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The left-leaning American news media’s stunning reversal on whether the coronavirus could have been created in a Chinese laboratory is the latest example of the dangers of fact checking.
For most of 2020 the supposed arbiters of truthiness insisted that lab leak stories should not be taken seriously and should be suppressed on social media. Just yesterday Facebook finally lifted is baseless ban of the lab leak theory. The real problem here is not that fact checkers got something wrong, it’s that they have the power to censor what journalism Americans see and consume unilaterally.
Nobody is checking the fact checkers, and it is time that changed. It’s time for government to regulate the fact checking industry.
This may seem antithetical to traditional conservative values of small government, but the ubiquitous and monopolistic nature of social media, the power it has to frame how we see the world, is an existential challenge. We cannot be slaves to orthodoxy if that means Americans are subject not only to lies, but also the censorship of the truth.
The left-leaning American news media’s stunning reversal on whether the coronavirus could have been created in a Chinese laboratory is the latest example of the dangers of fact checking.
For most of 2020 the supposed arbiters of truthiness insisted that lab leak stories should not be taken seriously and should be suppressed on social media. Just yesterday Facebook finally lifted is baseless ban of the lab leak theory. The real problem here is not that fact checkers got something wrong, it’s that they have the power to censor what journalism Americans see and consume unilaterally.
Nobody is checking the fact checkers, and it is time that changed. It’s time for government to regulate the fact checking industry.
This may seem antithetical to traditional conservative values of small government, but the ubiquitous and monopolistic nature of social media, the power it has to frame how we see the world, is an existential challenge. We cannot be slaves to orthodoxy if that means Americans are subject not only to lies, but also the censorship of the truth.