The ‘Experts’ Cited by the New Censors A leftist professor helps Democrats attack non-leftist media. By James Freeman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-experts-cited-by-the-new-censors-11614128309?mod=opinion_lead_pos11
Two House Democrats from California, Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, launched a frontal assault on the First Amendment this week with a letter to the CEOs of communications companies demanding to know what they are doing to police unwelcome speech.
A Journal editorial notes that “the letter is a demand for more ideological censorship.” The two legislators write: “Our country’s public discourse is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies.”
But it’s clear that they only want to discipline one side. The Democrats claim, “Experts have noted that the right-wing media ecosystem is “much more susceptible…to disinformation, lies, and half-truths.”
The “experts” quoted are three Harvard academics, and the lead author is law professor Yochai Benkler. His take on “right-wing” media is perhaps not surprising given that according to the OpenSecrets website he donates exclusively to left-wing politicians, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).
In any case, Mr. Benkler has assembled an interdisciplinary team at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and purports to have discovered data showing that conservative media is bad.
Writing in the Washington Post in October of 2018, Mr. Benkler asserted:
Our analysis underscores not only the enormous power of right-wing media but also their distinctiveness from left-wing media. The conservative network of outlets, with Fox at its center, feeds a large minority of Americans narratives that confirm their biases, fills them with outrage at their political opponents, and isolates them from views that contradict these narratives. It is a closed propaganda feedback loop.
Left-leaning media, whatever the goals of some of their members, have failed to produce anything similar, our analysis found.
Your humble correspondent is a Fox News contributor and does not share Mr. Benkler’s opinion of the network or its viewers. But is it really possible that by the fall of 2018, two years into the collusion story, he hadn’t figured out that CNN and MSNBC were relentlessly persuading many Americans on the political left to believe something that wasn’t true?
Mr. Benkler spent part of that 2018 column grousing about how much attention Hillary Clinton’s email scandal had received during the 2016 campaign, and this is perhaps not surprising. While his so-called research is now being used by Democrats to try to suppress non-leftist media outlets, he seems to think that classified information should often be free. In November of 2018 in the New York Times, Charlie Savage wrote about WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, espionage convict Chelsea Manning and fugitive Edward Snowden:
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor who testified at Ms. Manning’s court-martial in 2013 that WikiLeaks played a watchdog journalism role, denounced any charging of Mr. Assange for his work with Ms. Manning and Mr. Snowden. Mr. Benkler described Ms. Manning and Mr. Snowden as ‘’patriots’’ and ‘’whistle-blowers’’ and who, even if one did not agree with their actions, ‘’are clearly trying to do something to keep the government accountable.’’
But, he said, if there turns out to be evidence that Mr. Assange knowingly coordinated with a Russian intelligence agency trying to undermine democracy, ‘’I don’t think you have the same kind of protections from prosecution.’’
Good guess, professor.
Mr. Benkler’s research into U.S. media still seems to have plenty of holes. There’s at least circumstantial evidence that by 2019 the professor and his Harvard colleagues still hadn’t figured out how much the government had abused its surveillance powers against Trump associates. That’s the year the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple wrote:
Just take the whole “deep state” conspiracy theory, which holds that President Trump fell victim to a plot by national security establishment figures who felt threatened by his outsider policies. In their book “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics,” Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts examine how the phrase “deep state” morphed from a nonpartisan description of dark forces to a highly partisan attack on Trump detractors.
Had the Harvard crew never heard of the “resistance” movement inside the federal government? Reviewing the recent sentencing of Kevin Clinesmith would be a good place for the professors to begin their research on this topic.
Perhaps they’ve never heard of the case if they’ve chosen to stay inside a closed propaganda feedback loop of leftist media.
Comments are closed.
