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In early 2017, Mark Zuckerberg was on what might be termed an “apology tour” of the United States. In the tumultuous few months since Donald Trump won his first presidential victory, the young chief executive of Facebook was reeling from his company’s part in serving US voters Russian disinformation, and widespread accusations that the social media platform had disseminated a vast spray of “fake news”. Fighting a rearguard action, Facebook announced changes to its algorithms, and a major initiative to include “third-party factcheckers” as part of the content moderation efforts.

Touring the country, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, stopped off in Selma, Alabama. They posed for a casual photo outside the offices of the iconic local paper, the Selma Times-Journal. Zuckerberg posted a heartfelt “thank you” to journalists “who work tirelessly and sometimes put their lives in danger to surface the truth. I don’t always agree with everything you say, but that’s how democracy is supposed to work.” The choice of the Times-Journal was freighted with significance. A paper that had campaigned against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and reported on the Montgomery to Selma civil rights marches in the 1960s was a pointed reminder of how the local press could provide a bulwark against fascism.

Two election cycles later, a transformation has taken place. With Facebook rebranded as Meta, Zuckerberg has become part of a major Silicon Valley realignment behind the second Trump presidency. This week, Zuckerberg announced the abrupt dismantling of the third-party factchecking network heralded in 2016, blaming the “bias” of the factcheckers themselves for “eroding trust”, and “governments and legacy media pushing to censor more and more”.

The language is straight from a Trump speech in 2022, where the next president talked about “Silicon Valley tyrants” colluding to “silence the American people”. The tirade, which threatened colleges and non-profits that investigate disinformation with defunding, was itself inspired by the release of the “Twitter files” by Elon Musk, who allowed a number of sympathetic journalists unfettered access to private internal documentation held by the company after he bought it. The “censorship cartel”, or tech platforms, academics and civil society groups studying and acting against the unfettered spread of disinformation, is the key focus of America’s top communications regulator Brendan Carr, the Trump appointment for chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Looking at Meta’s track record outside the US, it is possible to conclude that Zuckerberg has always cared more about his company’s proximity to power than he has proximity to truth. Lack of moderation resources and cultural attention in Myanmar arguably led in part to ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims; dictators like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines used Facebook accounts and an army of trolls to undermine and harass legitimate journalism; journalists covering Gaza have found their material mysteriously “shadowbanned” on Meta’s other main conduit, Instagram (Meta claims it was a bug). In Canada, Facebook removed links from its pages to avoid a regulation that would have had the platform pay news organisations a licensing fee. As a result, the platform effectively bans legitimate news outlets at the expense of partisan campaigning. The rightwing Conservative party of Canada looks set for victory in elections this year, and a key part of leader Pierre Poilievre’s communications platform is defunding Canada’s English-language public broadcasting through cutting the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations’s budget.

The factchecking network itself was, from Facebook’s point of view, more of a useful public relations foil for possible regulation than a strategic long-term investment. Research showed it was applied in part in the US, though far more rigorously in Europe, as the Digital Services Act of 2022 regulates and fines very large online platforms that do not demonstrate adequate attention to preventing disinformation. Forcing a recession from trust and safety enforcement within large tech platforms is a key plank of Trump policy, inspired by Musk, in part as a reaction to European regulation.

Twitter was the first social media company to ban Trump after the 6 January 2021 insurrection, and was followed by Facebook and YouTube. Twitter was also the first social media platform in 2020 to flag Trump’s tweets for spreading Covid misinformation during the height of the pandemic. Now Musk is the owner of X, the rebranded Twitter, using his own platform as a bully pulpit against journalists, political opponents and overseas governments.

Musk is outrunning the long history of powerful media owners in terms of manipulation and influence, all without employing a single journalist. His relentless attacks on the UK Labour government and his promise to bankroll the Reform UK party to the tune of $100m, even if that now seems unlikely, dominate UK headlines, and threaten to subvert both politics and the media landscape. It is part of a broader campaign to fundamentally alter the world order with regards to rightwing authoritarianism, in part by removing and suppressing any accountability mechanisms. Even those as flimsy as Facebook’s factchecking efforts.

It is easy to overthink Zuckerberg’s pivot to Maga. In the past week he has swapped the former UK deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, who was his head of global affairs, for the Republican Joel Kaplan, and added the Trumpy MMA president Dana White to his board. This is heavy and visible compliance ahead of time with the potential regulatory reforms threatened by the FCC.

Still, the effective political capture of information gatekeepers by the Trump administration poses significant policy questions for governments and institutions outside the US. It is easy to imagine a situation in Britain where a far-right government defunds the BBC, where the vast majority of institutional journalism is supported by overseas and right-leaning billionaires, and where the channels for independent distribution, such as the social platforms, are opaquely set against accountability of the wealthy and extreme.

