Ever since Trump has entered the news running for president, there has been a whole new industry of fact checkers. No doubt there had been fact checkers in the past. It is a part and parcel of democracy for people to check if what someone said is true, and to expose any untruths. That is what free speech is about too. And therefore, people do check what they say beforehand so that they don't risk having someone come out and saying "that's not true."
But ever since Trump came into the picture, with so many twists and turns and what have you, it seems the usual number of fact checkers just can't keep up. Mainstream media has to get teams of fact checkers to run through everything just to make sure what they report are factually correct. And people are taking to social media to bring out any untruths too, bypassing the mainstream media (which, no matter how hard they work, is still limited by the size of their budgets). We now have YouTube channels dedicated (almost) to exposing such untruths.
If anything, he has provided employment for some people: fact checkers. But fact checking is not productive work; it doesn't produce anything new. It will be better for society if such resources are channeled into other areas. But I guess as long as people are not as truthful as they should be, or as thorough in their own checks before speaking out, fact checkers will continue to be necessary, and this industry's size will depend on how prominent (or how large the scale) of such behaviour.
But ever since Trump came into the picture, with so many twists and turns and what have you, it seems the usual number of fact checkers just can't keep up. Mainstream media has to get teams of fact checkers to run through everything just to make sure what they report are factually correct. And people are taking to social media to bring out any untruths too, bypassing the mainstream media (which, no matter how hard they work, is still limited by the size of their budgets). We now have YouTube channels dedicated (almost) to exposing such untruths.
If anything, he has provided employment for some people: fact checkers. But fact checking is not productive work; it doesn't produce anything new. It will be better for society if such resources are channeled into other areas. But I guess as long as people are not as truthful as they should be, or as thorough in their own checks before speaking out, fact checkers will continue to be necessary, and this industry's size will depend on how prominent (or how large the scale) of such behaviour.
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