onfocus

"These people on this ascendant right don't just have different ideas about the role and function of journalism; they don't just believe journalists are biased liberals; they don't just believe the media is too hostile to conservatives; they are hostile to the concept of journalism itself."

When journalism upsets the right’s outrage pipeline you don’t get rational criticism and debate.

"Fox and CNN are not different flavors of news, they are different things entirely. News organizations with any legitimate claim to that title do not keep important information from the public based on which party it benefits. CNN — or primetime MSNBC — may be opinionated, but they remain fundamentally fact-based. Fox does not."

Fox is an imitation of the news style but it's something different in substance that makes viewers less informed about the world.

Reminded of this saying by the way right wing media frames every minor complaint as an existential threat and asks, "why aren't people acting violently about this right now?" knowing a portion of their audience will make it happen and they'll never face consequences.

"The larger point, though, is that network activity plus some corroborating evidence based on the content of the speech should allow plaintiffs to succeed in many cases where an attacker was playing out the paranoid fantasies of a larger radical network that was effectively under the control of a few key individuals."

Interesting proposal that could bring accountability to ringleaders who spread dangerous rhetoric online. If someone spreads violent paranoid fantasies and their followers act on it in the real world there’s really no consequences right now.

"They discussed how various platforms, from Twitter to TikTok and Telegram, are moderating the content coming out of Russia and Ukraine right now; the costs and benefits of Western companies pulling operations out of Russia during a period of increasing crackdown; and how the events of the last few weeks might shape our thinking about the nature and power of information operations."

Good discussion of the state of global social media moderation during an information war.

"Beginning Saturday morning, NetBlocks saw failed or heavily throttled connections across every major Russian telecom provider, including Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline, and MegaFon. Russians are still able to access Twitter through VPN services, but direct connections are restricted."

Twitter should stop carrying Russian media outlets.

"Here is what I am not allowed to do: write things that are known to be false, with or without the intention to mislead. There’s an ethical reason for this, and a practical one. The ethical reason is that it’s not okay to intentionally deceive people — especially when the consequences of the deception are potentially deadly, as they are with vaccine misinformation. The practical reason is that it introduces liabilities for the publisher."

It's almost like new media companies like Spotify think they are inventing something new (it's not journalism!) so there's no accountability.

“By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals,” the letter said.

Starting to feel like there are no good media companies. Once you get to a certain size you have to get with the misinformation program to make enough money to sustain things.

"The obvious people to blame for this gross behavior are Republicans themselves. But what's the fun in that? So, instead, far too many in the media are letting Republicans off the hook and instead fixing the blame on Democrats for somehow not doing more to make Republicans less evil."

It’s not fun for journalists to hold Republicans responsible because their bosses are Republicans.

"Reporters feared for their lives because of authoritarianism from Republicans. But to cover the legislative process, they now must interact with and quote the same people who helped unleash forces that put them — and the country’s democracy — in danger."

How should journalists cover politics when Republicans want to do away with democracy?

"The U.S. Constitution protects free speech; however, it does not necessarily protect deceptive speech coupled with harmful action. This distinction potentially removes barriers to accountability for social media platforms that fail to address misinformation. Laws could require procedural safeguards and reporting about misinformation without censoring speech or treating Facebook or Google like a publisher."

More questions than answers here but this article has some useful distinctions to think about including this idea that harmful action that includes speech is not protected.

Meanwhile, these same political journalists are also handicapping the 2022 and 2024 elections as if things were normal — as if it were still just a choice between two equally legitimate political parties, rather than a referendum on whether the government should be allowed to function, whether the people should be allowed to pick their leaders in the future, and whether white Christian nationalism formally replaces pluralism as the country’s organizing principle.

It seems like journalists everywhere aren’t allowed to accurately describe how the Republican Party is behaving. This article demonstrates what a more accurate description looks like.