The Censorship Industrial Complex is reeling from financial difficulties after being defunded by the Trump administration and the social media giant Meta.
On this year’s April 2 International Fact-Checking Day, Angie Drobnic Holan, the director of the International Fact-Checking Network Poynter, penned an op-ed decrying the impacts of the Trump and Meta defunding campaign.
“Two heavy blows hit fact-checking in 2025,” she wrote. “In January, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced his decision to end its third-party fact-checking in the United States.”
“The other blow came from President Donald Trump’s administration, when billionaire Elon Musk pointed his Department of Government Efficiency at the U.S. Agency for International Development.”
She claimed that the USAID funding freeze “meant an immediate end to funding independent international journalism,” which financially supports fact-checkers in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
She also lamented the intense political pressure the censorship machinery faces while doing the “honorable” and “patriotic” work “that knows no party or political agenda” under the organization’s “standards for nonpartisanship.”
“The challenges fact-checkers face aren’t just logistical or financial. They are also cultural,” adding that “We must defend the credibility and usefulness of evidence-based reporting.”
Yet, the fact-checking community has been caught red-handed, silencing true stories such as the Hunter Biden Laptop saga, misleading Americans about Trump’s impeachment, the Russian Collusion- the list is endless.
She also inadvertently exposed USAID for overstepping its boundaries by exporting censorship abroad and paying for it using Americans taxpayers’ dollars.
“… groups like USAID thought that funding fact-checking overseas would empower democracy and accountable government.” Most Americans would not wish to pay for censorship in Asia, Latin American, and Africa.
She also denied that “fact-checking is censorship,” terming it as a mischaracterization of their work, and that proponents of free speech wish to perpetuate lies.
“We’re more like nutrition labels for online content. Nobody thinks a nutrition label on a bag of potato chips or a gallon of milk is censorship.”
“Trump and his supporters want an information environment where lies can multiply and go viral without anyone contradicting them. That is the real infringement on freedom of speech.”
Ironically, Trump was proven right multiple times after being heavily censored by the same machinery that claims accuracy and impartiality.
For example, the president was heavily criticized for claiming that COVID-19 originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, yet the general consensus now points toward that direction. The New York Times’ editorial board recently regretted being “badly misled” to suppress the story about COVID-19’s origins because it was deemed racist.
Trump was also censored about Hunter’s laptop and Russian collusion but was eventually vindicated by the former first son’s conviction. The Times also lamented not writing about the story, which it now acknowledged more than four years later.
Several witnesses were also found to have lied about Russiagate, for which Trump was heavily censored. Most news outlets relied on the so-called “accurate” fact-checking platforms like Holan’s to decide on whether to suppress stories. Yet, the fact-checking community still believes Trump was wrong.
Similarly, despite advocating for fact-checking presidential candidates, the censorship machinery failed to adequately fact-check Biden, essentially suppressing the truth on various issues, such as border security, which was worse than reported.
Meanwhile, the censorship director had a bleak vision of the future amid the ongoing trump onslaught. Subsequently, she requested individual Americans to join the fight “in whatever way they can,” including by donating, subscribing to fact-checking newsletters, and supporting education programs.
“What happens over the next 24 months will be critical to the future of accurate information online.”
“If we want a society that respects truth, now is our time to fight for it.”
