- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(bright music) - Next on WEDU.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram ends its use of independent, fact-checking organizations, including PolitiFact.

President Biden bans oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz says he's thinking about running for governor.

And the Rays make clear where they wanna play in 2026.

All coming up right now on "Florida This Week."

(triumphant music) Welcome back.

The giant social networking company Meta announced this week that the company would stop working with third-party fact-checking organizations.

In a video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company's content moderation approach has resulted too often in censorship.

- Here's what we're gonna do.

First, we're gonna get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the US.

After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.

We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth.

But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created.

- In its place, Meta will institute a user-driven model that allows people to add notes and corrections alongside posts that contain misleading information or missing context.

The changes will affect Facebook and Instagram, two of the largest social media platforms in the world, each boasting billions of users.

And one of the independent third-party, fact-checking organizations that has been working with Meta is PolitiFact, which is owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg.

Katie Sanders is PolitiFact editor in chief, and she joins us now.

Hi, Katie.

Thanks for coming on the program.

- Hey, there, thank you for having me.

- So what was Politifact's role in fact-checking at Facebook and Instagram and other Meta sites?

- We've been one of the partners from the beginning.

This program started after the 2016 election, which you'll remember was roiled by fake news.

That's where we first heard that term.

And so people on Facebook were very easily spreading false information from websites and blogs about the election, about other topics.

And there was really, there was real concern about foreign interference.

So Facebook was criticized for not having guardrails in place before the election.

After the election, they decided to start up this program with fact-checkers.

It's important to note that Meta has designed and tweaked the program all along, and it has not been about censoring users' post, it's been about adding information to false claims that are going viral.

And so what happens is fact-checkers review what Meta suggests is going viral on the platform.

It's really like choosing from thousands of claims and looking for what is most newsworthy, what is most harmful and what's really false or out of context.

We do our independent investigation, and then we append those reports to the post.

PolitiFact, other fact-checkers, do not take those posts down.

Any takedowns of user content was done by Meta and usually because it violated another aspect of community standards.

- I was gonna go back to something you said earlier.

Who decides what's fact checked on Facebook, for instance?

Was that up to you, or was that up to Facebook?

- Fact-checkers use their editorial judgment to decide what to fact check on the platforms.

Meta does not tell the fact-checkers what to fact check on the platforms.

So we do have that independent role in assessing what looks to be misleading or false.

They're looking for hoaxes and claims that can be clearly measured as true or false.

If it's true, we leave it alone.

- But if something was going viral, would Facebook flag that for you, or would Meta flag that for you and say, "Hey, you ought to check this out."

- So indirectly, Meta did not tell fact-checkers, "You need to look into this," but fact-Checkers could review Meta's own signals to make that decision themselves or ourselves.

And really, we don't just look at what's going on in Meta, in a bucket for our journalism.

We look at what's trending on X, what's trending on TikTok and other platforms and see if there's crossover.

So you know, we weren't just squarely focused on Meta, but this program has meant a lot to us over the last eight years.

And I think it's benefited users too.

- So I've seen two things on places like Facebook.

One is content has been removed by someone, and the other is you see additional information about the post.

The post is still up there, but there's additional information.

Who removes the content?

Who was, that's the censorship, right?

Who removes the content?

- I think there are a lot of different policies being conflated here, and I just wanna be very clear.

Fact-checkers do not remove content.

We don't have that ability.

The work that you see from the fact-checking partners is about adding that context and that flag to posts that are false or missing context or manipulated with artificial intelligence.

Fact-checkers do not take down post.

Meta has community standards that are separate from fact-checking that address other types of content that it doesn't want on the platform.

And it's tweaked some of those areas.

Zuckerberg mentioned LGBTQ issues, immigration issues.

They have these algorithms that scan for expression that they didn't want on the platform.

And so if people were using certain kinds of hate speech, for instance, Meta would decide to identify that and take it down.

But that's separate from fact-checking, but you wouldn't get that impression or that detail from the statements we've heard this week.

- So you guys aren't the sensors, so to speak.

