SENATE INTEL LEADERS: STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR 2016 ELECTION …
In today’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on “worldwide threats,” Republican Chairman Richard Burr and Democrat Vice Chairman Mark Warner continued to over-hype the threat of “malign influence” by foreign cyber actors on social media platforms.
CNN reported: “Chairman Burr asked FBI Director Chris Wray whether US adversaries will continue to try to weaponize disinformation through social media platforms. And Vice Chairman Warner was critical of social media companies for being slow to react in 2016 to the threat posed from Russia on their platforms.”
This isn’t the first time the Senate Intelligence Committee leadership has wrung its hands over the evil intentions of fake Facebook accounts and ads. In their August 2018 hearing on the Foreign Influence of Social Media, Chairman Burr gave a hyperbolic condemnation of foreign malign influence in social media: “Cyber actors are using social media platforms to spread disinformation, provoke societal conflict and undermine public faith in democratic institutions … Sixty percent of the U.S. population uses Facebook … A foreign power using the platform to influence how Americans see/think about one another is as much a public policy issue as it is a national security concern … This is about national security. This is about corporate responsibility. And this is about the deliberate and multifaceted manipulation of the American people by agents of a foreign hostile government.” (The full hearing transcript is included below this posting.)
We couldn’t agree more, Mr. Chairman. No one wants Russia or any foreign entity to meddle in our elections. Facebook and other social media platforms should prohibit foreign entities from misrepresenting themselves and placing phony content on their website. And the government and social media companies should work together to do that without impacting free speech rights and corporate independence.
But let’s put things in perspective …
After the 2016 election, Facebook said it found paid ads bought by fake accounts that were run by groups in Russia. It revealed that 470 accounts paid to boost 3,000 posts, spending approximately $100,000. The ads appeared to be from foreign agents looking to sow political division by promoting hot-button political messages around LGBT issues, race relations, guns and other topics. But Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital strategist, puts the $100,000 of known foreign money into perspective. Parscale told 60 Minutes: “The Trump camp spent tens of millions of dollars on tens of thousands of ads using sophisticated targeting. So the campaign hardly needed outside assistance to sway the narrative online. To say that Russia had any influence over Trump and his voice would be saying that if we took a whole sports arena and made it a salad bowl and dropped two pieces of salt in it, you could taste the salt. I just don’t think that’s a possibility.”
Rather than fretting over a smattering of inconsequential fake ads perpetrated by foreigners, shouldn’t the bulk of our outrage be focused on the biased and fake news emanating from the mainstream media and its effect on American society and voters?
The majority of Americans at home and in public places are subjected to liberally biased news from networks, shows and print media like CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NPR, Colbert, Lemon, Myers, Maher, Fallon, Kimmel, The View, NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, etc. The ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts alone are seen by approximately 23 million people each night.
The 20 Most Popular Liberal “News” Websites, including CNN, Huffington Post, NY Times, Politico, Slate, Rollingstone, ABC News, Dailykos, Washington Post, Time, The Atlantic, NBC News, Salon, New Yorker, Thedailybeast, etc, had a cumulative total of 637.6 million unique visitors in 2018.
So, no surprise, liberal media has always and still does dominate the news landscape in America. But what about the accuracy, fairness and trustworthiness of their coverage?
With respect to accuracy … We submit for your consideration two articles (click link on journalist’s name) written by Glen Greenwald from The Intercept and John Nolte from Breitbart News that chronicle the worst ‘Fake News’ stories since Donald Trump’s election. These are just some of the most recent and glaring examples of totally inaccurate and biased reports, there have been many others.
With respect to fairness … Since January 20, 2017, the Media Research Center has analyzed every moment of coverage of President Trump on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts. They found that coverage to be 90% negative, which amounts to “two years of unrelenting hostility.”
Harvard media scholar Thomas Patterson also looked at coverage of Trump’s first 100 days in office. He found NBC’s coverage was 93% negative, CBS’s 91% negative; ABC was not included. His study also found highly negative coverage from leading newspapers and CNN, while only Fox News offered balanced coverage (52% negative vs. 48% positive).
With respect to trustworthiness … NewsBusters reports: “The media has become highly-partisan; earning greater respect among Democratic voters, of whom 76% say they trust the media (up from 51% in 2016), according to the most recent Gallup survey. But a meager 21% of Republicans say they trust the press, a near-record gap of 55 percentage points in how the press is viewed by voters of each party. (The record was a 58-point gap in 2017; prior to the age of Trump, this partisan gap never exceeded 40 points.)“
To be clear, we do not begrudge any media outlet the right to operate their business as they see fit. It’s a free country. But let’s get something straight: Every day tens of millions of Americans are subjected to supposedly “unbiased news,” more accurately characterized as “political propaganda.” Who would argue seriously that an imperceptible sprinkling of fake ads by foreigners does more harm to America than the daily barrage of divisive anti-Trump, anti-conservative, anti-faith, anti-capitalist propaganda spewing from our own national media?
To Chairman Burr and Vice Chairman Warner: We agree that Congress and social media companies should be vigilant in the fight against nefarious actors using media platforms to spread disinformation, provoke societal conflict and undermine public faith in democratic institutions … But, gentlemen, the primary enemy is not the feckless foreign actor, it is the manipulative media propagandists within.
Conservatives have known this truth to be self evident for decades, but we’re not holding our breath waiting for congressional leadership to do something about it. All we ask is that you acknowledge the real threat to our nation and stop making excuses for the 2016 election results.
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