Administrations like the current Labour government in the UK have a narrow window in which to act if they wish to resist this powerful trend. Reforming support for public media, digging deeper regulatory firebreaks through legislation and Ofcom, and providing new incentives and support for local and independent fact-based reporting are not far-fetched ideas.

The Biden administration in the US started down some of these paths by appointing anti-trust specialists to the FCC, encouraging bills that supported local news and setting up an ill-conceived initiative on fighting disinformation. But all such efforts have been washed away by a powerful tide of Maga media policy that is rooted in the more effective notion of quashing opposition and criminalising legitimate inquiry. As the epiphany of Mark Zuckerberg shows, in digital businesses political change can happen overnight, and without the vast majority of the public noticing the change in the weather. The long-term intentions and effects of small changes, however, can have long-lasting and global consequences.

• Emily Bell is the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and a non-executive director at Guardian News and Media

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Even before Donald Trump won the election in November, multiple companies with announced they were ending their diversity initiatives. After the election, some of the country’s largest companies announced they too were sunsetting some of their corporate programs.

In December, Walmart said it was rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals and would drop using the term altogether. McDonald’s made a similar statement in January. On Friday, Meta became the latest major company to announce the end of its DEI goals, saying that the company will scrap its DEI team, its equity and inclusion training programs and requirements to have a “diverse slate” of applicants when hiring.

Though some of the announcements followed conservative pressure on social media, some came unprompted, suggesting that companies who were quick to trumpet their desire to broaden their workforce after the backlash to the murder of George Floyd have cooled on an idea that seeks to increase opportunities for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups.

Now that conservatives not only have a majority in the supreme court, but also the White House and both chambers of Congress, they can launch a full-fledged attack against DEI at the federal level.

But DEI advocates maintain this isn’t the end. Here’s how Trump’s second term could impact DEI.

An executive order banning DEI in the federal government

Toward the end of Trump’s first term in 2020, Trump signed an executive order that banned diversity training in government agencies, contractors and institutions that receive federal funding, such as non-profits. It also restricted the use of so-called “divisive concepts” that the administration deemed common in such training.

The administration was quickly hit with lawsuits over first amendment violations in the order, and a federal judge blocked it soon after.

After Joe Biden took office, he signed an executive order that asked government agencies to establish or promote chief diversity officers, hold DEI training and develop their own DEI plans.

Trump and his allies have railed against DEI and will likely target it again once he takes office. While it is unclear exactly what a new anti-DEI executive order from Trump would look like, he will likely scrap Biden’s executive order and once again target DEI goals in the federal government.

Such an order can’t impact private companies, even if Trump’s administration would want it to. A federal appeals court upheld a ruling this year against Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who tried to ban private employers from diversity training, on first amendment grounds.

Judicial appointments

Trump appointed more than 200 federal judges to courts around the country during his first term, in addition to the three justices he got on to the supreme court.

Trump’s impact on the judiciary from his first term is already weighing on the dozens of DEI cases that are still ongoing in federal courts around the country.

“That’s going to shape the ongoing direction of the law of DEI in the years ahead and solidifies that the interpretation of laws that protect DEI will be moving in a conservative direction,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the NYU School of Law.

After Students for Fair Admissions – the supreme court case that overturned affirmative action in higher education – was decided in 2023, workplace programs became the next target. Edward Blum, the conservative legal activist who was behind the affirmative action case, said the case was only “the end of the beginning”.

The Meltzer Center is tracking 68 ongoing cases that are still in court. Many of the lawsuits focus on targeted programs such as scholarship, grants or initiatives for specific affinity groups. Others focus on reverse discrimination in the workplace, for example, white job applicants or employees suing companies for allegedly giving preference to their nonwhite counterparts.

More Trump-appointed judges means even if these cases don’t get up to the supreme court, lower courts that are conservative-leaning could set legal precedents that shape the legal landscape around DEI for years to come.

Conservative judges could interpret laws that were established during the civil rights era to uphold claims of reverse racism, which have skyrocketed since Students for Fair Admissions.

Congress and the Department of Justice

On the campaign trail, Trump himself railed against what he called “anti-white feeling in this country”, telling Time in May that he thinks “the laws are very unfair now”.

Trump’s administration can utilize the legal powers of the Department of Justice, which can prosecute state and local government employers, or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which has enforcement power over private companies, to carry out what it deems are reverse discrimination cases.