- Fact-checking is not censorship.

It's about adding information.

- Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

- I think it's important to say people still get to decide whether they wanna see the post, whether they wanna share the post.

It's just about adding more information before that happens.

- So I've noticed that your fellow fact-checkers include the Agence France-Presse, Reuters, USA Today, and then there's a conservative group, Check Your fact is one of the fact-checkers.

So there's quite a range of fact-checkers who worked alongside you?

- Yeah, you haven't seen a lot of details about the alleged political bias in the news this week.

And I think that's because fact-checkers adhere to really high standards of journalism, accountability and transparency.

And so there are a couple of conservative outlets that have fact-checking teams within their outlets who are taking part in the Meta fact-checking program.

You mentioned the Daily Caller and also the Dispatch, and they do really solid work because they are held to account for being non-partisan in their assessments.

If they weren't being non-partisan, they wouldn't be allowed to participate in the fact-checking program because there's really strict criteria.

- Katie, I wish we had more time, but we're out of time.

Thanks for joining us.

- Thanks for having me.

(intriguing music) - Joining us now on our panel, Deborah Tamargo is the past president of the Florida Federation of Republican Women.

Mike Deeson is an independent journalist and author.

Travis Horn is the president and CEO of Bullhorn Communications and a Republican, and Democrat Michelle Rayner represents parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties in the Florida House.

Nice to see all of you.

- Good to be here.

- Thank you for coming to the show.

Yeah, happy New Year.

With just a few days to go in his administration, President Biden is blocking oil and gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of US ocean, the largest region a president has ever protected using this authority.

- [Reporter] The area includes the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Biden's action prohibits new leases in the identified regions, but it does not affect any existing leases.

In a statement, Biden said that, "Drilling off the East Coast could cause irreversible damage to places that we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation's energy needs."

He added that as the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country, and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.

President-elect Trump, who campaigned on the slogan of "Drill, baby, drill," said this week he would end Biden's ban on day one when he takes office.

Biden's actions could be difficult for Trump to undo since they would likely require an act of Congress to repeal.

- Some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that's underway in America, but nobody, nobody can reverse it.

- [Reporter] This April will mark the 15th anniversary of the Deep Water Horizon oil disaster, in which a drilling rig in the Gulf blew up killing 11 workers and unleashed millions of gallons of crude oil, an event that fouled panhandle beaches and lasted almost three months.

- Travis, I'm wondering what do people who live along the coast who may make their living from tourism or fishing, what do they think of this?

- Look, Democrats and Republicans, we all agree we wanna protect our pristine Florida environment.

We are a tourism-based economy.

No one wants to see an oil rig off of the coast necessarily, and within view of the Florida's coastline.

You know, having said that, government by executive order is a tricky business.

You can put one in and pull one back.

And so I don't think it'll be maybe as hard to change later on.

You know, maybe energy needs change.

And of course at some point, you know, if there's oil, there's gonna be exploration if there's oil and gas.

So I just, I know that Floridians wanna protect it.

And again, we're not like Texas.

They're an oil-based economy.

You can see rigs off their shore.

They're not, it's no problem for them.

In Florida, we have ecotourism, we have a very pristine environment, and I think, well, pretty much in Tallahassee, maybe one of the things that Democrats and Republicans come together on more often than not.

- Mike, the Washington Post reported that President Trump, incoming President Trump, promised 20 oil executives, including Chevron, Exxon, and Occidental to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

And he was asking them for a billion dollars to fund his campaign.

This seems to be- - Pay for play.

- Making good on a campaign promise.

- Absolutely.

Here's the deal.

I like what happened with that executive order.

I'm all in favor of that, but like Travis said, I don't particularly like legislation through executive order.

And I think even if Congress has to approve a change in it with the current makeup of the House and the Senate and with Trump's campaign promise, and he went over and over and over again, drill baby drill, that it may be a moot point.

I don't know if it makes any sense at, at this point, although I like, like I say, I like the order, don't know whether it will stand.

- It makes me wonder though, if he wasn't trying to saddle Trump with higher gas prices as he's coming into office.

