Behind the Curtain: Reality-checkers

Skeptics and opponents will be left shaping, and reacting to, entire worldviews and narratives that have so much momentum — and such powerful constituencies — that they become the reality that lawmakers, regulators, journalists and citizens will have to contend with.

• This is uncharted terrain. What's real? What's spin? What's outright misinformation?
• And who do you trust to make sense of it all? And what if others trust people who are untrustworthy?

Between the lines: Name the last time Democrats drove the dominant narrative on social media or even traditional media.

• You'd have to go back to before the election. In fact, in the environment that exists at this moment, it's hard to imagine who would drive it and how it would be driven.

Two real-time examples capture this new reality of the online information ecosystem: the LA fires and the British grooming scandal, narrated by Axios' Zachary Basu:

1. As flames tore through Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, X became a cesspool of misinformation and anti-DEI attacks targeting LA Mayor Karen Bass and LAFD chief Kristin Crowley, who is the first woman and LGBT person in the job.

• The truth became impossible to distill: Musk's vaunted Community Notes system was like a Band-Aid on a bullet hole, as reports of water shortages — some real, some fake — exploded into partisan blame games.
• Trump quickly exploited the crisis and accused Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of refusing to sign "the water restoration declaration," which the governor's office dismissed as "pure fiction." With the fires raging and growing, Trump posted on Truth Social: "Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!" Musk quickly tweeted agreement.
• In a now-deleted tweet, Musk responded "True" to an Alex Jones post claiming the LA fires were "part of a globalist plot to wage economic warfare & deindustrialize the [United] States."

Reality check: The unprecedented fires are a natural disaster caused by fierce winds and some of the driest conditions on record for early January, likely exacerbated by climate change.

• Bass is facing real criticism for being on a diplomatic mission in Ghana at the start of the crisis. And water policies have been hotly debated in California. But there's no evidence of diversity programs hindering the response.
• The lack of sufficient water to put out the fires wasn't as simple as a few bone-headed decisions by incompetent people. It's exceptionally complex: Municipal water systems aren't built for this many fires requiring this much water from this many hydrants. Fixing this, if super-fires are indeed a new normal, would be a domestic Manhattan Project.
• Surely mistakes were made. But it's implausible to know the precise ones to fault in real time.

2. Musk plunged the U.K. into crisis last week— and is now plotting to oust center-left Prime Minister Keir Starmer — after reviving and weaponizing a decade-old child abuse scandal involving British-Pakistani grooming gangs.

• What was a widely covered national story at the time — first broken, ironically, by traditional media — has been recast on X as a conspiracy of silence by the pedophilic establishment.

• Musk has baselessly claimed Starmer — who was credited with improving the treatment of sexual assault victims as chief prosecutor in 2013 — is "deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes."
• And Musk has lionized anti-Islam agitator Tommy Robinson — a convicted felon reviled in British society, even by right-wing Reform Party leader Nigel Farage — as a heroic citizen-journalist.
• For the tens of millions of Americans and X users unfamiliar with the grooming gang scandal, every quote and move by the British government is now being scrutinized through Musk's tainted lens.

Reality check: Starmer and other British officials have acknowledged that authorities and politicians failed many victims of child abuse, and that recommendations from a 2022 independent inquiry should be implemented.

• There's no evidence that the Labour government — which was elected in a landslide last July after 15 years of Conservative rule — has intentionally blocked investigations for political reasons.

The backstory: Trump — and Trumpworld — helped create this new reality.

• From kicking off his first term with "alternative facts" to changing the meaning of "fake news," MAGA-world has consistently sought to discredit traditional gatekeepers.

What you can do: Realize that in-the-moment information is often flawed, and rarely as black-and-white as presented.

• Resist sharing any information outside highly trusted sources.
• Think about the political motivations of people casting blame or spreading ideas.
• View social media — including X — as a good place to find real-time videos, photos and updates if you trust and verify the source. But also full of bad actors. The burden is on you.
• Take a deep breath. Traditional media sources you've grown to trust are quite good at sorting fact from fiction and offering helpful context. That often takes more than a few minutes or hours. Find a source you trust — and trust it.

In the case of the L.A. fires, the Los Angeles Times is doing a very good job on this front. Check out the coverage.