• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 7, 2025

Are TV stations now pulling back on their fact-checking efforts? Not entirely, according to facts.

Tegna, according to reports, said this week it was ending -- and laying off around 18 journalists, producers, researchers and other staff from -- its Verify fact-checking group, which started up in 2015.

Yes, this comes as a slow wave of fact-checking operations are scaling back and closing down.

But cost savings is something that TV station groups increasingly have needed to do to help keep profitability stable.

This doesn’t mean Tegna is ending “fact checking” -- which would have been a major headline if it were the case. Instead, it says fact-checking efforts will continue at each of its individual stations -- some 48 newsrooms.

Meta Platforms recently said it is abandoning its fact-checking efforts. But unlike Tegna stations, Meta is not a news-focused organization. It is a social-media platform predominantly.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will end its fact-checking program with trusted partners and replace it with a community-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes.

That doesn’t sound good. He cited a shifting political and social landscape and a desire to embrace free speech.

Social media fact-checking efforts seem impossible. Attempting to look into billions of posts, tweets, missives by its billions of consumers is a largely impossible task.

There is pressure from anti-fact-checking groups to have social media -- and all media -- pull away from these units from what they say is “censorship” with regard to information.

Zuckerberg also used the “C” word and looks to soften the move by generalizing that "governments and legacy media [are pushing] to censor more and more."

That’s the not-so-fine line that media owners of news services and social media platforms dance around these days: Freedom of speech with the increasing downside of delivering purposeful incorrect or misleading data.

With its avalanche of thoughts, opinions, information, data is mixed into one huge, gross media stew. Separating those ingredients from the good, bad and indifferent is getting harder.

Free expression is wonderful. But if false information volume increasingly over welcomes the truth, what then?

Next, I wonder whether real journalism practices will be even more infiltrated with iffy news.

Perhaps we’ll soon never hear these obligatory, necessary words from a TV reporters for their news stories -- to at least try confirm facts from non-facts: “Efforts to contact the company went unreturned.”