Fact-checking firm staffed by CNN alums takes Meta axing hard: 'surprised and disappointed'

A prominent fact-checking organization used by Facebook to moderate political content reacted to news that it will revamp its fact-checking to better avoid bias with an article outlining its disappointment and disagreement with the move. 

"Lead Stories was surprised and disappointed to first learn through media reports and a press release about the end of the Meta Third-Party Fact-Checking Partnership of which Lead Stories has been a part since 2019," Lead Stories editor Maarten Schenk wrote on Tuesday in response to an announcement from Meta that it would be significantly altering its fact-checking process to "restore free expression."

Lead Stories, a Facebook fact checker employing several former CNN alumni including Alan Duke and Ed Payne, has become one of the more prominent fact checkers used by Facebook in recent years. 

Fox News Digital first reported on Tuesday that Meta is ending its fact-checking program and lifting restrictions on speech to "restore free expression" across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have "gone too far." 

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"After Trump first got elected in 2016 the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message on Tuesday. "We tried in good faith to address these concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S.."

"What political bias?" the article from Lead Stories asks before explaining that it is "disappointing to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse the organizations in Meta's U.S. third-party fact checking program of being "too politically biased.’"

"Especially since one of the requirements Meta imposed for being part of a partnership included being a verified signatory of the IFCN's Code of Principles, which explicitly requires a "commitment to non-partisanship and fairness,’" the article states. "In all the years we have been part of the partnership, we or the IFCN never received any complaints from Meta about any political bias, so we were quite surprised by this statement."

Meta said in its announcement that it will move toward a system of moderation that is more in line with Community Notes at X, which Lead Stories seemed to take issue with. 

"However, In our experience and that of others, Community Notes on X are often slow to appear, sometimes downright inaccurate and unlikely to appear on controversial posts because of an inability to reach agrement [sic] or consensus among users," Lead Stories wrote. "Ultimately, the truth doesn't care about consensus or agreement: the shape of the Earth stays the same even if social media users can't agree on it."

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Lead Stories added that Community Notes is "entirely non-transparent about its contributors: readers are left guessing about their bias, funding, allegiance, sources or expertise and there is no way for appeals or corrections" while "fact-checkers, on the other hand, are required by the IFCN to be fully transparent about who they are, who funds them and what methodology and sources they use to come to their conclusions."

Schenk added, "Fact-checking is about adding verified and sourced information so people can make up their mind about what to believe. It is an essential part of free speech."

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Duke said that Lead Stories plans to press on.

"Lead Stories will continue, although we have to reduce our output with no support from Meta," Duke said. "We are global, with most of our business now outside the USA. We publish in eight languages other than English, which is what will be affected."

Some conservatives took to social media to blast Lead Stories over their article lamenting the change at Meta after years of conservative pushback to Facebook’s fact checkers as a whole on key news stories, including the suppression of the bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.  

"Of all the fact-checking companies, Lead Stories is the worst," British American conservative writer Ian Haworth posted on X. "Couldn't be happier that they'll soon be circling the drain."

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The executive director of Politifact, a fact checker also used by Facebook, issued a strong rebuke of Zuckerberg following Tuesday's announcement. 

"If Meta is upset it created a tool to censor, it should look in the mirror," Aaron Sharockman said in a statement he posted on X following Zuckerberg’s announcement.

Sharockman fumed, "The decision to remove independent journalists from Facebook’s content moderation program in the United States has nothing to do with free speech or censorship. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision could not be less subtle."

He threw back Zuckerberg’s accusation of political bias, stating that Meta’s platforms, not the fact-checkers, were the entities that actually censored posts. 

"Let me be clear: the decision to remove or penalize a post or account is made by Meta and Facebook, not fact-checkers. They created the rules," Sharockman said.

At the conclusion of his Lead Stories post, Schenk wrote, "Even though we are obviously disappointed by this news, Lead Stories wishes to thank the many people at Meta we have worked with over the past years and we will continue our fact checking mission. To paraphrase the slogan on our main page: ‘Just because it's now trending without a fact-checking label still won't make it true.’"

Fox News Digital's Gabriel Hays and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.