The Story Is Much Bigger Than It Seems

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The story is that Mark Zuckerberg’s parent company Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, has replaced its controversial “fact checking program” with one similar to Elon Musk’s program X. Fact checking had been in effect in Meta since 2016 when Trump first became president, and it resulted in hundreds of thousands if not millions of conservative voices being silenced by cancelling or censoring.

As Zuckerberg, explained “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram . . . [Fact checkers] have become too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created . . . What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas. And it’s gone too far.”

Zuckerberg added that he had difficulty working with the Biden administration, who favored censorship, and that he looked forward to working closely with President Trump to oppose it.

Some will believe Zuckerberg’s new position took too long to arrive to be trustworthy. Others will see only the irony of his joining forces against censorship with the very man who had been its main target. Still others will be too relieved at his change of heart to question it. I can understand all three reactions. But my reaction is quite different. I find the story much more meaningful than it seems.

The bigger part of the story is the consequences of the “fact checking program” and other efforts to demonize Trump, ridicule the millions of citizens who supported him, and obstruct his efforts to serve all Americans.

First, innumerable journalists and news organizations were led to abandon their traditional codes of ethics and responsibilities to their followers and substitute false narratives for true ones.

The false narratives against President Trump were monumental in scope, ranging from allegations of his sinister relationship with Putin to his cruelty toward migrant children, dictatorial aims, and intention to harm the climate. Also, the ridiculing of his view that the Covid virus came from a Chinese lab, his questioning of the Covid vaccine, and his support of the medications Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.

When Biden became president, the negative false narratives were replaced by positive false narratives. When border control ceased to exist, the narrative was that it was fully secure. When migrant children were separated from their parents and left with Coyotes, they were reported as well-cared for. When the economy worsened, it was termed “improving.” When the fact of Biden’s advancing dementia became undeniable, the media proclaimed more forcefully that he was healthier and intellectually sharper than ever. And when honest reporters challenged the false narratives, they were dismissed as fools or knaves bent on spreading Trump’s evil plan to destroy the country.

The willingness of countless journalists to promote the narratives of those in power opened the door to a number of radical notions, many of them absurd. For example, that residents of cities and towns are safer without police departments than with them. Also, that many grade school children are in the wrong bodies, desperately need surgery to correct the error, and have the maturity to make this decision without parental consultation. And that young men who have transitioned to womanhood, or at least are on the way there, should be allowed to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms and compete against women in sports. On a seemingly contradictory note was the narrative that the number of human genders is not two but 28 or maybe 49. (Once falsehood is embraced, consistency no longer matters.)

With the majority of media promoting radical notions rather than rational ones, many school and college educators teaching them in their classrooms, and religious leaders of virtually every denomination refusing to question them or, in some cases, preaching them, an enormous gap was opened between democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives. That gap has produced widespread disharmony and suspicion.

The situation has become so serious that lifelong friends have stopped communicating, parents and children no longer celebrate holidays or holy days together, and many no longer speak to one another. This is the consequence of replacing truth with self-serving lies. Mark Zuckerberg deserves credit for acknowledging that fact checkers “have become too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created . . . shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas . . . and gone too far.” But the bold statement of one influential person, or a thousand of them, is not enough to solve the enormous problem that has been created.

What, then, will solve that problem? Undoing the lies that spawned and cultivated it. In other words, having those who deceived many millions of Americans acknowledge their offense in the same platform they used to proclaim it. For journalists that means their newspapers and networks; for politicians, their newsletters to their voters; for teachers, their classrooms; and for the clergy, their pulpits.

To be sure, some of those who have deceived the nation will be unwilling to do this. The easy path is internal denial of wrongdoing. The honorable path is much harder. It requires the humility to acknowledge mistakes, genuine sorrow for having done harm to others, and the courage to face the inevitable scorn that will follow admission of guilt. The nation’s hope rests in the belief that enough deceivers will take the honorable path and help the deceived to realize that the neighbors and loved ones they were persuaded to doubt, scorn, and even hate did not deserve that treatment. That realization is the key to reconciliation and harmony in America.