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MEDIA

How to Put a Stop to Twitter’s Game-Playing on Censorship Congress does not need to repeal Section 230 to do it. By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/washington-can-put-a-stop-to-twitters-game-playing-on-censorship/

T he much-misunderstood Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act is in the spotlight again. Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, suppressed reporting that Joe Biden abetted his son Hunter’s cashing in on the then-vice president’s political influence. Since there are plenty of alternatives to these social-media platforms, their actions merely drew more attention to the story while calling into question their qualification for Section 230 immunity from lawsuits.

The Biden news was broken by the New York Post, the nation’s fourth-largest daily by circulation, whose Twitter account (with 1.8 million followers) remains suspended as of this writing — irrationally so, given that the social-media site is no longer blocking other users from sharing links to the reports that prompted the Post’s account to be locked. Twitter also locked the account of Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, as well as that of the Trump reelection campaign.

Twitter’s bogus rationale for the suspensions was the claim that the Biden information had been “hacked” from a laptop computer that appears to have belonged to Hunter. In fact, there is no evidence that the emails, photographs, videos, and other materials on the laptop were hacked or otherwise misappropriated. Hunter suffers from drug addiction and is notoriously erratic. The laptop was brought to a repair shop in Delaware and never reclaimed. The shop owner, in addition to being given consensual access to the data, reported it to the FBI. Plus, Fox News reports that the work order prepared when the computer was dropped off appears to bear Hunter Biden’s signature.

Jeffrey Toobin Suspended by The New Yorker After Exposing Himself on Zoom Toobin claims he thought his camera was off:By Bonnie Stiernberg

https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/internet/jeffrey-toobin-new-yorker-suspended

We’ve all accidentally left ourselves on mute during a Zoom meeting before, but this is, uh, a bit more extreme. Vice reports that the New Yorker has suspended reporter Jeffrey Toobin after he exposed himself on a Zoom call last week between members of the publication and WNYC radio that’s being referred to as the “Zoom Dick Incident.”

Toobin insists it was an accident, claiming he thought his camera was turned off (though he offered no explanation for why his dick would be out during a work call in the first place).

 “I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera,” he said in a statement to Vice. “I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers. I believed I was not visible on Zoom. I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.”

Toobin’s Conde Nast email has been disabled, and he has not tweeted since Oct. 13. New Yorker spokesperson Natalie Raabe confirmed he has been suspended, saying, “Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended while we investigate the matter.”

He did, however, appear on CNN, where he is the network’s chief legal analyst, as recently as Saturday. The network told Vice that Toobin has been granted leave. “Jeff Toobin has asked for some time off while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted,” CNN said in a statement.

The Bidens: Media Selling A Preposterous Alternate Reality Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-10-18-the-bidens-media-selling-a-

It was Wednesday October 14 that the New York Post broke its big story about the Hunter Biden laptop and emails, confirming Joe Biden’s personal involvement in Hunter’s Ukraine/Burisma corruption. The big news the following day was the efforts of social media giants Facebook and Twitter to limit the circulation of this story on their platforms. But how about the rest of the media? Clearly, they were all aware of this story. So, how would they report it? Could they really just ignore a story of this significance in the final stages of a presidential election campaign?

With the passage of a few days, the answer to that question is now in. An official talking point was developed, and somehow got adopted by every single organ of the Democrat media. The official talking point is that the emails are a “possible disinformation campaign” put out by the Russians on behalf of Trump. Yes, it’s the return of Russia, Russia, Russia! Somehow, dozens of media organs adopted this exact same talking point within hours of each other. Is there a source? I’ve gone through about a dozen of these pieces, and every single one that I have found attributes the story to some anonymous source. The sources are not all the same, but supposedly every single one seems to have demanded anonymity. Odd, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, the indications that the emails are genuine have greatly strengthened. I’ll get to that in a bit. But first let’s look at a sample showing the official mainstream media talking point:

From USA Today, October 17: “A tabloid got a trove of data on Hunter Biden from Rudy Giuliani. Now, the FBI is probing a possible disinformation campaign.” Excerpt: “Less than three weeks before one of the most contentious presidential campaigns in history, federal authorities are investigating whether the material supplied to the New York Post by Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is part of a smoke bomb of disinformation pushed by Russia.” Source: “according to a person familiar with the matter.”

