broadcast licenses of specific networks he disliked, including NBC, CBS, and ABC — the FCC under his own appointees declined. In his second term, Trump banned the Associated Press from White House events after the AP declined to use the term “Gulf of America.” He has threatened to investigate, prosecute, and revoke the licenses of media organizations that report unfavorably on him. The Committee to Protect Journalists described this as creating “a chilling effect.” The same administration that labels critical coverage “fake news” and threatens media organizations simultaneously claims to champion free speech.

The Associated Press was founded in 1846 as a cooperative news service jointly owned by its member newspapers — including many conservative publications. Reuters was founded in 1851. Both operate under editorial standards that have been tested in courts for over 170 years. The AP’s stylebook is used by the majority of American newsrooms across the political spectrum. The AP’s fact-checking operation has corrected claims from both Democratic and Republican politicians and has verified stories that were unflattering to both parties. The claim that the AP is a Deep State pipeline would require that 170 years of ownership by thousands of member newspapers — including conservative regional papers — were all coordinating with a deep state that also didn’t exist in much of that period, since “the deep state” as a concept was invented decades after the AP.

Trump’s 34 felony convictions, two impeachments, civil liability for sexual abuse, $83 million defamation judgment, $175 million bond in the New York fraud case, and payment of $787.5 million by his chosen media outlet for broadcasting election lies were all documented in public court proceedings, on the record, with transcripts, evidence, and verdicts rendered by American judges and juries — not by journalists. Journalism reported on what courts found. The courts are also not fake news, though Trump has described judges he dislikes as corrupt. The logical endpoint of the “all negative coverage is fake” framework is that no negative fact about a political figure can ever be true, which is a standard of epistemic immunity that would protect any politician from any accountability for any action, regardless of documentation.

After Musk acquired Twitter/X in 2022, he reinstated numerous accounts that had been banned for rule violations including harassment, incitement, and spreading dangerous misinformation. He also banned several journalists who covered him critically, without stated policy violations, then reinstated them after public criticism. Independent content analysis found that hate speech and harassment on the platform increased significantly following Musk’s acquisition. Advertisers fled the platform citing brand safety concerns. The platform’s active user base declined. Musk posted or amplified numerous pieces of disinformation himself, including the false Springfield pet-eating claims. He selectively applied suspension and demotion to accounts based on political criticism of himself — an action he had previously condemned as censorship when performed by others.

The claim that objectivity is impossible is a legitimate philosophical position in media criticism; it is also the primary rhetorical move used to justify consuming only partisan media, since if all journalism is biased, one might as well choose the bias one agrees with. Professional journalism’s standard is not perfect objectivity but rather transparency, verification, source attribution, willingness to correct errors, and presenting multiple perspectives — a set of practices that is meaningfully different from making things up or only reporting the information that supports one conclusion. The argument that “everyone is biased” is only ever deployed to discredit outlets that produce unflattering coverage — it is not applied to Fox News or OAN by the same people who invoke it against CNN, suggesting the objection is to the finding rather than to the methodology.

Local news stations are owned by a relatively small number of media conglomerates, the largest of which — Sinclair Broadcasting — is explicitly conservative and has required its anchors to read scripts defending Trump and attacking “fake news.” George Soros does fund some journalism initiatives, primarily through Open Society Foundations grants to investigative reporting nonprofits. He is one of many wealthy individuals and foundations that fund journalism, including conservatives like Rupert Murdoch (Fox), Sheldon Adelson (who purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal), and various others who fund conservative media outlets. The local TV station covering your city council meeting is almost certainly not controlled by George Soros. Roughly one-third of American newspapers operating in 2005 have since closed due to financial pressures, creating “news deserts” in rural and smaller communities.

Science operates through peer review, replication, and adversarial challenge — researchers compete to disprove each other’s findings, because overturning a major result is professionally rewarding. This is the opposite of conspiracy. Scientists in climate, vaccine, evolution, and epidemiology have routinely updated their findings based on new evidence. Scientific consensus has been wrong and corrected itself throughout history — which is the system working, not evidence of conspiracy. The premise that all mainstream scientists are conspiring together requires that researchers in Russia, China, Iran, India, Brazil, the European Union, and the United States — countries that often actively oppose each other politically — are coordinating their findings in service of a globalist agenda, which would make it the most successful international cooperation project in human history, surpassing NATO and the United Nations by a wide margin.

Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia edited by volunteers who must cite verifiable, reliable sources for all claims. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, including conservatives — and many do. Articles on politically contested topics go through extensive editorial disputes and are frequently locked when edit wars occur. Wikipedia’s “Neutral Point of View” policy requires presenting all significant viewpoints with sourcing. Studies have found Wikipedia’s accuracy on scientific and factual topics comparable to traditional encyclopedias; it performs less reliably on rapidly-evolving topics and politically contentious questions. Wikipedia reflects the sources it cites — if those sources are predominantly mainstream academic and journalistic, it will reflect that, which is a different problem than “shadowy editors rewriting history.”

