The Fact Checker rose in an era of false claims. Falsehoods are now winning.
Longtime Fact Checker Glenn Kessler takes stock as he departs The Washington Post.
July 31, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EDT, Today at 5:00 a.m. EDT, 9 min
Analysis by Glenn Kessler
When 400 fact-checkers from around the world gathered in Rio de Janeiro in June for an annual conference, the mood was tense. After years of exponential growth, political fact-checking was in retreat and under fire. And somehow, even as fact-checking surged in the past decade, so had the wave of false claims and narratives swamping the world.
Meta, which after 2016 spent more than $100 million to fund 100 fact-checking organizations, ended a partnership with U.S. fact-checkers to highlight false claims and signaled it would cut back across the world. Google announced it would end its ClaimReview program — which I helped foster — that elevated fact checks in search results. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s abrupt dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development cut off additional funding for fact-checkers in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The state of the fact-checking field is on my mind as I write my last column for The Washington Post. I am taking a voluntary buyout, ending almost 28 years at the newspaper, including more than 14 as The Fact Checker.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Fact Checker rose in an era of false claims. Falsehoods are now winning. – The Washington Post
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