(NO, IT’S NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE.) – Facebook plans to curate ‘high quality’ news for its users from ‘trusted outlets’
Mark Zuckerberg is considering hiring human “editors” to hand-pick “high-quality news” to show Facebook users in an effort to combat fake news — and no, it’s not an April Fool’s joke.
In his ongoing quest to satisfy the political censorship demands of Western governments, Zuckerberg told German publishing house Axel Springer that he is considering the introduction of a dedicated news section for the social media platform, which would potentially use humans to curate the news from “broadly trusted” outlets. Zuckerberg said Facebook might also start paying news publishers to include their articles in this dedicated news section in an effort to reward “high-quality, trustworthy content.”
With social media censorship already at worryingly high levels, who will decide which outlets are “broadly trusted” and which are untrustworthy? What qualifies one outlet as more “trusted” than another? Will Zuckerberg make the criteria public?
Collective punishment? Zuckerberg’s call for internet regulation is aimed at competitors – analyst
Fresh from the anti-climactic Russiagate saga and long-awaited Mueller report, will Facebook penalize all the outlets that incessantly pushed the Trump/Russia “collusion” narrative and hyped fake “bombshells” for more than two years sans evidence, or will the likes of MSNBC and Rachel Maddow automatically earn “trusted” status? The answer to that question is blindingly obvious.
Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news are reminiscent of other recent efforts from apps like NewsGuard, the US government-linked app which “rates” news websites according to their “trustworthiness” and, unsurprisingly, targets alternative media sites which do not strictly adhere to establishment narratives. If recent history is any indicator, Facebook’s own efforts to rate news will also fall directly in line with US government objectives.
The social media giant has been rightly accused of blatant censorship on multiple occasions in recent memory — and there doesn’t seem a way that a group of Facebook-hired editors could be trusted to curate the news for anyone, unless it took some serious steps to address its various biases. In fact, even if it did that, isn’t hiring human editors with their own political biases and preferences to sift through all the available news and select the stories deemed fit for public consumption just an Orwellian idea in the first place?
Facebook should probably already be aware of the pitfalls when it comes to hiring human editors for such purposes. During the 2016 US presidential election, the company’s solution to political bias in its trending news section was to fire the human editors responsible for it. Maybe Zuckerberg thinks this time it will be different? Or maybe, and more likely, this is just another PR effort to placate the pro-censorship crowd on Capitol Hill.
There is no shortage of examples of Facebook censorship at this point. Last year, the platform inexplicably took down the English-language page belonging to left-leaning, Venezuela-based news network Telesur — and deleted the page belonging to Venezuela Analysis, another left-leaning outlet offering commentary critical of Washington’s foreign policy in Latin America. The pages were later restored, but Facebook was not forthcoming with an explanation.
Changes made to Facebook algorithms to combat “fake news” in 2017, saw traffic to multiple socialist and government accountability websites plummeting — including Police the Police (a page exposing US police brutality) and the Free Thought Project (which promotes government transparency). Alternative news websites like Truth-out.org, Democracy Now and Alternet also suffered as a result of those algorithm changes.
More recently, Facebook suspended popular pages run by Maffick Media, which is 51 percent owned by RT’s video agency Ruptly. Coincidentally, the content on those pages is also highly critical of the US government. Funnily enough, Facebook isn’t often caught censoring popular pages whose content is Washington-friendly. The Maffick pages were later restored, but Facebook forced them to include more explicit information about their funding, which in itself is no big deal, but it is a requirement curiously not demanded of US government-funded or linked pages.
ALSO ON RT.COMZuckerberg asks governments for more internet regulation in self-flagellation exercise
Not only has Facebook been accused of censorship, however, it has also been found to be working at the behest of certain governments — but again, only Washington-friendly ones, of course.
The Intercept reported last year that Facebook met with Israeli government officials and complied with orders to delete the accounts belonging to certain Palestinian activists. Facebook quickly bowed to Israel’s demands after threats that it would be forced into complying with the deletion orders by law if it failed to do so voluntarily.
But things don’t look to be getting any better on the Facebook censorship front since then. A journalist for Israeli news outlet +972 Magazine tweeted on Monday that Facebook was now punishing news sites (in the form of lower views) for publishing content that “could be a negative experience” for users — whatever that means. The content in question was an article by the magazine about Gaza’s Great Return march and the casualties inflicted on protesters by the Israeli army.
