Why PolitiFact couldn’t name just one Lie of the Year
The concept of truth feels particularly bleak in 2025.
Government leaders deploy up-is-down narratives at an exhausting clip. Online worlds drip with artificial intelligence-generated slop that incites rage. Chatbots answer questions with fabricated information, and the government folds it into a report card on America’s health.
The last 10 years have been an ugly era for facts, marked by a drumbeat of untruths and near-constant charges of “fake news” from the decade’s most influential player, President Donald Trump.
The trouble with drumbeats is, as a matter of survival or sanity, we tend to tune out or grow numb to them. Even people with influence who might lament “misinformation” move on to other fights. The word itself is downgraded — at best it’s a red flag, at worst it’s a punchline.
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
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.
Related Knowledge Center: 2025: looking back
The annual retrospectives from news organizations.