The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

The Mainstream Media and Social Media

05/07/19 Social Media and Freedom of Speech

“As I have written in my article “Slander & Libel on Social Media and Journalism” social media is playing a more active role in our society as a source of news and political commentary. As such, we must be assured that all sides of news and political commentary have a voice. To not do so is to skewer the social and political scene, which can lead to undesirable and unforeseen results. Unfortunately, many social media outlets are banning speech that they disagree with. The majority of these bans most often occur on the conservative viewpoints of social and political speech. And this must stop as it is harmful to the body politic. I am aware of the Constitutional and legal issues in regard to legislating an end to this banning as I have outlined in the before mentioned article. I would encourage you to read this article for my thoughts on this subject.

07/30/21 Social Media and Free Speech

In my Article, “Social Media and Free Speech”, I touch upon Section 230 of the Federal code that deals with "Social Media" content and distribution. The Wikipedia article “Section 230” has more information on this topic, but the actual law, “47 U.S. Code § 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material”, is very readable.

A recent lawsuit by President Trump on his banning on Facebook and Twitter has raised some interesting questions about Section 230. In addition, comments made by President Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, have raised concerns about interactions between government and social media. A series of articles by noted Constitutional scholar and lawyer Rob Natelson examines this lawsuit from a legal and constitutional perspective. These articles are “Trump v. Twitter, Part 1: How Social Media Censorship Abuses Federal Law” and “Trump v. Twitter, Part 2: Can a Private Company Violate the First Amendment?” and “Twitter v. Trump, Part 3: Trump’s Best ‘Free Speech’ Claim against Twitter”.

The larger question that this lawsuit raises is what constitutes Free Speech in the 21st century in the era of the Internet? What good is Free Speech if someone or some entity can restrict somebody from reading or listening to your Free Speech (somewhat like the question "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound")? As the "Social Media" services utilize the free and publicly available Internet as their means of communication, should the Internet be considered as a common carrier? What restrictions on content are constitutional, and how are they are to be applied? Is a company a publisher or a provider, and be treated differently depending upon the answer? And finally, the questions about the impacts on our democracy if censorship or banning of content in Social Media is permitted to continue?

Given these questions, I have rewritten my Article, “Social Media and Free Speech”, to address these questions.

11/22/21 The Atrociousness of Mainstream Media Reporting and Commentary

Since writing my Chirp on “11/20/21 The Seven Deadly Sins of Kyle Rittenhouse”, I have read an article in the New York Post, “10 heinous lies about Kyle Rittenhouse debunked” by Miranda Devine, that details the false and misleading information that was said or written about Kyle Rittenhouse in the Mainstream Media:

1. He killed two black BLM protesters.
2. He crossed state lines.
3. Rittenhouse took an AR-15 across state lines.
4. The gun was illegal.
5. Rittenhouse’s mother drove him across state lines to the riot.
6. He was an “active shooter” who took his gun to a riot looking for trouble.
7. Rittenhouse is a “white supremacist,” as then-candidate Joe Biden labeled him in a tweet showing the teenager’s photograph.
8. He “flashed white power signs” with Proud Boys.
9. He wore surgical gloves “to cover his fingerprints.”
10. Judge Bruce Schroeder is a “Trumpy” racist biased toward the defense.

 You should read this article and weep for America, especially if their other reporting and commentary are this atrocious (which it is).

But this is nothing new for the Mainstream Media, especially in the last five years of all the willful lies and omissions in the media’s coverage of the Steele dossier and the Russian Collusion Delusion, the January 6th, 2021 ‘Insurrection’ and Officer Brian Sicknick death, the Covington kids and Nicholas Sandmann smears, the Jussie Smollett’s lies, the Wuhan laboratory gain of function research and the resulting COVID-19 Pandemic and responses, Hunter Biden’s laptop and his foreign nation dealings, and so on. But nothing beats the evil propaganda peddled about Kyle Rittenhouse and demonstrates the atrociousness of "Modern Journalism" reporting and commentary. And all of this is based upon a false narrative about American society that the "Mainstream Media" and Mainstream Cultural Media, Modern Big Business, Modern Education, Social Media holds dear.

