- Disabling protests - 30th June 2025
- A good storybook - 30th June 2025
- Cancel culture part three - 27th June 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, in a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon) our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, always believed the truth of a controversy should be exposed, but now comes new disturbing evidence that money, as well as resources, devoted to fact-checking are being cut, even as it is needed more than ever today.
A fact is a fact is a fact.
This salient truth is known to many people (especially to journalists like me), but it seems to be alien territory to President Donald Trump.
Look for example at his boastful speech in Michigan a few weeks ago marking his time in office during this administration.
He said it was: “The most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, according to many, many people”, highlighting especially his ‘success’ in tackling illegal immigration, bringing back jobs to the US, and ending what he called “the inflation nightmare”.
How true, though, is this?
Let’s examine some of the evidence.
Core parts of inflation are ever higher petrol and energy costs, and President Trump declared that: “gasoline prices are down by a lot” since he took office.
In fact they are slightly UP on the $3.125 (£2.33) recorded by the American Automobile Association (AAA) on the day he entered the White House.
In his speech, he also added that gas prices had “just hit $1.98 in a lot of states”, but as of April 29, no state had an average gas price LOWER than $2.67 (£1.99), according to the AAA.
What then about the thorny issue of creating jobs, which has been much trumpeted by President Trump, with him proclaiming proudly: “In three months we have created 350,000 jobs”.
During President Trump’s first two full months in office this time, 345,000 jobs had been added officially, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
HOWEVER, over the same period LAST year (under President Biden) 468,000 jobs were added.
President Trump said as well: “For the first time in recent memory, job gains for native-born Americans now exceed job gains for foreign workers”.
Yet actually this also happened between February and April LAST year under President Biden!
Then there is also the question of how efficient his administration is.
President Trump praised Elon Musk’s work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) – but if he was so successful WHY did he leave it?! President Trump stated: “They’ve saved over $150bn on waste, fraud and abuse”.
Less than 40 per cent of the figure that he lauds, though, can be broken down into individual savings, and they include cancelling government contracts, grants or leases. It might, therefore, not be because of Mr Musk’s efforts at all!
So it can be seen that checking what is or not factually true is absolutely central today, but we now live in a world where this is under threat as never before, unlike in days gone by.
YouTube (YT) removed more than half a million channels last year for broadcasting misinformation.
Meanwhile Facebook (FB) and Instagram (I) deleted 27 million falsehoods about Covid-19 at the height of the pandemic.
Yet such diligence may not be so evident in future.
Meta (FB’s parent company) had built probably the world’s largest network of fact-checkers for its social networks, but it announced in January that it would start to replace professional sleuths with volunteers.
Another reason to worry is the fact that President Trump is dismantling USAID, which had channelled funds to fact-checking organisations.
Even as money for fact-checking is being cut, it is clear that this system is needed more than ever now.
And journalists like me know this only too well…
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when ensuring accuracy was vital) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – why close examination of online messages released by sacked Welsh Go Compare frontman Wynne Evans reveals that he was offered an interview by the BBC yet then it was withdrawn, and it gives another opportunity for The Eye to re-publish our story from a few weeks ago about how many programmes cannot now be transmitted because of the huge number of scandals that have hit the giant corporation, but they REFUSE to talk about them!