“Right now, all the anti-DEI lawsuits are coming from private advocacy groups or individuals. They’re not coming from the government,” Glasgow said. “If the federal government uses its enforcement power to go after private companies, then that could have a chilling effect.”

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Incoming vice-president JD Vance co-sponsored a self-explanatory bill in the Senate earlier this year named Dismantle DEI that would end all federal DEI programs, including for agencies, contracts and schools or organizations that receive federal funding.

The legislation would be more sweeping than what Trump could muster with an executive order. Republicans have a majority in both the House and Senate and could get it to Trump’s desk, if they choose. But with slim majorities, particularly in the House, Republicans will need the political will to get the bill passed.

A chilling effect

When Floyd was murdered in 2020, the ensuing protests around the countries encouraged companies to introduce or expand DEI programs. Commitments were made, DEI offices were created and executives were hired.

But after the Students for Fair Admissions decision, companies went quiet. Even though the decision didn’t mention the workplace, private employers stopped touting their commitments to diversity.

DEI advocates are worried that Trump’s second term will mean an even more widespread chilling effect, where companies do away with their DEI initiatives out of fear of retaliation.

“I’ve had leaders tell me things like, ‘Even the people who support DEI within our company are scared right now,’” Glasgow said. “There’s a lot of fear and anxiety out there … even if, from a policy or senior leadership standpoint, these organizations still buy into [DEI].”

When Meta announced to its employees that it was dropping its DEI goals, the company said in a statement that “the legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing now”.

“The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others,” the statement read.

But Glasgow and other researchers at the Meltzer Center say that companies shouldn’t drop their DEI initiatives completely.

Researchers have outlined ways companies can support DEI, even when the legal environment around it is murky. Companies can be careful not to scrap initiatives that are legally protected and think about areas where DEI could expand legally. Companies could also focus on making sure their companies are inclusive internally, without pushing for broader change outside the company.

“No matter how hostile the external environment becomes, we can still make sure that our policies are protecting vulnerable workers,” Glasgow said.

And some companies can become public advocates of DEI, against the conservative tide.

“I would like to see organizations that have a powerful voice and a powerful platform actually speaking up in defense of DEI and contributing to a conversation about why DEI is important in the public sphere, to push back on those anti-DEI narratives,” Glasgow added.

In late December, Costco’s board of directors released a statement pushing back against a shareholder proposal from a conservative thinktank that would require the company to evaluate and release a report on its DEI initiatives.

“A diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings,” Costco said in a statement to investors. “We believe (and member feedback shows) that many of our members like to see themselves reflected in the people in our warehouses with whom they interact.”

Tablets and appliances made in China, hybrid cars built in Canada, European wine. As Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president quickly approaches, Americans are stocking up on goods in anticipation of tariffs Trump plans to place on imports, according to a Guardian reader poll.

Since the election, Trump has promised to immediately impose a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports, along with increasing existing tariffs on Chinese imports by 10%. On the campaign trail, Trump said he would put tariffs of 10% to 20% on all imports.

Economists widely agree that prices will increase with tariffs. Though the policy is meant to encourage American companies to produce their goods domestically, the global supply chain has become so entangled and interconnected that for many companies, the most simple thing will be to pass the cost of tariffs on to consumers – executives from multiple companies, including Walmart, Columbia Sportswear and AutoZone, have said they will do as much.

In a November Harris/Guardian poll, nearly half (44%) of respondents said they were planning purchases before Trump entering office, while nearly two-thirds (62%) said they were at least adjusting their financial plans for next year.

The Guardian asked readers whether they had made or were planning to make purchases in anticipation of Trump’s tariffs. Dozens responded with what they had bought with inauguration day in mind.

Many readers said they made major electronics purchases in anticipation of new tariffs against China. According to the Consumer Technology Association, a 60% tariff on Chinese imports could push up prices for laptops and tablets by 46% and smartphones by 26%.

Even though many said they would have preferred to hold off on making bigger purchases, many felt the pressure of looming tariffs.

“My wife and I are planning to purchase new Apple iPads,” said Bob McMahon of West Chester, Pennsylvania. “These are purchases we’ve been considering for some time, but we now feel a sense of urgency since Trump’s tariffs will likely increase prices.”

Household appliances, such as washers and dryers and kitchen appliances, have also been top of mind. The National Retail Federation estimates consumers would pay an additional $6.4-$10.9bn on appliances with tariffs.

“We are purchasing a new washer and dryer … which we have put off due to medical bills,” said Liza Gilbert of La Crosse, Wisconsin. “It will be even harder to afford in January.”

Those who were planning home renovations have been buying construction materials in advance of tariffs, particularly ones placed on Canada that could affect material like imported wood for cabinets.

