Another example of superb work covering the wildfires was turned in by NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff, who is reporting on the ground in Palisades, where he grew up.
He called the fires “catastrophic,” explaining, “This is the community that I grew up in. I was born and raised in this neighborhood.”
In addition to the link above, check out this video and this photo from his Instagram account.
Reactions to Meta’s troubling message
One day later and we’re still trying to wrap our brains around Meta’s troubling decision to drop its third-party fact-checking program in favor of letting just any ol’ body police the site.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, figuratively wrapping himself in an American flag, says it’s all about free speech and stopping censorship. But it’s pretty clear that he is bowing down to President-elect Donald Trump and conservatives who have complained for years when many of their unchecked talking points have been scrutinized for and identified as being untrue, unsubstantiated and untrustworthy.
Again, and to be clear, it’s Meta and not the fact-checkers who created the rules and regulations and, ultimately, were in charge of whatever penalties came with posting false information.
So now Facebook and Instagram and Threads will follow X’s lead of crowdsourced fact-checking.
But, Poynter’s Angela Fu writes, “experts are skeptical. Many fact-checkers say that X’s Community Notes program is ineffective, in some cases even furthering the spread of misinformation. And questions remain about how exactly Meta’s version will work — details that will ultimately determine its efficacy.”
Fu talks to several experts on the subject who are unconvinced about Meta’s plan.
Alex Mahadevan — director of MediaWise, Poynter’s digital media literacy project that teaches people of all ages how to spot misinformation online — writes, “Meta will attempt crowdsourced fact-checking. Here’s why it won’t work.”
Mahadevan writes that “Meta’s plan is doomed to fail” for several reasons that he lays out in his piece, which I encourage you to read.
He adds, “Despite my criticism, I remain a big believer in crowdsourced fact-checking — but as one spoke in a real trust and safety program, which was how it was originally envisioned at Twitter. If Meta is truly following X’s example, it will greatly exacerbate the misinformation problem on Facebook and Instagram. Take one look at your X feed today. Is it more factual than it was three years ago? A crowdsourced fact-checking solution is only as effective as the platform, owners and developers behind it. And it appears Meta is more interested in ‘more speech’ than it is in tackling misinformation.”
Pertinent tweets
With us all talking about Meta’s controversial decision to drop its third-party fact-checking program, I found this tweet from NPR’s Brian Mann to be particularly worthwhile:
As Meta announces the end to professional fact-checking, please -please- accept finally that social media is not a viable way to get factual information. It was a noble experiment. It failed. Traditional journalism, while imperfect, is the way. Please pay a little bit and use it.
Mann also tweeted this, which makes some salient points as well:
Important: If you're conservative, find a really good ethical conservative news outlet. They exist, they're great. But if your info source (on the right or left) never reports things that makes you uncomfortable and only feeds your anger and ideology? It's not real journalism.
And one more from Mann:
Americans who think they can rawdog an accurate picture of the world by staring into the morass of social media wind up poorly informed and miserable. One of the most toxic social media lies is that the world is garbage. Journalism offers a more balanced, human view of the world.
Vice President Bartiromo?
Alex Isenstadt, a national political reporter at Politico, has a new book coming out about Donald Trump called “Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power.”
Two excerpts from the book were shared with CNN’s Hadas Gold. Both are eyebrow-raising.
First, Isenstadt reported that Trump seriously considered picking Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo to be his running mate. While Bartiromo is nowhere near qualified to be vice president, one could easily understand why Trump would consider her. She was a “Trump favorite” because she constantly defended him at nearly every turn and, according to the book, “(conducted) numerous softball interviews with him over the years, including his first on-air sit-down following the 2020 election, for which she had given his team a heads-up on her questions ahead of time.”
Fortunately, Trump’s team talked Trump out of picking Bartiromo.
And speaking of a heads-up on questions, Isenstadt alleges in his book that Trump was fed questions ahead of a January 2024 town hall with Fox News.
Isenstadt writes, “About thirty minutes before the town hall was due to start, a senior aide started getting text messages from a person on the inside at Fox. Holy (expletive), the team thought. They were images of all the questions Trump would be asked and the planned follow-ups, down to the exact wording. Jackpot. This was like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started.”
In a statement to Poynter, a Fox News spokesperson said, “While we do not have any evidence of this occurring, and Alex Isenstadt has conveniently refused to release the images for fact checking, we take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate should there prove to be a breach within the network.”
Interview of the day