I don't know, it just.

If it had been so important, he should have done it earlier on as administration.

- But higher gas prices, I think is, I don't think that has anything, any relevance to this issue.

The issue became, President-elect said drill, baby, drill.

Now in 2020, he said he didn't want to drill, but now we're back here in 2025, drill, baby, drill.

At the end of the day, I think that while people don't necessarily like executive orders, but that's why you have executive orders to be able to ensure that things can be done.

And I think that the coast of Florida needs to be protected because I most certainly don't want to have what happened 15 years ago happen again.

- And Deborah, what do you, what do you make of this?

What's your take on this?

- Well, Florida's been very proactive.

In 2018, we passed an amendment.

It gave us nine miles on the Gulf of Mexico.

It gave our Atlantic coastline three miles.

Then President Trump came in in 2020, 2019, and he extended that all the way through Georgia and South Carolina.

So he was proactive.

I don't like executive orders.

I think we did it the right way.

Let's continue to do it through Congress the right way.

- The last question is, the US right now is a net energy exporter, that is that we're energy independent right now.

We're even selling some of our energy processes like oil and natural gas abroad.

So is this time to that we need more places to drill?

- Right, but I also think that there is a time for us to think about how we can have cleaner energy, especially with climate change.

I mean, I know that that's a scary word, but climate change is real, right?

We are experiencing it right now with unprecedented, you know, temperatures right now during January.

But we experienced two natural disasters back to back.

So I think that it's incumbent upon us to think about how we're going to have, you know, clean energy as our, how, as you know, oil drilling and all of these things affects our climate.

- Okay.

Well, Matt Gaetz, the former North Florida congressman and current cable TV host tells the Tampa Bay Times that he's considering another run for elected office.

- [Reporter] Just weeks after the release of a congressional report on sexual misconduct allegations against Gaetz, the former US representative from the panhandle, tells the Tampa Bay Times that he's starting to think about running for governor in 2026.

Chief among Gaetz's stated policy concerns, the insurance crisis.

The House Ethics Committee's long-awaited report on Gaetz included substantial evidence that Gaetz used illegal drugs, accepted gifts outside of allowable limits, paid women for sex and had sex with a 17-year-old girl during the time he served in Congress.

The US Department of Justice investigated Gaetz for sex trafficking before ultimately deciding not to charge him.

Gaetz denies the allegations and is a popular figure among MAGA Republicans.

- Deborah, I'm wondering what do rank and file Republicans that you talk to to think about Matt Gaetz?

- That Matt Gaetz is yesterday's news.

And I say that because his aspirations now are running for governor.

His aspirations were running for, to become the appointee for the Department of Justice.

But, and now he talks about insurance, that that's a big issue.

But what has he ever done?

He was in the House, he was in Congress, what did he do in terms of insurance?

He's very gifted in terms of his ability to articulate, but what are the issues?

I think people, when they're electing a city council, they want someone that's been involved in the city, kind of understands the problems.

When you're electing a governor, you want someone with a wide diverse background and actual knowledge to deal with the issues that we have here in Florida.

So who do we have?

We have Ashley Moody with that legal background.

Total success, just an amazing representative of the people.

You have Byron Donald with that banking background.

Financial with House of Representatives in Florida with congressional background.

So much of our funding comes from Congress.

So knowing that system and being well-liked and having also the ability to articulate as Ashley Moody does.

You have Wilton Simpson with his agricultural background.

Again, Florida, big agriculture-producing state.

So you have these very viable people.

All of them have, and properly, each one of them would get a endorsement from President Trump if the others weren't running.

So I think Matt Gaetz is yesterday's news.

- But here's the deal.

And I agree that mainstream republicans in the party don't like Gaetz.

I am concerned that Floridians might vote for this guy.

They voted for a guy who is now a convicted felon, that was done today.

He has been- - I vote for that guy.

- Accused of sexual assault.

And they voted overwhelmingly for him.

They put aside all the bad things that you hear about the President-elect and voted for him, which just blows my mind.

- Look, Matt Gaetz is not Donald Trump.

