Brian Stelter, CNN's chief media analyst, recently tweeted that “fact-check” had become a dirty word. Stelter’s assessment followed Meta’s announcement that it would scrap its fact-checking processes—once central to the post-2016 response to the proliferation of so-called fake news. Now, with Donald Trump preparing for a second term, many former critics of fake news have curiously dropped their concerns over disinformation and aligned with him. This shift exposes Big Tech and legacy media’s anti-fake-news campaigns as, at best, PR fluff, and at worst, efforts to outright silence dissent.
These fake news flip-floppers include a self-described Democrat, Elon Musk, who endorsed Trump and donated a staggering $250 million to his campaign. By allying himself with Trump, Musk reaped the rewards with an appointment to co-lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In 2022, Musk claimed he acquired Twitter - which he renamed X - in order to protect and promote free speech by ending what he saw as Twitter’s suppression of truth. Instead, Musk seems poised to use his platform as a tool of propaganda that promotes a positive image of Trump's presidency. After Trump was elected, Musk announced that he would change his platform’s algorithm to promote "positive, beautiful content,” suggesting that since Trump is president, Musk sees no need for negative content on X.
