{"id":240439,"date":"2023-07-31T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=240439"},"modified":"2023-07-29T05:56:49","modified_gmt":"2023-07-29T04:56:49","slug":"the-most-embarrassing-facebook-files-revelation-the-press-exposed-as-censors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/07\/the-most-embarrassing-facebook-files-revelation-the-press-exposed-as-censors\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Embarrassing “Facebook Files” Revelation? The Press, Exposed as Censors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The “Facebook Files” show the press is part of the censorship establishment, but that’s not the worst part.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Racket News<\/p><\/div>\n

28 Jul 2023 – <\/em>The most embarrassing revelation of the \u201cFacebook Files<\/a>\u201d released by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan yesterday (described in more detail here<\/a>) involves the news media.<\/p>\n

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In one damning email, an unnamed Facebook executive wrote to Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg:<\/p>\n

We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more Covid-19 vaccine discouraging content<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We see repeatedly in internal communications not only in the email above, but in the Twitter Files, in the exhibits of the Missouri v Biden<\/em> lawsuit, and even in the Freedom of Information request results beginning to trickle in here at Racket<\/em>, that the news media has for some time been working in concert with civil society organizations, government, and tech platforms, as part of the censorship apparatus.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2021, the White House and Joe Biden were in the middle of a major factual faceplant. They were not only telling people the Covid-19 vaccine was a sure bet \u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations<\/a>\u201d is how Biden put it \u2014 but that those who questioned its efficacy were \u201ckilling people.\u201d But the shot didn\u2019t work as advertised. It didn\u2019t prevent contraction or transmission, something Biden himself continued to be wrong about as late as December of that year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you go back and give a careful read to corporate media content from that time describing the administration\u2019s war against \u201cdisinformation,\u201d you\u2019ll see outlets were themselves not confident the vaccine worked. Take the New York Times<\/em> effort from July 16th, 2021, \u201cThey\u2019re Killing People: Biden Denounces Social Media for Virus Disinformation<\/a>.\u201d You can see the Times<\/em> tiptoeing around what they meant, when they used the word \u201cdisinformation.\u201d In this and other pieces<\/a> they used phrases like, \u201cthe spread of anti-vaccine misinformation,\u201d \u201chow to track misinformation,\u201d \u201cthe prevalence of misinformation,\u201d even \u201cBiden\u2019s forceful statement capped weeks of anger in the White House over the dissemination of vaccine disinformation,\u201d but they repeatedly hesitated to say what the misinformation was.<\/p>\n

Any editor will tell you this language is a giveaway. Journalists wrote expansively about \u201cdisinformation,\u201d but rarely got into specifics. They knew that they couldn\u2019t state with certainty that the vaccine worked, that there weren\u2019t side effects, etc., yet still denounced people who asked those questions. This is because they agreed with the concept of \u201cmalinformation,\u201d i.e. there are things that may be true factually, but which may produce political results considered adverse. \u201cHestiancy\u201d was one such bugbear. Note the language from the unnamed Facebook executive above, which describes the press lashing out \u201cCovid-19 vaccine discouraging content,\u201d not \u201cdisinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is total corruption of the news. We\u2019re supposed to be in the business of questioning officials, even if the questions are unpopular. That\u2019s our entire role! If we don\u2019t do that, we serve no purpose, maybe even a negative purpose. Moreover, think of the implications. News outlets wail about \u201cdisinformation\u201d when they\u2019re aware the public has tuned them out. When people don\u2019t listen to reporters, it\u2019s usually because they suck. You can do the math, as to why the current crop embraces censorship. A more embarrassing outcome for our business would be hard to imagine.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Matthew C. Taibbi is a U.S. author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. He is a contributing editor for <\/em>Rolling Stone, author of several books, a winner of the National Magazine Award for commentary<\/em>, co-host of <\/em>Useful Idiots, and publisher of a newsletter on <\/em>Substack.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 racket.news<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Jul 2023 – The most embarrassing revelation of the \u201cFacebook Files\u201d released by the House Judiciary Chair yesterday involves the news media. They show that the press is part of the censorship establishment, but that’s not the worst part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":240440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[1785,125,2881,234,1006],"class_list":["post-240439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-censorship","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-journalistic-ethics","tag-media","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240441,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240439\/revisions\/240441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}