With such a terrible track record when it comes to political bias and willingness to censor news and information, don’t be surprised if Facebook’s planned “dedicated news section” of “high-quality” information turns out to be a failure.
Danielle Ryan
Big League Politics Editor Patrick Howley: Obama and Brennan’s Crime of the Century Included Coercing A Supreme Court Justice
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Big League Politics Editor-in-Chief Patrick Howley joined host Matt Locke on the syndicated Conservative Cartel radio show (12-3 PM on Mojo 5-0 Radio) to discuss his landmark piece on the “Crime of the Century” carried out by Barack Obama and Deep State conspirators against President Donald Trump.
It turns out the Russia Collusion Hoax even included the attempted coercion of a Supreme Court justice by two Obama administration intel officials.
READ THE FULL REPORT: HOW OBAMA, HILLARY, AND BRENNAN CARRIED OUT THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY
MSNBC’s Maddow keeps spinning Russian collusion hysteria, even as her OWN NETWORK corrects her
The post-Mueller comedown has been hard for many MSM journalists, but none more so than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. The prime-time host continued to spin collusion hysteria, even as her own network corrected her live on air.
With Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report clearing President Trump of colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election, the focus among anti-Trump types in the media and in Washington has now shifted to pushing for access to the full contents of the report, including its underlying evidence. Surely, they argue, there must be a speck of collusion in there somewhere.
Attorney General William Barr, who released a summary of its findings last Monday, has promised to turn over as much of the report as possible, “consistent with applicable law, regulations, and Departmental policies.”
According to Maddow, “it’s hard to believe” that Mueller would allow Barr – a Trump appointee – to pick through the report himself, deciding what passages need redaction. “They wouldn’t leave that to Barr,” she said on Sunday night. But Barr, she continued, is doing that “all by himself.”
Except he’s not. In a letter sent to Congress on Friday, Barr explicitly stated that Mueller is “assisting us” in making these redactions. Even Maddow’s own producers flashed this newsline across TV screens, as Maddow argued the opposite.
In the two years Mueller has been investigating Trump, Maddow has stood out as one of the mainstream media’s most fervent Russiagate conspiracy theorists, starring in her very own detective thriller every night on live TV. Trump, she said, was “curiously well versed” in “specific Russian talking points.” The Kremlin, meanwhile, was running a “continuing operation” to steer the US government from within, and could “flip the switch” at any time if discovered, shutting down the entire US power grid.
As Maddow saw ‘Reds under the bed,’ MSNBC covered Mueller more than any other cable network, mentioning the investigator-turned-savior of democracy almost every day last year.
Could it be that the network’s producers are finally tiring of Maddow’s tinfoil-hat proclamations? If so, it’s about time.
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CNN didn’t get ‘anything’ wrong in Russiagate reporting, host claims. It didn’t?
The host of CNN’s State of the Union, Jake Tapper, tried to defend the network’s coverage of Russiagate, claiming it actually got nothing wrong. The bold claim, however, was challenged by other journalists.
Tapper made the controversial remark while talking to acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Sunday.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying the media got wrong. The media reported the investigation was going on. Other than the people in the media on the left, not on this network, I don’t know anybody that got anything wrong,” Tapper stated.
Mulvaney shot back at what he called Tapper’s personal “recollection of history.”
“Face it, the media got this wrong. It’s okay. People get stuff wrong all the time, just not at this level,” he said.
Tapper’s defense of the ‘balanced’ CNN coverage raised a few eyebrows among the journalist community, as some took to Twitter to challenge the claim and bring up embarrassing retractions of the stories on ‘collusion’ the network had to make.
Others pointed out previous statements by Tapper himself.
And even accused him of reporting fake news.
Many users took issue with the overall tone of the coverage, as well as opinions expressed by CNN guests who pushed the conspiracy theory really hard.
Some joked that Tapper’s remark was proof that he was among those viewers who stopped watching CNN as it obsessed over the disproven ‘Trump-Russia collusion’.
ICYMI: Mueller’s collusion delusion: US media is furious their president isn’t a Russian spy (VIDEO)
The dysfunction in American politics has reached the bizarre stage where there is visible anger that President Donald Trump didn’t collude with Russia to take the office.
Russiagate has been a fixture in the news for two years, where the media sold a story that it wasn’t a case of ‘if’ but ‘when’ Special Counsel Robert Mueller would find evidence to prove that Trump was Moscow’s man in the White House.