“My partner is laying in supplies and materials for a new roof we had planned for the spring,” said Jen Thomas of West Virginia. “While the rush of a second Trump presidency is still exciting for many West Virginians, my partner and I are neither excited nor optimistic about the next four years.”

With the shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic still in recent memory for many, people are also stocking up on essentials, including food and toilet paper, with the uncertainty of future prices.

“My husband and I stocked up on toilet paper and flour early in the pandemic, so thought we’d be clever and try to get ahead of the looming price hikes due to Trump’s tariffs,” said Molly Heath, of Indianapolis, Indiana. “Lessons learned, right?”

Heath added that upon doing more research, her family concluded that it would be hard to “get ahead of” the tariffs. “We decided it would be wiser to revisit the household budget and prepare for a general cost-of-living increase,” Heath said.

Others have stocked up on food that can last on their shelves.

“Everything will go through the roof when [Trump] takes office,” said Carol Lee Wood of Virginia, who said she has made more purchases of beans, rice, powdered milk and freeze-dried fruits and vegetables. “I wish I could stockpile gasoline and avocados!”

A few readers said they had recently purchased hybrid cars, anticipating that Trump would end Joe Biden’s electric vehicle tax credit.

“I bought a 2025 hybrid SUV five days after the election,” said Ellie from Maine, who did not provide her last name. “It was the last one on the lot.”

The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that consumer prices could rise 1.4% to 5.1% if Trump were to implement his broad tariff plan, which would be the equivalent of an additional $1,900 to $7,600 per household.

It would be a painful uptick in prices for American consumers, many of whom are still reeling from inflation seen in the years after the pandemic. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 and has since come down to below 3%.

Despite this concern from consumers, Trump has continued to insist that he will institute tariffs as soon as he enters office, carrying out a promise he made on the campaign trail. In his 9 December interview with Meet the Press, Trump said that tariffs “cost Americans nothing”.

Tariffs “made this country money. And we never really got the chance to go all out because we had to fight Covid in the last part,” Trump said, referencing his first term. “We did it very successfully.”

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Zuckerberg complained that the EU had forced U.S. tech companies operating in Europe to pay “more than $30 billion” in penalties for legal violations over the past two decades. Last November, the tech chief’s Meta conglomerate, which operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media and communications platforms, was fined €797 million for breaching EU antitrust rules by imposing unfair trading conditions on ads service providers.

Zuckerberg argued that the European Commission’s application of competition rules is “almost like a tariff” on American tech companies and said that U.S. President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration had failed to deal with the situation.

“If some other country was screwing with another industry that we cared about, the U.S. government would probably find some way to put pressure on them, but I think what happened here is actually the complete opposite,” he said. “The U.S. government led the kind of attack against the companies, which then just made it so the EU is basically in all these other places, just free to just go to town on all the American companies and do whatever you want.”

Zuckerberg’s appearance on Rogan’s podcast comes just days after he announced that Meta will end its third-party fact-checking program and move to a so-called community notes model. The move has been widely interpreted as an attempt by Zuckerberg to ingratiate himself with the incoming Trump administration, which has long denounced the moderation policy as censorship with a left-wing bias.

Acknowledging the changing “legal and policy landscape,” Meta on Friday also said that it would terminate its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.

I hate to say I told you so, but. …

Last year, when writing about why the year in media was really the year of Taylor Swift, I warned that despite the silly hand-wringing in some circles about the pop superstar’s ubiquity, we should enjoy it while it lasts.

“Next year is a presidential election year. By all indications, it will be brutal, perhaps a full-frontal assault on the media, democracy and the future of the country.”

Nailed it.

But here we are, can’t be helped. It’s time again to look at the year in media. Swift still made plenty of news in 2024, whether for wrapping up her tour or showing up at Kansas City Chiefs games to cheer on Travis Kelce. (The cheering worked; the Chiefs won their second Super Bowl in a row.) But she wasn’t the story of the year.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Trump, Rogan and Musk were a Cerberus of misinformation

The temptation here is to go with the obvious: Donald Trump is the biggest story of the year. He survived assassination, he completed a political comeback, and he continued to threaten truth and the foundations of democracy along the way.

Or maybe Joe Rogan? Trump joined Rogan for a three-hour waste of time. Among the topics they discussed were how bull riders occasionally die, aspects of concrete, and the effect of wind on whales. And yet the Kamala Harris campaign, desperate to place some blame somewhere for her loss — anywhere but on their own decisions — bemoaned her not being on his podcast. Would it have helped? Who knows. But as they say, it couldn’t have hurt.

