Glenn Greenwald points out that no evidence was needed for left-leaning news outlets to conclude that Trump was in Putin's pocket.
I write this as someone who has almost no respect for both the Democrats, the Republicans and for their respective media teams.
Today's Netchoice opinion out of the 5th Circuit stuns Big Tech, which claimed that it had a First Amendment right to muzzle viewpoints of users. No you don't, said the Court. An excerpt:
A Texas statute named House Bill 20 generally prohibits large social media platforms from censoring speech based on the viewpoint of its speaker. The platforms urge us to hold that the statute is facially unconstitutional and hence cannot be applied to anyone at any time and under any circumstances.
In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to “the freedom of speech.” But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.
The implications of the platforms’ argument are staggering. On the platforms’ view, email providers, mobile phone companies, and banks could cancel the accounts of anyone who sends an email, makes a phone call, or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate, or business. What’s worse, the platforms argue that a business can acquire a dominant market position by holding itself out as open to everyone—as Twitter did in championing itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” Blue Br. at 6 & n.4. Then, having cemented itself as the monopolist of “the modern public square,” Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017), Twitter unapologetically argues that it could turn around and ban all pro-LGBT speech for no other reason than its employees want to pick on members of that community, Oral Arg. at 22:39–22:52.
Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say. Because the district court held otherwise, we reverse its injunction and remand for further proceedings.
In the meantime, during Congressional testimony, Facebook admits that it has been coordinating with the Whitehouse & CDC to censor FB users' constitutionally protected speech.
Jesse Singal digs into this storiybut, more importantly, into the way the New York Times has once again committed journalistic malpractice. Our media outlets have turned into two competing teams that act like churches. It's as if we are relying on churches to provide us with factual accuracy regarding their respective dogmas:
In light of all this, it’s interesting to read the rest of the Times story and examine which information Patel did and didn’t include. There is no sign he (or the other two staffers who worked on the story) contacted any other member of either team or its coaching staff, or anyone in attendance at the game, or anyone who wasn’t in a leadership, issuing-an-official-statement position at BYU. In the age of ubiquitous social media and gigabytes of video being posted from every live event every second, I bet Patel and his colleague could have contacted at least two dozen individuals in attendance with about an hour of work, if only to get some color about what the atmosphere was like in the student section supposedly hurling these slurs. . . .
As of now, the Cougar Chronicle’s version of this story is better, more complete, and more accurate than The New York (freaking) Times’, in part because it didn’t treat the accusation as automatically true. Rather, the reporters did some reporting. All these days later, the Times story remains up, treating the maximalist account of this incident as more or less settled fact, spreading misinformation, without an update or follow-up article in sight.
This is reason number 2,342,392,398 why I don’t trust journalists who insist that the way forward for journalism is to intentionally stray further from the ideals of objectivity. While few will say it quite so bluntly, in practice, the idea seems to be that because in the past certain groups and claims weren’t given the benefit of the doubt, now they should reflexively be believed, with little need for due diligence.
I can’t emphasize enough how basic the stuff the Times failed to do here used to be: As a journalist, you should always have a tiny but insistent voice nipping at the back of your mind, demanding (to the extent possible) a bit more skepticism, a bit more independent confirmation, and so on. If you think things through journalistically, the fact that BYU hurriedly issued statements denouncing the racism shouldn’t be seen as proof it actually occurred, because of course the institution has its own goals and it wouldn’t look good for it to do anything but issue an abject apology.
The Espionage Act is an embarrassment that would make Marcos or Suharto squeamish, but it’s of course not completely impossible there’s an actual espionage offense in Trump’s case somewhere (just as obviously, no evidence of this has been produced). Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried under the Act for giving bomb secrets to the Soviets, as Michael Beschloss and Michael Hayden just helpfully reminded us. However, in modern times, the Espionage Act is more associated with talking to the Times, ABC, The Guardian and The Intercept than with actual spying. The defendants are more often conscience-stricken heroes like Hale than villains.
That’s the problem with this law. “Information relating to the national defense” can essentially be anything the government decides, and they can put you in jail a long time for “mishandling” it, which in Assange’s case included merely having it. Trump or no Trump, if you think that’s okay, you’re an asshole. It’s totally un-American, which is why Robert Reich shouldn’t be surprised if Donald Trump acts proud of being investigated for it. This law is more infamous than he is, and everyone but a handful of blue checks can see it.
Fascinating peek behind the scenes at the New York Times provided by Bari Weiss. This account was published by the National Review:
Weiss, who cited the “illiberal environment” at the Times as reason for her departure from the paper two years ago, first told the story while interviewing Scott on a Wednesday episode of her podcast, Honestly With Bari Weiss. Weiss recalled:
Weiss: Here’s what happened. I was at the New York Times and you or your staff sent in an op-ed about the bill, and why it fell apart. And this is the part I’m not sure if you know — there was a discussion about the piece, and whether or not we should run it, and one colleague, a more senior colleague, said to a more junior colleague who was pushing for the piece, ‘Do you think the Republicans really care about minority rights?’Scott: Wow.
Weiss: And the more junior colleague said, ‘I think Tim Scott cares about minority rights.’ And then — and here’s the pretty shocking part — the more senior colleague said, ‘Let’s check with Senator Schumer before we run it.’
Scott: Wow.
Weiss: And the colleague, the younger one, refused. Because he said — because that colleague said — it wasn’t an ethical thing to do.
Scott: Wow.