True Fact-Checking in the Age of the Meta-Narrative
Lyotard once claimed that the postmodern condition marked the end of grand narratives. Religion, ideology, historical teleology—those sweeping frameworks that once organized reality—were said to be gone, replaced by fragments and local truths. But the 21st century proved otherwise.
Meta-narratives returned not as whispers but as thunder. COVID, climate, Russia, AI—these are not plural accounts but single, dominant story-worlds that pull everything into their orbit. Whether one agrees or resists makes little difference; the meta-narrative has come back with a vengeance.
In this climate, fact-checking has drifted into farce. It no longer means verifying a date, a document, or a quote. It has become the policing of coherence within a story.
The real question is not is it true? but does it fit the frame? When it aligns, it passes. When it threatens coherence, it is branded “misleading,” even if the claim contains truth. Language itself has become part of the policing: verdicts like “missing context,” “experts say,” or “partly false” are less about clarifying fact than about stabilizing the narrative.
Even coincidences are neutralized. When uncanny parallels appear—pandemic simulations before a pandemic, forecasts before crises—the official move is not to investigate but to dismiss.
The word “coincidence” is wielded like a shield. What once was checking has turned into steering. Curiosity is replaced with nudges toward the “responsible” interpretation.
True fact-checking should be different. It should remain almost forensic: confirm dates, names, and documents; acknowledge what is unknown; separate fact from interpretation; and resist collapsing everything into a single storyline. This is slow and humble work. It leaves gaps open. It feels unfinished. But that discomfort is also honesty.
A small experiment makes the difference clear. Instead of drowning in the endless scroll, turn to Teletext, that old relic that still ticks away in corners of the internet, updating without spin. And if not Teletext, then something with the same bare quality: a wire feed, a parish noticeboard, a regional paper where reports are short and undecorated.
Foreign press helps too. No outlet has the truth alone, but in the Schnittmenge—the overlap between different accounts—something closer to it emerges. Better to live with uncertainty than to fall into blind belief. Eric Hoffer warned against the pull of movements. Bertrand Russell put it more sharply: the stupid are cocksure, the intelligent full of doubt.
The point of minimal news is not nostalgia. It is resistance.
The central battle of our time is data against drama.
Once the hysteria is stripped away, the skeleton of events remains, and thinking becomes possible again. The meta-narrative does not simply want agreement; it wants cognitive surrender.
To turn to something minimal, like Teletext, is to refuse. The silence it offers is not empty. It is the space where your own mind can finally speak.