Congress recognized that the internet could be an incredible venue for free expression, and it could provide individuals with a platform for spontaneous expression larger than ever before. In response, Congress enacted Section 230. In the early days of the internet, service providers were sued when people were hurt or offended by comments left on message boards. But they seem to misunderstand what this law does fundamentally. President Trump and his supporters have focused on one law as the source of all of their grievances with social media, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Twitter escalated the feud yet again by flagging a Trump tweet that called for shooting looters in Minnesota for violating Twitter’s standards. Then, Trump announced that he would sign an executive order punishing social media companies.
#The daily caller series
In a series of tweets, President Trump revived long-simmering accusations that social media platforms display anti-conservative bias. President Trump erupted with rage when Twitter posted a fact check of two of his tweets on mail-in voting.
So we’re really left with a nothing-burger about an advocacy organization that, like hundreds of advocacy organizations, has given its work to journalists.In the ongoing war between President Trump and social media, the casualty may be social media as we know it. And this, of course, makes you further doubt the alleged source’s claim that various journalists are in Media Matters’ pocket. I’m pretty sure Media Matters didn’t want Ben Smith to write a story linking Media Matters to anti-Semitism. It does apparently have a source claiming that Ben Smith will write whatever Media Matters wants him to write. Now, it’s a good story if the Daily Caller can show that Media Matters got reporters to publish stories that weren’t true, or were slanted to its perspective. (I have no memory of ever communicating with anybody from Media Matters, but it’s possible I have. Obtaining information from biased sources is an activity known in the journalism profession as “reporting.” The job of a journalist is to process the information and to decide if it checks out, if it’s worth publishing, if it means what the source says it means, and so on. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line, so that’s where they sent it.” “Ben Smith will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.” We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. “Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna. “The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico ,” remembered one former staffer. Reached by phone, Sargent declined to comment. “If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge. Greg Sargent will write anything you give him. “The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon.
The most putatively explosive portion of the story is that the mainstream media are somehow Media Matters’ lapdogs. It’s generally best not to take any published claims in the Daily Caller at face value, though. The story has some juicy dirt on David Brock, the former right-wing pseudo-journalist turned apostate who runs Media Matters, suggesting that Brock suffers from strange delusions and paranoia about his own security (ironically, like his bête noire Roger Ailes.) There’s a good chance that particular part of the story could fall into the portion of the Venn diagram where the “stuff printed in the Daily Caller” circle and the “stuff that’s true” circle overlap. The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson’s publication, has a new story on the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters. Don’t feel obliged to restart them, either.
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