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: THE PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO KNOW

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. Wherever the cause of liberty is making its way, one of its highest accomplishments is the guarantee of the freedom of the press.”    Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)        Address – American Society of Newspaper Editors 1925

                                                                                                        

For the past ten or more years, I have posted my essays on a blog run by Google. It had always been easy to do; traffic on the Blog was generally slow. It was a way to preserve my essays (besides the paper copies and the ones stored in the cloud and on my hard drive), and as a means to access them by subject through the internet. In recent months, the number of “hits” on my Blog has risen to the range of four to six thousand a month – not a lot in this age we live in, but enough so that Google apparently decided that posting and editing should be more onerous. I have not been blocked, but access for me has become more difficult.

A few days ago, Twitter and Facebook blocked access to a story in the New York Post that showed an e-mail from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, to Hunter Biden, a new board member. The e-mail, dated April 17, 2015, thanked Hunter Biden for an introduction to his father, indicating a meeting had taken place between Vice President Biden and Mr. Pozharskyi. Mr. Biden has denied such a meeting took place. The Senate Homeland Security Committee, led by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is “in the process of validating the information,” as Senator Johnson told the Wall Street Journal. As well, Twitter locked the personal account of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, because she had linked to the Post’s story.

Social Media Censoring Of Biden Influence-Peddling Must End Now

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/10/16/social-media-censoring-of-biden-influence-peddling-must-end-now/

It seemed perhaps a bit excessive when President Donald Trump referred to Democratic candidate Joe Biden as a “grifter.” But after reviewing the incriminating emails found on son Hunter Biden’s laptop, if anything Trump’s remark might be an understatement.

We’re writing this knowing full well that the progressive apologists for Democratic Party crimes at social media giants Facebook and Twitter probably won’t let this be shared. They’ve basically dammed up the truth so no one can share it, hoping it will all go away.

It won’t. The news is getting out. And it isn’t good for either Joe Biden or his freeloading son. The evidence clearly suggests that both Bidens profited from the vice president’s office during the Obama administration, in essence selling access for cash.

What’s galling is that Biden had heretofore denied any contact at all with Hunter’s many global partners, saying he had “never spoken” to his son “about his overseas business dealings.”

But the newly discovered trove of emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop says otherwise.

Twitter Operates as Biden’s Censorship Arm A sordid tale of tech giants’ election interference. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/twitter-operates-bidens-censorship-arm-joseph-klein/

Twitter is censoring the dissemination of links to a bombshell news story and user commentary that is negative to the Democrats’ presidential candidate Joe Biden as voters are already casting their ballots less than three weeks before Election Day. On Wednesday, Twitter as well as Facebook blocked access through their platforms to a New York Post story casting serious doubts on Biden’s denials that he had ever discussed his son Hunter’s business dealings with the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma while he was serving as vice president. Hunter was raking in lots of money from Burisma while his father Joe was traveling to Ukraine as the Obama administration’s point man there.

The New York Post article published the text of an e-mail reportedly showing a top Burisma executive thanking Hunter for “the opportunity to meet your father.” In May 2014, the year that Hunter Biden secured his lucrative position with Burisma for which he had no qualifications other than the Biden name, Vadym Pozharskyi, a top Burisma adviser, e-mailed Hunter asking Joe Biden’s prodigal son “how you could use your influence” on Burisma’s behalf. Less than a year later, on April 17, 2015, Pozharskyi reportedly sent Hunter Biden an e-mail thanking Hunter “for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent (sic) some time together.” Less than eight months after the date of this e-mail, during a December 2015 trip to Ukraine, Joe Biden by his own admission pressured Ukraine’s leaders to get rid of the Ukrainian prosecutor or face the loss of a $1 billion dollar loan guarantee. That prosecutor claimed he was preparing to investigate Burisma, which would have meant interrogations of members of Burisma’s executive board including Hunter Biden.

Twitter and Facebook’s Shameful Repression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden Story

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/twitter-and-facebooks-shameful-repression-of-the-new-york-posts-hunter-biden-story/

This morning, Andy Stone, Facebook’s policy communications manager (and, per his bio, a former staffer for Barbara Boxer, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the House Majority PAC), announced that the social-media giant would begin “reducing” the “distribution” of a New York Post investigation into emails purporting that Joe Biden met with a top executive from the Ukrainian natural-gas firm Burisma Holdings at the behest of his son Hunter Biden.

Bad idea.

In one of the emails reported by the Post, a Burisma executive named Vadym Pozharskyi thanks Hunter for inviting him to Washington to meet with the vice president in 2015.

If the Post report is to be believed, the Biden-Burisma meeting occurred less than a year before the vice president pressured Ukrainian officials to fire Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor investigating the company that was paying Hunter $50,000 per month for his alleged expertise. That is, by any journalistic standard, newsworthy.

Instead of simply asking pertinent questions, or debunking the Post’s reporting, a media blackout was initiated. A number of well-known journalists warned colleagues and their sizable social-media audiences not to share the story.

