Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

As traditional media struggles with credibility, audiences are turning to podcasts and social media, finding platforms that allow real-time discussion, independent verification, and more critical perspectives on current events.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” “And who will guard the guards?” From the satires of the Roman poet Juvenal, written in 115 B.C., this phrase has endured to highlight the problem of controlling power. Who is responsible for overseeing or enforcing the rules in a society?

For decades in the West, the press has been socially responsible (at least in theory) for elucidating the truth, communicating it, or promoting the inclusion of important ideas on the public agenda for discussion. They are the guardians. From this stems concepts such as impartiality, news values, public relevance, etc.

But what happens when a media elite, emboldened by a massive audience and reach, twists the truth, ignores it, or, in the best liberal sense, relativises it? Katherine Maher, for example, believes that “reverence for the truth could be a distraction that prevents us from finding common ground and getting things done.” Maher was a “guardian”: CEO of the highly influential Wikimedia Foundation and, later, of NPR.

However, she is not the exception. In the 1930s, The New York Times lied about the Holodomor; and in the late 1950s, it energised the myth of the then-rebel and future dictator Fidel Castro, whom it described as having “very clear ideas about freedom, democracy, and social justice.” The newspaper’s fondness for strongmen on the Left does not appear to be waning in the 21st century, as it recently defended the socialist Nicolás Maduro against the anti-narcotics blockade that the Trump administration has ordered off the coast of Venezuela.

The New York Times, along with The Washington Post, lied about the “Russiagate” investigation, in a case that tainted the Pulitzer Institute, and with it, the establishment press awards system.

In the last election cycle, the mainstream media, friendly to the US Democratic Party establishment, buried all information about Hunter Biden’s laptop. The story (suppressed under the pretext that it was Russian propaganda to interfere in the 2020 election) revealed crimes committed by him and possible ties to his father, then a presidential candidate.

From being guardians of the truth, the mainstream media became guardians of the Democratic Party.

Following the Joe Biden saga, the media vehemently told us for almost his entire term that the Democrat was mentally capable of completing his term and even running for a second four-year term.

Meanwhile, Trump was portrayed as a Nazi and a danger to democracy. The same Trump who, days after assuming his second term in an incredible comeback, chatted animatedly with Barack Obama. Was the first black president of the United States smiling next to “Hitler”?

Who Will Fact-Check the ‘Fact-Checkers’?

On the other side of the Atlantic, the phenomenon is being replicated. The Adam Smith Institute has listed several of the most recent scandals involving the supposedly impartial BBC, which refuses to call groups like Hamas, known exclusively for its benevolence and good deeds in the Levant, “terrorists.”

Thus, the BBC redirects money from the taxpayers of what was once Great Britain to contributors who are members of the jihadist group or who call for the death of Jews simply for being Jewish.

In short, anyone conscientious — something that doesn’t seem to be abundant in the Western mainstream — should be ashamed to admit to having published in these media outlets.

And what has been the result of this systematic abuse by the “guardians” of truth? Well, trust in mainstream media is plummeting to unprecedented levels.

On the other hand, podcasts are flourishing, with their virtues and weaknesses (ranging from cynicism to incredulity). They cater to an audience connected to the broadcasts who can, in real time, react to, comment on, or refute the statements of the broadcasters. The democratisation of communication brought about by social media has, in general, fostered more critical readers.

Hence what appears to be a decline in fact-checkers, often following the same paths that deflated the credibility of mainstream media: ignoring events or arguments from the conservative side, almost exclusively reinforcing, or manipulating language to defend a progressive narrative.

And who will “fact-check” the fact-checkers, Juvenal might write in the 21st century.

Recall the case of the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who eventually won the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. One of his opponents, the Italian Angela Carini, quit the fight after only 46 seconds in the ring. Following this incident, public figures and social media posts have claimed that Khelif gained an advantage because he was biologically male.

Then fact-checkers, such as the one from the state-run Spanish Radio and Television (RTVE), rushed to claim that the Algerian boxer was not “a transgender woman.”

However, a study was recently released confirming these accusations. Khelif is biologically male, presenting “a chromosomal analysis that reveals a male karyotype.” That is, all women have an “XX” chromosome configuration, while men are “XY,” the combination found in Khelif’s tests.

The study would mean the end of the 26-year-old Algerian’s career in women’s boxing, but also a further blow to the credibility of fact-checkers.

Even more painful is seeing how some media outlets are covering the Christian genocide in Africa, after President Donald Trump’s October 31 post in which he said that “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria.”

The German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle denied this, putting the phrase “Christian genocide” in quotation marks and suggesting that the bloodshed, the murders, and the kidnappings were merely a “crisis of narratives.”

History repeats itself: from the denial of the Holodomor to the denial of the Nigerian Christian genocide. But what shouldn’t be repeated is a critical public, formed after so many falsehoods, once again blindly believing, without first verifying every fact, the words printed or spoken in the mainstream media. Let us be the guardians of the truth.

___

Image courtesy of Unsplash.