How about Elon Musk? He’s kind of the worst of everything about the miserable division that splits the country. He has no official title, and he’s never received a vote, yet he tanked a bill in Congress by threatening and browbeating members on X, getting Trump to go along. Who’s running this railroad?

There was some thought given to combining Trump, Rogan and Musk into a kind of Cerberus of irresponsibility who separately and together impacted the news in outsized ways. If this was just a headline count, that would probably be the right, or at least a defensible, move.

The media are the story of the year

But let’s get meta.

The big media story this year is the media. And the story often wasn’t pretty. Trump had a lot to do with that, too. He rails against responsible reporting if it’s critical of him, threatens legal action for the same reason, and has helped accelerate the decline in trust of an industry that was doing a fine job of eroding that trust all by itself.

I’m not going to go through a blow-by-blow list of mistakes media made in 2024. Nor am I going to enumerate all of the things journalists did right. The latter far outweighs the former, by the way. You know all those stories that “mainstream media is afraid to tell you about?” Yeah, well, in most cases, the only reason anyone knows about them is because mainstream media did report on them, but TikTok or your influencer of choice didn’t bother to credit them.

That said, there have been some troubling signs in the wake of Trump’s victory. Before it, too. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked his staff’s planned endorsement for Harris. Now he’s meddling further, blocking an editorial critical of Trump’s cabinet and talking about creating an AI-powered “bias meter” on editorials and opinion columns.

Then Jeff Bezos, a billionaire like Soon-Shiong, said hold my beer. Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, as well as a host of other businesses, killed the paper’s endorsement of Harris. When Trump won, Bezos fell all over himself to congratulate him. Then Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Meanwhile, ABC paid $15 million to settle a defamation claim Trump brought against the network, a suit that many legal experts believe would have been hard for Trump to win.

A bunch of tech titans, whose businesses have a big effect on media through their various algorithms, have given up on responsibly monitoring content; Musk’s X practically exists to promote irresponsible content. Oh, and a bunch of them have given $1 million to Trump’s inaugural campaign, too.

These are the developments that made the headlines. But the real danger is more insidious. I am not one of these people who screams, “CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION” whenever the New York Times or the Washington Post aren’t hard enough on Trump in a story or a headline. (Which happens, I won’t deny.)

However, I think almost all media have fallen into a trap — not without exception, but often — of normalizing Trump’s behavior. And that’s a problem.

Winning the election doesn’t normalize Trump’s behavior

I’m sorry, but nominating Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General isn’t normal. (Gaetz dropped out not long after.) Nominating Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense isn’t normal. Pushing Kari Lake as director of Voice of America isn’t normal. Nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services not only isn’t normal, it’s insane.

It’s also trolling. And it should be covered as such. Saying that Trump is making “controversial” choices doesn’t cut it. It’s like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. I mean, it is true. But it’s also selling short the enormity of the situation.

I hear from a lot of Trump supporters. There seems to be a feeling among them that because Trump won the election, he can do anything he wants, that all of his lies are now magically true. This is, of course, absurd. It’s the media’s job to keep him honest to the extent that anyone or anything can.

It won’t be easy, with Trump’s influence over his followers. It won’t be perfect because journalism never is. But it has to be consistent and it has to be thorough. Standing up for the truth in the face of adversity would be a good start.

Enjoy the year of Taylor Swift:Media headlines are about to get dark

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly WatchList newsletter.

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(Bloomberg) — The Bitcoin rally sparked by US President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory in early November is stalling as 2024 draws to a close.

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The digital asset wavered at $93,922 as of 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday in New York, about $15,000 below the record high set in mid-December. Smaller tokens like Ether and meme-crowd favorite Dogecoin also struggled for traction.

Trump’s preference for crypto friendly regulations and support for the idea of a national Bitcoin reserve lifted digital assets. But scaled back expectations for interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve have cooled the speculative frenzy.

More clarity on the US crypto regime is likely to emerge after Trump assumes power on Jan. 20. The Republican’s stance contrasts with President Joe Biden’s administration, which cracked down on the scandal-prone sector.

Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group, said “the momentum has come out of the post-election move” in Bitcoin, partly due to outflows from exchange-traded funds for the token. The group of a dozen ETFs in the US have seen a net outflow of nearly $1.8 billion since Dec. 19, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, software maker turned Bitcoin accumulator MicroStrategy Inc. has been on a buying spree in the past few weeks. Traders are waiting to see if the company — which owns more than $40 billion of the digital asset — will continue a pattern of announcing Bitcoin purchases on Mondays.

The original cryptocurrency has climbed roughly 120% this year, outstripping traditional investments such as global stocks and gold. Bitcoin also more than doubled in 2023 in a comeback from a deep bear market.

(Updates price)

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