I’ll give you a little peek behind the curtain here at Poynter.

My Poynter colleague Angela Fu started working on a piece a couple of weeks ago about the relationship (or, more accurately, the nonrelationship) between X and fact-checkers.

That piece — “It’s easy to find misinformation on social media. It’s even easier on X” — was published on Poynter’s website on Thursday.

In it, Fu writes, “A platform that used to downgrade hoaxes, conspiracy theories and false claims has become one where even the boss now spreads the stuff. That change didn’t happen immediately, but the shift of X from a useful information source to a locus of misinformation has alarmed fact-checkers worldwide.”

The boss of X, of course, is Elon Musk, who seemingly spends his days coming up with new ways to use his social media platform as a toy for misinformation and divisiveness. Of course, he has every right to endorse someone for president. In this case, he made it clear that he supports Donald Trump for the White House.

Nothing wrong with that, and that’s not what this is about.

Let’s go back to what Fu wrote in her story: “The relationship between large technology companies and professional fact-checkers has always been contentious, with fact-checkers accusing the platforms of not doing enough to combat the spread of misinformation. But at least there is a relationship. Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — partners with independent fact-checkers to review and rate posts on its platforms, for example. TikTok operates a similar program.”

Fu continues, “X under Elon Musk has shown no interest in doing the same. It does not have a formal relationship with fact-checkers and instead relies on its crowdsourced fact-checking program ‘Community Notes,’ Maldita.es co-founder and CEO Clara Jiménez Cruz said. While experts acknowledge that there are some advantages to the Community Notes system, it also has its flaws, allowing many pieces of mis- and disinformation to go unchecked and viral.”

Jiménez Cruz said, “It doesn’t only involve misinformation itself, but also hate speech and other forms of manipulative content.”

Fu writes, “The result, fact-checkers say, is a worse experience for users as misleading and hateful posts clutter people’s feeds and disinformation campaigns run rampant. Many worry about the effects of those campaigns, especially during a year when nearly half the world’s population votes in national elections.”

So let’s get back to Musk. In the past couple of weeks, he posted a creepy and cringy tweet about Taylor Swift, then followed that up with a dangerously irresponsible response to an X user who posted after a second apparent assassination plot against Trump, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”

Musk wrote, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” He then included a “person thinking” emoji.

Musk eventually deleted his remark — nine hours after he posted it and after it had more than 4 million views. He then followed up with two flippant posts that basically said he was joking.

And now here’s another example of Musk acting like a donkey. It’s CNN’s Liam Reilly with “Elon Musk boosts fake Trump rally bomb threat and false claims about the election.”

Reilly also pointed out another time, just this week, when Musk shared a false video involving that whole baseless story about ​​Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Again, this all happened since Fu started working on her story.

As Fu wrote, “Musk has emerged as a major spreader of misinformation, amplifying false claims to his 197 million followers. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Musk made 50 false or misleading posts about the U.S. elections between Jan. 1 and July 31, generating nearly 1.2 billion views, and The Washington Post reported last week that Musk’s online posts have coincided with harassment campaigns towards election administrators.”

Be sure to check out Fu’s story for more.

And now for more media news, tidbits and interesting links for your weekend review …

• While Musk goes all in with his support for Trump, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to stay out of politics, according to this piece from The Washington Post’s Will Oremus and Cristiano Lima-Strong. Zuckerberg has not endorsed anyone for president and, recently, wrote a letter to Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio about politics, saying, “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role.”
• The Associated Press’ David Bauder with “A news site that covers Haitian Americans is facing harassment over its post-debate coverage of Ohio.”
• And here’s The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin with “Threats Against Haitians Land at the Doorstep of The Haitian Times.”
• The New York Times’ Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson with “On YouTube, Major Brands’ Ads Appear Alongside Racist Falsehoods About Haitian Immigrants.”
• The big story getting a ton of buzz on Thursday was this CNN KFile investigation from Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck about controversial North Carolina gubernatorial candidate (and current lieutenant governor) Mark Robinson: “‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum.” (Warning: the story contains language that some might find offensive.) Robinson is denying the story, but it sure seems like CNN’s reporting does tie Robinson to comments made between 2008 and 2012. There are parts of this story that are quite disturbing and CNN wrote, “CNN is reporting only a small portion of Robinson’s comments on the website given their graphic nature.”
• The Washington Post’s Jonathan Baran and Emily Giambalvo with terrific analysis of audio and visual evidence in “New audio disputes ruling that stripped Jordan Chiles of Olympic medal.”
• For Teen Vogue, Toni Odejimi with “Yamiche Alcindor and Dasha Burns of NBC Talk 2024, Trump, Harris, and Journalism.”
• Washington Post sports media writer Ben Strauss with a superb piece on ESPN basketball analyst Monica McNutt: “No, dude, Monica McNutt does not need your WNBA take.”
• USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt with “‘His future is bright:’ NBA executives, agents react to Adrian Wojnarowski’s retirement.”
• With just over a week left in the Major League Baseball season, the Chicago White Sox are 36-117 and could make a run at being the worst team in modern major-league history. (The 1962 New York Mets went 40-120). Here’s The Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli and Ken Rosenthal with “An owner who ‘thinks he knows everything’ led the White Sox to historic disaster.”

More resources for journalists

• Free webinar: The journalists’ guide to debunking health misinformation
• Build a framework for ethics and standards around AI in Level Up.
• Are you an upcoming-and-coming newsroom manager?

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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