Unfortunately, Mueller wasn’t playing ball and – having taken the unprecedented approach of considering facts and not wishful thinking – he concluded that there was no evidence of collusion to be found.
So ICYMI looks at how America is dealing with the fact that Trump may have been elected because people thought he was the best option.
For more, follow #ICYMI on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
‘Nobody is panicking!’ Rachel Maddow sheds 500,000 viewers in post-Mueller slump
After putting all its eggs in the Russiagate conspiracy-theory ‘basket’ only to be let down by the contents (or lack thereof) of the Mueller report, MSNBC – and its top attraction, Rachel Maddow – are hemorrhaging viewers.
Russian-collusion high priestess Rachel Maddow’s nightly news show has slipped from number one in cable news to number six since Special Counsel Robert Mueller turned in his report on Friday, hemorrhaging half a million viewers in the space of a week. An MSNBC insider spilled the beans to the Daily Beast, assuring them that no one at the network was panicking.
“It was obviously a big couple of nights for Fox,” they said. MSNBC’s second-top-rated program, ‘The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,’ was also down half a million pairs of eyes.
#Resistance media reactions to Mueller’s “no more indictments” recommendation have varied wildly, from desperate pleas to “wait and see” what’s in the full report to claims that Mueller himself was compromised, or asking the wrong questions, all along. Maddow herself seems to have chosen the “denial” route:
“Can we expect President Trump and the Trump White House to finally accept the underlying factual record that Russia did in fact attack us?” she asked on Monday, interpreting the report summary of Attorney General William Barr, which found no evidence to suggest Russian collusion, as proof that the Russian menace was even more menacing than previously believed.
Maddow’s privileged status as Queen of the Russiagaters has largely insulated her from the standard journalistic responsibilities of telling the truth, fact-checking, and otherwise maintaining a reality-based narrative, but the Beast cited “many producers” at MSNBC who had noticeably backed away from other fiery preachers of the Russiagate gospel, like Malcolm “Russia has been plotting to invade the US for 20 years! Also memes are cruise missiles“ Nance.
‘Opportunistic, xenophobic’: WikiLeaks mocks Rachel Maddow’s latest Russia scare story
Despite the temporary ratings death spiral, network insiders took the long view, speaking of a “pivot to 2020” and keeping the faith that the Trump administration would provide plenty of raw meat for its pundits in the coming months.
And Trumpworld has already begun distributing that meat, blasting a memo to all TV news producers on Monday night that was half victory lap, half threat.
“At this point, there must be introspection from the media who facilitated the reckless statements and a serious evaluation of how such guests are considered and handled in the future,” the missive chided, mentioning some of the worst offenders – including former CIA director John Brennan and Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez – by name.
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Conspiracy Theory Peddling CNN Talker Brian Stelter Offers Excuse for CNN’s Abysmal Ratings
CNN’s eunuch has an interesting take on why his network’s ratings are falling.
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A conspiracy theorist and host at CNN made a downright bizarre excuse for his network’s plummeting ratings after the collapse of the RussiaGate hoax.
“It’s true that Fox’s prime time ratings have popped this week while CNN and MSNBC’s ratings have been below average. That makes sense: On the right, the Barr letter is being celebrated like a sequel to election night. Since the letter’s release on Sunday, there hasn’t been much news. So I’m not surprised by the ebb and flow, but I’m keeping an eye on it…” said Brian Stelter in his morning newsletter.
Stelter hosts the show “Reliable Sources,” which proved itself unreliable on multiple occasions, but confirmed its unreliability after the CNN’s president said that the network’s reporters “are not investigators.”
The excuse that there “hasn’t been much news” this week is bogus.
America’s favorite alleged hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett was mysteriously exonerated by tight-lipped prosecutors in Chicago who have deep ties to the Democratic Party establishment, all the way up the ladder to the Obama family.
Going to, not from jail is former CNN darling Michael Avenatti, whose alleged un-indicted co-conspirator is Mark Geragos, a former CNN legal analyst who has now been released by the network. The network once let both men dominate their airtime. Now, Stelter says they’re not newsworthy.
CNN could always discuss their own legal woes. The network was recently served with a $250 million lawsuit by the attorneys for Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann, alleging that the network defamed him. That was on March 9. CNN first covered the story on March 21 – then dropped it altogether.
There’s plenty of news to cover. Perhaps Stelter could drop the charade and be honest about why his network is rapidly losing viewership.