Legacy Media Fall Silent On Bombshell Report Showing Joe Biden Lied About Knowledge Of Son’s Foreign Business By Tristan Justice

http://Legacy Media Fall Silent On Bombshell Report Showing Joe Biden Lied About Knowledge Of Son’s Foreign Business By Tristan Justice

Any time a legacy paper drops what they call a “bombshell” report on President Donald Trump, one can safely bet it will end up on the front page of every outlet immediately upon publication.

It happened with the Woodward tapes, where the Watergate journalist uncovered comments the president had been making for months. It happened with a report in the Atlantic, where the magazine published a hit piece based solely on anonymous sources making claims only to be contradicted by more than a dozen current and former White House staff, including fired National Security Advisor John Bolton. And it happened with every minor new detail to emerge in the mainstream media’s Russiagate narrative seeking to indict the president as a Russian agent.

When the New York Post dropped an actual bombshell report on Wednesday morning however, exposing that 2020 Democratic presidential nominee repeatedly lied about what he knew of his son’s potentially criminal overseas business activity, legacy outlets so eager to publish incriminating content on the Trump White House have gone silent.

Emails obtained by the Post show correspondence between Hunter Biden and Vadym Pozharskyi, a Ukrainian advisor to Biden’s energy firm Burisma show that contrary to Joe Biden’s claims that he never talked business with his son “or with anyone else,” the vice president at the time was indeed introduced to Pozharskyi by Hunter. Hunter Biden was raking in upwards of $50,000 a month in excess compensation for serving on the board of Burisma while his father served as the “public face” of White House policy towards Ukraine.

THE 1619 CHRONICLES Bret Stephens *****

https://mailchi.mp/30f104131355/krd-new-bret-stephens-the-1619-chronicles?e=936

Bret Stephens takes on his own paper’s “1619 Project” in glorious form, exposing the many falsehoods and problems with it. Bravo! KRD

If there’s one word admirers and critics alike can agree on when it comes to The New York Times’s award-winning 1619 Project, it’s ambition. Ambition to reframe America’s conversation about race. Ambition to reframe our understanding of history. Ambition to move from news pages to classrooms. Ambition to move from scholarly debate to national consciousness.

In some ways, this ambition succeeded. The 1619 Project introduced a date, previously obscure to most Americans, that ought always to have been thought of as seminal — and probably now will. It offered fresh reminders of the extent to which Black freedom was a victory gained by courageous Black Americans, and not just a gift obtained from benevolent whites.

It showed, in a stunning photo essay, the places where human beings were once bought and sold as slaves — neglected scenes of American infamy. It illuminated the extent to which so much of what makes America great, including some of our uniquely American understandings of liberty and equality, is unthinkable without the struggle of Black Americans, as well as the extent to which so much of what continues to bedevil us is the result of centuries of racism.

And, in a point missed by many of the 1619 Project’s critics, it does not reject American values. As Nikole Hannah-Jones, its creator and leading voice, concluded in her essay for the project, “I wish, now, that I could go back to the younger me and tell her that her people’s ancestry started here, on these lands, and to boldly, proudly, draw the stars and those stripes of the American flag.” It’s an unabashedly patriotic thought.

Don’t Let the Media Win This Election By Frank Miele

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/12/dont_let_the_media_win_this_election.html

“It is hard for anyone who is not chained to a rock to fathom how millions of people can accept the anti-Trump narrative that is projected 24/7 from the studios of CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and the rest. Don’t these millions of people — these “likely voters,” according to multiple polls — have any perspective?”

The mainstream media have always skewed left in the modern era, but that didn’t mean they were parasitic vampires who fed on the misfortune of others. When Ronald Reagan — the most conservative modern president  elected prior to Donald Trump — was wounded by a would-be assassin’s bullet in 1981, the media reported the event as a matter of national and historic significance. There was no glee and no speculation about President Reagan’s karmic responsibility for his near-death experience.

As a young liberal myself then, I experienced the horror of seeing our president shot on camera and the joy of seeing our president and his wife, Nancy, wave from the window of his hospital room several days later. The shooting was a moment of unifying grief, and the rapid recovery was a moment of triumph, not just for President Reagan, but for our people as a whole. Politics be damned.

Fast-forward four decades. Welcome to “Twilight of the Media: The Week of the Vampires.” When Donald Trump revealed that he had tested positive for coronavirus, the media spoke with almost one voice: Trump got what he deserved. That was the beginning of a week that represents what one can only hope is the low point in media distortion and Fake News, but may also justifiably be described as “situation normal.” It certainly made clear to me and many others what is at stake on Nov. 3.