PolitiFact editor-in-chief Katie Sanders is still decrying Meta Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to break up with the fact-checking companies, so, on Thursday, she wrote an article using the death of Pope Francis to argue he supported their work.
Sanders cites two Francis quotes, “Francis outlined the societal harms of misinformation in 2018, tracing the origin of false news to the Garden of Eden ‘snake tactics’ that led to the original sin” and ‘“There is no such thing as harmless disinformation; on the contrary, trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences,’ he wrote Jan. 24, 2018, for World Communications Day. ‘Even a seemingly slight distortion of the truth can have dangerous effects.’” 
In that document, Francis did write, “Praiseworthy too are those institutional and legal initiatives aimed at developing regulations for curbing the phenomenon, to say nothing of the work being done by tech and media companies in coming up with new criteria for verifying the personal identities concealed behind millions of digital profiles.”
However, and for all his reputation as a “reformer” on certain matters of gender and sexuality, Francis was still fiercely critical of gender ideology and maintained there are only two sexes and used “sex” interchangeably with “gender.” PolitiFact, by contrast, claims such beliefs are wrong.
Sanders then proceeded to list several Francis-related hoaxes, but she missed the main point. It is not objectionable if PolitiFact points out an AI-generated image was, in fact, AI-generated or that a certain article was satirical, provided they don’t slap a “false” label on a joke and suppress social media reach. The problem is when PolitiFact confuses its or its preferred experts’ opinions for facts, when it doesn’t fact-check itself before publishing, or applies double standards to similar claims.
Towards the end of her article, Sanders recalled, “In his 2018 message, Francis described journalists’ responsibility as the world’s informers to promote accurate, trusted reporting. He called on everyone to ‘promote a journalism of peace.’"
She concludes:
More than ever, the future of information integrity relies on ordinary people seeking truth and providing corrective information in the public square.
Take it from Francis’ message:
‘The best antidotes to falsehoods are not strategies, but people: people who are not greedy but ready to listen, people who make the effort to engage in sincere dialogue so that the truth can emerge; people who are attracted by goodness and take responsibility for how they use language.’
Yes, “sincere dialogue,” not proclamations from St. Petersburg, Florida. Truth is not relative, and people should put in the effort to make sure what they are saying or posting on social media is true, but Pope Francis would agree that does not mean the truth is defined as whatever PolitiFact says it is.