- No, he's not Donald Trump.

- That is not a great comparison.

I voted two times for Donald Trump.

I'm glad he's in office.

We've got a deep bench.

We've got a deep bench, as she said.

We've got Greg Stuby, also a Congressman south of here considering a bid.

- So you agree.

- We've got lots of people.

- Matt Gaetz, yesterday's news.

- Well, I think that's a fair assessment.

- I think, here's the deal.

I went to college with Matthew, and I call people by their full names.

I went to college with Matthew, and it is, one, it's disappointing to see where he has ended up.

So that's number one.

But number two, it is problematic for me that this man who has been accused of sexual misconduct, having sex, having sex with an underage girl, statutory rape, that is what that is.

That he continues to even have a platform in the Republican party.

He continues to even have people that would even pump up this idea of him wanting to run for governor.

At the end of the day, this is not the first time I heard him wanting to run for governor.

He said that while he was elected in Congress.

But to Mike's point, I do actually agree with him.

I am concerned that there are people that these things aren't going to be a deal breaker for them.

- No, not gonna be that.

- You can't say that.

It wasn't a deal breaker for Republicans when Donald Trump was an adjudicated rapist.

He's an adjudicated rapist.

- He is not a rapist.

Actually, oh, you might wanna revamp that one.

- The judge said it akin to being a rapist in the case.

- When there is a judgment, that's an adjudication.

So either way- - Negative letter from Trump on that one.

Asked step George Stephanopoulos about that.

- I don't know why ABC settled, that was crazy.

- Nonetheless.

- He wasn't convicted though of rape.

- He was not convicted.

But civilly, I will say civilly a judge.

- I wanna ask about Byron Donalds.

Wilton Simpson was on the show last week.

He said he wants to continue to be agriculture commissioner, but he does have $30 million in funds that he controls.

Byron Donalds made a big move this year, this week rather.

Yeah, he hired Tony Fabrizio, who's one of the best pollsters in the country.

Best pollster in the state.

What do you make of that?

- I mean, I think that, you know, when people start making those certain moves, you kind of know what's happening.

You kind of know what they're trying to do.

I mean, once again, his name has come up quite often as far as someone that's a potential to be governor.

So I think that, you know, there, you know, Ron DeSantis is basically done.

We know that the next election cycle starts the day after the last one ends.

And so he is also kind of making it you known that like, if you want to come for me, here, I'm hiring Donald Trump's pollster.

Also, you know, I think that it's fair to say, of all the people that Deb named, he's one of the closer people to Donald Trump, right?

- And it's all about who's endorsed by Donald Trump, right?

- The President-elect will weigh in on the race.

He can bet on it, and Byron is well positioned on that.

- The Rays baseball team owners have reversed course and made their preference clear they want to be back in Tropicana Field for the 2026 season.

- [Reporter] The Trop was heavily damaged by Hurricane Milton in October, shredding the roof and causing flooding inside.

In an email last week to St. Petersburg city administrator, Rob Gerdes, team president Matt Silverman wrote that, "The Rays support and expect the city to rebuild Tropicana Field in accordance with the terms of the current use agreement."

The Rays are set to play this coming season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa.

The team has been open to considering a scenario in which the city bought out of its obligation to rebuild Tropicana Field, which would've left the club without a ballpark in 2026.

But they now support the city's effort to repair the stadium.

- So Michelle, does this settle the question about whether or not the Rays really wanna move out of town?

- I mean, I think it settles the question that they're actually going to be partners in this process, right?

I think all of us at this table have seen this back and forth, this ping pong with the Rays and the city, the Rays and the county, and it seems that there was a contract, there was a deal that was made.

And when the Rays felt that it didn't benefit them, especially after the storms, they decided to back out.

And I don't think that was right.

I don't think that was fair.

I think that especially in the midst of everything that we had going on after two natural disasters, there are ways for them to be an actuarial partner.

And so I think now what we're seeing the Rays do is actually like, honor their word and be a partner, and, you know, technically St. Petersburg is their landlord, right?

