Fact-checking has become partisan. Can it survive the backlash from conservatives and Big Tech? [Video]

In a coffee-table book published last year about his first term in office, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatened to jail Mark Zuckerberg, suggesting the Meta CEO had helped rig the 2020 election.

The conspiracy theory had circulated widely on social media, including on Meta’s own platforms, Facebook and Instagram. It was eventually debunked by one of the third-party groups that Meta paid to fact-check popular content on its sites.

On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced an abrupt end to Meta’s fact-checking program in the U.S., drawing praise from Trump.

Zuckerberg’s move appeared aimed, in part, at shielding Meta from an escalating effort by Republican lawmakers and activists to cripple the fact-checking industry that has arisen alongside social media.

It’s also causing a reckoning among fact-checkers themselves about the value and effectiveness of their work amid the daily tidal wave of falsehoods.

“Fact-checking has been under attack. It’s been made into a bad word by some corners of our politics in the U.S. and …