Should Politicians Be Exempt from Fact-Checking?

Fisher, Sarah, Beatriz, Kira, Arabaghatta Basavaraj, Kiran and Howard, Jeffrey 2024. Should Politicians Be Exempt from Fact-Checking? Journal of Online Trust and Safety 2 (2) , pp. 1-12. 10.54501/jots.v2i2.170

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Abstract

Social media platforms enforce an array of policies concerning misinformation. Insome cases of seriously harmful misinformation, they prohibit such speech under theirrules, attempting to remove violating content. For example, Facebook’s communitystandards prohibit misinformation that risks imminent physical harm (including vaccinemisinformation), as well as some forms of electoral misinformation and misleadingmanipulated media (Meta,n.d. ). But not all misinformation poses a serious risk of immi-nent harm. Accordingly, much misinformation, while officially allowed under platforms’rules, is combated throughfact-checkingrather than removal.1In these cases, themisinformation is visible, but it is appended with a notice indicating that the content hasbeen deemed false or misleading by some trusted fact-checking entity (e.g., the WorldHealth Organization). Some platforms also demote content once it has been judged falseor misleading, reducing its prevalence in algorithmic recommendations and news feeds,and thereby limiting how often (and how many) people see such content.2Strikingly, platforms do not always apply this fact-checking protocol to all users equally.Perhaps most notably, politicians—understood as those occupying or running for publicoffice—are immune from Meta’s fact-check labeling protocol (Meta,n.d. ). Meta evenrefrains from fact-checking paid-for political advertisements.Can such an exemption for politicians’ speech be justified? Meta’s rationale lists fourdistinct reasons, relating to(1) respect for free expression,(2) respect for the democraticprocess,(3) opportunities for scrutiny, and(4) newsworthiness.3Our aim here is toassess their plausibility. In each case, we shall argue that the stated reason does notplausibly justify exempting politicians from the ordinary fact-checking protocols appliedto normal users’ speech. We conclude that the most reasonable approach, taken by otherplatforms like X (formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok, is to extend fact-checking to politicians

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
ISSN:	2770-3142
Last Modified:	23 Sep 2024 09:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/172190

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