But also I think the Rays need to have skin in the game as well.

This is not just something that just should fall on the people of St. Peter, the county of Pinellas, but they benefit from playing in St. Petersburg.

They benefit from being there.

So hopefully this does settle the question.

- St Pete made a mistake though.

They underinsured the dome.

They took a gamble, they rolled the dice, and they lost.

- But bigger than that, I would hate to be an office holder pulling the trigger on funding a big stadium for rich fella from New York City.

You know, I just, I was a civic leader.

I supported them when they were planning to move to Ebor City.

I was chairman of the chamber then, I was behind it.

I'm now at this point a little fatigued.

I can't imagine how fatigued you all are over in Pinellas County.

- But a contract is a contract.

- They don't do a real good job of, like you said, they back and forth, ping pong, and pull in, pull out.

- So the big question is, there are two new members on the St. Pete city council, and both, I think if it express some skepticism about the deal, and the question is, will they vote to pay for the repairs?

- I mean, that's gonna be the question.

I mean, there are two members, new members on the city council, and I think that, you know, those members, it would be incumbent upon them to make sure that they know what their constituents want and not vote their own personal or political feelings, because I live there.

So I'm telling you, it should be that they need to vote to what their constituents want, not their own political or personal issues, whomever they may have it with.

And how this deal is going to benefit the people of St. Petersburg.

- I love having pro sports in Tampa Bay.

I'd like to keep 'em so.

- Well, before we go, what other news story should we be paying attention to?

And Deborah, let's start with you.

Your other big story of the week.

- Well, first of all, I wanna say happy New Year to all of our viewers and all of you.

And talking about representative government, I would challenge and hope that every single person would exercise the rights they've been given, their God-given rights of speech, their rights under the Constitution to speak to issues.

Go to your city council, county commission, talk to your representatives.

Truly the deal in St. Petersburg was not representative of the people who will end up paying for this boondoggle.

So exercise your right to speak.

- Mike, your other big story?

- There was another notable death this week besides Jimmy Carter and that's Anita Bryant.

Anita Bryant changed the entire LBGTQ movement, because in the late '70s she opposed an ordinance that was being put in effect in Miami, Dade, to give equal rights for employment and housing for gay people.

It cost to her job, her career.

But what it did is it unionized the gay movement and that got all the changes from the military to gay people being allowed to apply for housing.

And so she really had a ping pong effect badly.

It destroyed her life, but it really helped the gay movement to be what it is today.

- Travis, your other big story?

- My big story might not be that big a story.

I think, I feel like this inauguration, I went to Trump's first inauguration, it was a little more contentious.

I feel like with him winning the popular vote and doing better on electoral map this time, that, you know, it'll be a little more respectful, and I hope we'll be able to observe it, and I'll be able to make to my seats this time.

- Alright, you're going up there.

All right.

Michelle, you got a big story?

- So I have like two, one, they're both super quick.

One, I think by the time people watch this, they will see that Donald Trump has been sentenced.

So I just, I think that that is going to be kind of a way forward and what happens in that of all his other legal issues.

Also, I think my other notable story is January 6th, 2025.

Nothing happened, there was a peaceful transfer of power.

- It was peaceful, yeah.

And I have a story of the week.

Back in 2022 when the covid epidemic was winding down, Governor DeSantis asked for a statewide grand jury to investigate any wrongdoing related to COVID-19 vaccines.

The governor suspected the drug manufacturers may have violated the law in making the vaccines available so quickly.

The grand jury's report was released this week.

It found no evidence that vaccine manufacturers broke either federal or state laws when making or distributing the shots.

The grand jury did criticize the revolving door relationship between the FDA and Pfizer and Moderna.

That revolving door is a problem between all levels of government and the corporations they regulate.

And it should be an easier problem for the legislature in Congress to address this year if they're serious about it.

Thanks to our panelists, Deborah Tamargo, Mike Deeson, Travis Horn, and Michelle Rayner.

If you have comments about the program, please send them to ftwwedu.org.

See you next week.

(triumphant music) (triumphant music continues)