The Russian “collusion” scandal was always a conspiracy theory, and CNN and the rest of the cable nets perpetuated it for two years.
Russiagate diehards can’t let the collusion narrative go, come up with new theories instead
The conspiracy known as ‘Russiagate’ should have ended with the news that, after intense investigation, no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was found — but die-hard collusion truthers are finding it hard to move on.
Attorney General William Barr sent a four-page letter summarizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings to Congress on March 24. Quoting the report directly Barr wrote that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in 2016.
That unambiguous conclusion was reached with the help of 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts and forensic accountants, among other professionals. In pursuit of any evidence to prove Trump colluded with Moscow, Mueller issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.
But none of that was enough to satisfy or dent the resolve of the Russiagate true believers (on social media or in the mainstream media) who are still convinced that they were right all along and are coming up with new theories in a last-ditch effort to prove it.
‘Barr is lying for Trump!’
Following the letter, the first instinct of the Russiagaters was to cast Barr as the new villain. It was too early to turn on Mueller (who had been held up for two years as a Messiah-like figure who would save them from the Trump presidency).
“Barr is a Trump appointee!” they shouted on Twitter, suggesting that the AG lied or misconstrued the contents of Mueller’s report while he sat by and said nothing. Former Hillary Clinton adviser Adam Parkhomenko even accused Barr of engineering a “coverup” of Mueller’s real evidence.
This was followed by demands for the release of the report in its entirety, which is a fair request. Trump himself in the past has said he would have “no problem” with the full report being released, so time will tell whether he’ll stick to that position or not. Regardless, what the Russiagaters are expecting to find in the full report is a bit of a mystery, since we already know there was no evidence of collusion established by Mueller.
‘Mueller didn’t investigate the right things!’
Perhaps realizing that accusing Barr of spinning the report in Trump’s favor wasn’t going to cut it, collusion enthusiasts finally began to set their sights on Mueller himself. A piece in the New York Times noted the “sense of mourning” that had set in among “disappointed Mueller fans” who were now beginning to “rethink the pedestal they built for him.”
“Mueller’s scope was too narrow!” the former fans insisted, after pledging their hopes on his investigative skills for two years and hanging on every “bombshell” and “turning point” the media — including the Times — had offered them. Some were so disillusioned that they decided the whole thing must have been “a setup” from day one.
‘Forget Mueller, the evidence is in plain sight!’
Others maintained that Mueller (“a Republican!”) was simply ignoring all the “evidence” of collusion that was in “plain sight.” The “plain sight” narrative was boosted by the unrelenting Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the Democrats’ collusion charge and even claimed that he seen the evidence of collusion himself. Yet, on Tuesday, Schiff told CNN that the problem was an inability to establish proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” and promised that Congress would continue its own investigations of Trump to prove that he was “compromised” by Russia.
Some did stick by Mueller, however, insisting that they trust him and will accept whatever is in the report. Whether they will stand by that assessment if they are disappointed by the contents of the full report remains to be seen.
‘But what about *insert theory*?’
Then there were those who went back to basics and dug up all the old theories. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia Evelyn Farkas suggested that maybe Trump secretly owes buckets of money to Russians “close to Putin.”
What about that Trump Tower meeting? What about WikiLeaks? What about Trump saying nice things about Putin? Come on, there must be something they can catch him on.
Media madness
US media has taken two different approaches to the Mueller news. There are the ones who are eager to move on and forget Russiagate ever happened (no need to reflect on the role journalists played in hyping the conspiracy) — and there are those who are doubling down.
Preferring the ‘let’s all move on’ option, two CNN reporters penned an unintentionally funny article suggesting that the finding of no collusion was an opportunity to quickly “move past a dark period,” but worried that the president “isn’t prepared to let go.” One assumes they haven’t recently encountered any of the congressional Democrats who are insisting that investigations of Trump will continue indefinitely.
Coming as a surprise to no one, MSNBC’s chief Russiagate prophet Rachel Maddow is one who has opted to double down, barely acknowledging on her Monday night show that no collusion had been found and pouring ample skepticism on Barr’s letter. Poor, desperate Maddow was then unironically dubbed the “queen of collusion” in the Washington Post, which was hardly a beacon of reason and moderation over the last two years.
Anyway, best to stay tuned; who knows what new theories the Russiagate devotees will come up with next.
Danielle Ryan RT
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