Our job is to be truthful not neutral’: Christiane Amanpour on Trump, tech and and fighting for the truth; The Observer, via The Guardian, January 25, 2025

Tim Adams, The Observer via The Guardian; Our job is to be truthful not neutral’: Christiane Amanpour on Trump, tech and and fighting for the truth

"Amanpour works to a trusted formula: “Our job is to be truthful, not neutral,” she says. When we speak, the news is full of the malign influence of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg on the global conversation.

As someone who originally owed her lucrative journalistic career to a billionaire, the “visionary” – her word – CNN founder Ted Turner, Amanpour is fully aware that rich men have always seen news as a business opportunity. Social media oligarchs, however, want to pocket the billions with none of the attendant responsibilities. Never a doom scroller, she sees Mark Zuckerberg’s utterly shameless decision to remove all factchecking from his Meta platforms as a drastic escalation of that policy.

“Of course, not everybody’s going to agree on everything and nor should they,” she says. “But unless we can agree that the sky outside is blue and the grass is green, we have no chance. What is overtaking the public square is that every single fact is now the subject of accusations of lies or bias. Zuckerberg enabling totally permissive commentary is another arrow in the heart of truth.”"