Trump gutted the tools to fight disinformation. Now Iran has the advantage.
Yet fact-checking is still standing after a year of challenges on every front
President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have been determined to dismantle fact-checking journalism, both in the United States and around the world. Are they having regrets now?
Iran may be outgunned on the battlefield, but the country is holding its own in information warfare. Report after report has documented its propaganda network. Iran’s messaging efforts include mocking Trump, promoting false military wins and sowing discord and confusion by claiming, for example, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was dead. (He’s alive.) Iran’s Lego videos have gone viral. And there’s evidence that Russia and China are amplifying Iran’s propaganda.
Related Knowledge Center: The White House vs. the press
Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
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Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.