Public opinion polling is a statistical science with documented methodological strengths and limitations. Polls can be wrong — they were meaningfully off in 2016 and 2020 presidential races. They can also be remarkably accurate. The same organizations that produced polls showing unfavorable Trump numbers in 2020 also produced polls showing unfavorable Biden numbers in 2024 that turned out to be accurate. Poll skeptics who claimed all polls were biased in 2020 accepted favorable polls in 2024 without changing their underlying epistemological framework, which suggests their objection was to the findings rather than to the methodology. Gallup, Pew Research, AP-NORC, and other reputable polling organizations publish their methodology, sample sizes, margins of error, and weighting procedures for independent review.

The most significant political stories of the last decade — the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Abu Ghraib, NSA mass surveillance, CIA detention programs, the January 6th investigation — were broken by mainstream journalists, often against fierce government resistance. Government officials routinely deny, obstruct, and classify information to keep it from journalists. The “deep state feeds stories to media” claim is structurally incompatible with the observable reality that reporters fight to extract information from government agencies through FOIA requests that take years and are frequently denied. If the deep state were feeding stories to journalists, it was doing so selectively to expose programs that damaged its own interests, which is an unusual strategy for a self-interested bureaucratic conspiracy.

JournoList was a private email listserv of approximately 400 journalists, academics, and researchers that operated from 2007 to 2010. When it was exposed, leaked emails showed members discussing stories, sharing drafts, arguing about coverage, and venting frustration about political events — normal activities for a group of people who share a profession and an online list. Journalists and media figures on the political right also privately communicate with each other, share story tips, coordinate messaging, and belong to professional networks. The existence of a private discussion group among journalists is evidence that journalists talk to each other, which they do, as do lawyers, doctors, plumbers, and members of every other profession. No evidence emerged that JournoList directed journalists to spike stories, fabricate claims, or coordinate false reporting.

Journalism education teaches verification, sourcing, legal standards for reporting, editorial ethics, and writing. These skills are tools, not ideology — they can be applied by reporters across the political spectrum. The demographic skew of journalists toward liberal views, documented in surveys, is a genuine phenomenon whose causes are debated — possible explanations include selection effects (people interested in accountability journalism may skew liberal), urban concentration of news organizations, and educational attainment. Conservative journalism programs and fellowships — including those at institutions like Hillsdale College, the Daily Caller News Foundation, and various conservative think tanks — exist and produce working journalists. The existence of liberal journalists does not establish that journalism training is liberal indoctrination, any more than the existence of conservative farmers establishes that agricultural school is conservative indoctrination.

Independent media operators vary enormously in quality. Some Substack writers are experienced former journalists with strong sourcing and verification habits; others are people with opinions and an internet connection. The distinction between them is not platform but practice: whether claims are verified, sources are documented, corrections are issued, and methodology is transparent. A podcast has no institutional fact-checking, legal review, editorial oversight, or defamation liability incentive that a major news organization faces. The celebrated “freedom from institutional pressure” of independent media is simultaneously freedom from accountability, which can produce excellent independent journalism and can also produce unchecked rumor, fabrication, and monetized outrage, often indistinguishable in format.

The Babylon Bee is a conservative Christian satire site. Its headlines are designed to be plausible and its articles are not consistently labeled as satire within the body content, which has resulted in widespread sharing of its articles as factual news by readers who did not recognize them as parody. Pew Research found that a significant percentage of Americans had seen false news stories during the 2016 election that they believed to be accurate. A substantial portion of viral misinformation has been traced to satirical or parody content that was shared without the satirical context. The Onion is liberal satire, widely recognized as such, and very rarely shared as factual news because its headlines are absurdist rather than plausible. The distinction is not that satire is more honest than news, but that some satire is indistinguishable from news in format, which is an information hazard rather than a journalistic virtue.

The United States already has robust laws against specific categories of harmful false speech: defamation law, fraud law, perjury, false advertising, securities fraud, and incitement. These laws have been upheld as compatible with the First Amendment because they target specific harmful conduct rather than viewpoints. The debate over social media content moderation concerns private platforms — which have First Amendment rights of their own to set editorial policies — not government censorship. The government cannot compel private companies to host all speech under the First Amendment. At the same time, government-directed pressure on platforms to remove specific content raises genuine First Amendment concerns. The tension between free expression and harm prevention in an information-saturated environment is real, complicated, and not resolved by “misinformation laws are censorship” or by “platforms must remove all false information.”