Fact-checking at AFP: The trouble has just begun

The op-ed published in January by our CEO Fabrice Fries in Le Monde was a welcome response defending the Agency and its staff against Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that the work of fact-checkers was censorship. This stinging attack on Meta’s fact-checking partners, “denigrating” in the words of our CEO, is a telling example of the immense challenge that social networks and their leaders have set for AFP and for journalism.
SUD also believes that Fries was right to declare that AFP will continue fact-checking as it dovetails with our public interest mission. But our CEO conceded that fact checking will need to be scaled back if Meta follows through with Zuckerberg’s announcement and ends support for third-party fact-checking outside of the United States.

Blame shifting

It’s too simple in 2025 to blame any fall out from Meta’s announcement on political polarization encouraged by Trump during his reelection. It is self-serving and contradictory to call Meta’s decision “surprising” and then immediately note that “it did not come completely out of the blue”. Meta never stood up to Trump during his first term in office, letting him post whatever he wanted. It only banned his account after the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
We’ve known for years that our fact-checking operation is more of a house of cards than a long-term strategy. It was the 2019-2023 Aims and Means Contract (COM), which our CEO negotiated with the French government, that made fact-checking part of our mission. It was during this period that our fact-checking operation grew spectacularly. Bu management has acknowledged for a while that it needs to diversify the revenue sources of fact-checking. This was even made an objective in the 2024-2028 COM, which was negotiated in 2023. But here we are in 2025 with the house of cards ready to fall and the jobs of some 150 full-time fact checkers at risk. Management will no doubt feel it to be unfair to criticize them for not being able to quickly find other funding sources. It’s complicated, they always like to say, and indeed it is. But those whose jobs are at risk won’t find it unfair. They’ve been complaining about the precarious nature of AFP’s fact-checking operation for the past couple of years. Many of them are on fixed-term contracts that simply won’t be renewed. AFP won’t need to pay a penny in severance.

Journalism or not journalism?

Fries also made a full-throated defense of fact-checking being “the essence of journalism”. AFP has striven in recent years to integrate fact-checking into the newsroom. But in its hurry to serve social networks we didn’t always hire fact-checkers capable of working in other positions in the Agency. Language is a barrier for many (we carry out fact-checks in many more languages than our six news production languages), but fact-checkers have indicated this isn’t the only hurdle. At the annual town hall meetings fact-checkers have complained about a lack of opportunities to shift to text or video. To management’s credit, it has promised more training to enable this.
Fries was right to defend fact-checking against critics who dismiss it as not being “real journalism”. What we publish on our website AFP Fact Check is indeed real journalism. Fries’ argument is all about process however: transparency about methodology and sourcing. Nowhere does he mention publishing. Our charter recognizes the importance of publishing: “AFP’s duty is to seek and publish the truth in an increasingly disrupted world of information.” (our emphasis) Without publishing what we do it wouldn’t be journalism.

Public interest mission or privatization?

Unfortunately, our fact-checking operation does not always publish its work. Under our contract with TikTok we fact-check videos at the request of the platform for its content moderation service. These fact-checks are never published. SUD believes that such production on demand that is never published is not journalism and should not be carried out by AFP itself but by a subsidiary (See our tracts of September 30 and October 16). We asked AFP’s Higher Council to examine whether or not our work for TikTok should be put in a subsidiary. The Higher Council didn’t state clearly that it believes that our work for TikTok is part of AFP’s public interest mission or that it is journalism.
On the other hand, the Higher Council gave management a free hand, stating that there is no law or regulatory act that says our fact-checking work for companies should be carried out by a subsidiary rather than the parent company. On the surface that may indeed be correct. But the European Commission noted in 2014, as part of its state aid investigation, that France promised to adopt a law that requires AFP to put into subsidiaries any activities that don’t fall under articles 1 and 2 of our statutes. This was accomplished via the revision of our statutes in 2015. Article 1 sets out AFP’s mission as a news agency, not as subcontractor to the content moderators of platforms. In its 2023 reauthorization of our state subsidy, the Commission reiterated this principle and the responsibility of the Higher Council and the Board of Governors in this area.
AFP, in its arguments to the Higher Council, noted that AFP sells information to many companies, and not only our full wires, but selected information based on their interests. But this is still information produced for all subscribing clients and not information generated for the exclusive use of a single client (and for TikTok, we believe, they also own the copyright). TikTok submits to AFP information it wants checked and our journalists – staff or stringers – do a lightning-quick 10-minute check to determine its veracity regardless of how complex it is. While AFP can do fact-checks of its own initiative based on videos published on TikTok, in fact these were exceptionally rare during periods reviewed by SUD. Does management think AFP journalists should be researching and producing information at the request of and for the exclusive use of individual companies? SUD believes that would be in complete contradiction with AFP’s public interest mission, not to mention journalistic ethics. It would make our reporters more akin to corporate mercenaries than journalists.

The lucrative market of impartiality

Management believes this work for TikTok is okay as we are serving to combat disinformation. But are we? Unlike Facebook, TikTok doesn’t publish any information about the use of fact-checks (done by AFP and other subcontractors) and the subsequent reduction in circulation of mis/disinformation. The public is never informed about mis/disinformation on TikTok and for all we know its circulation is not curtailed.
It is clear that TikTok wants organizations, particularly media with their own ethical impartiality guidelines and which have certification from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) working for its content moderation service. Outsourcing fact-checking insulates TikTok from charges of partisanship as, one, it is not doing the fact-checking and, two, as IFCN certification requires non-partisanship. AFP has IFCN certification. If we put our TikTok work in a separate subsidiary, however, we wouldn’t get the certification. Why? Because IFCN certification rules require fact-checks to be published.
It is clear to us that management would like to put its work for TikTok in a subsidiary, but that TikTok wants the AFP label, so the operation remains part of the newsroom. In short it isn’t our management calling the shots on the organization of our operations, but a social networking platform. We need the money, so we swallow our principles.
Combating disinformation has become a favorite justification for management to cover dubious editorial decisions. Each time it glosses over the economic interests behind these choices. This is the crux of the problem. AFP is under such financial pressure because of the under-financing of our public interest mission that it must prioritize revenue in the short term over concerns about risks in the medium term. But in the information war AFP can’t afford to damage its most precious asset: its integrity.
That is where the Higher Council should ideally come in, acting as check and balance on management. It needs to be the voice of conscience about AFP’s integrity and ethics when management strays too far into grey zones.

Paris, March 17, 2025
SUD-AFP (Solidarity-Unity-Democracy)