In the 20th century, and progressively worse in the 21st century, modern journalism has drifted from reporting the facts and truths in America to the advocacy of ‘change’, ‘reform’, and ‘transformation’ based on "Progressives/Leftists" Ideals and Ideas, and their support of Democrat Party politicians and their agenda.

As a result of this reporting and commentary, America has become a bitter partisan nation based on the Mainstream Media skewered view and narrative of America, a view and narrative that is incorrect and harmful to American society, and indeed, is hateful of America. In my next Chirp on, “11/23/21 Why Do They Hate America?”, I will examine why the Democrat Party Leaders and Progressives/Leftists, as well as their adherents in the Mainstream Cultural Media, Mainstream Media, Modern Big Business, Modern Education, and Social Media, so hate America that they believe that the ‘Noble Lies’ they propagate is justifiable, rather than speaking the truth of America.

12/08/21 The Disinformation and Misinformation of the Media

The willful avoidance of facts and deliberate obscuring of what happened in the Waukesha, Wisconsin massacre (as outlined in the article, “Waukesha: The Shame of the Media” by Newt Gingrich), in the Kyle Rittenhouse reporting (as outlined in the article, “10 heinous lies about Kyle Rittenhouse debunked” by Miranda Devine), and in the Ahmaud Arbery and the Jussie Smollett’s trials, and other disinformation and misinformation reporting of "Modern Journalism", is practiced because it apparently violates the established media’s narrative of inherent white racism and black victimization. The propaganda media’s answer has been to simply avoid the facts and focus on reporting, which can at best be described as inadequate and at worst be described as maliciously dishonest and misleading.,

As in my Chirp on, "11/22/21 The Atrociousness of Mainstream Media Reporting and Commentary", modern journalism has drifted from reporting the facts and truths in America to the advocacy of ‘change’, ‘reform’, and ‘transformation’ based on "Progressives/Leftists" Ideals and Ideas, and their support of Democrat Party politicians and their agenda. They believe that this is proper journalism, as it advances the Noble Lie as I have Chirped on, "11/24/21 Noble Lies, Big Lies, and Repeated Lies". They do so because of their American hatred viewpoint, as I have Chirped on, "11/23/21 Why Do They Hate America?".

This Disinformation and Misinformation is doing great harm to the body politic, for without proper and correct information, it is not possible for the American electorate to cast their ballots in an informed, rational, and reasonable manner as I have explained in my Articles, “Rationality” and "Reasoning". It is also leading us to a degradation of "A Civil Society", a coarsening of "Dialog and Debate", and the American public to believe in "The Biggest Falsehoods in America".

Hopefully, the American public is beginning to recognize this Disinformation and Misinformation as seen in the declining viewership and readership of the "Mainstream Media". And, hopefully, this will be seen in the voting of the American electorate in the next few elections.

12/15/21 America's Trust in Mass Media

The Gallup Poll on America's Trust in Mass Media by Political Party reveals no surprises, but it is revealing as to the extent that Americans do not trust the "Mainstream Media" and "Modern Journalism":

I suspect that these results are a factor of the more you engage in “Rationality” and "Reasoning", the less likely you are to trust Mass Media, which also says much of the intelligence of Americans by Political Party.

06/20/22 Mobs and Social Media

In an article by Rob Natelson, “The Founders and the Twitter Mob”, he begins the commentary by stating:

“Over the past two centuries, our Constitution has done a good job of curbing the menace of mob behavior. Unfortunately, social media have created new challenges by re-empowering political mobs—notably, but not exclusively, the ‘Twitter Mob.’

In this essay, I discuss the risks mobs pose to republican political systems. I explain how the American Founders addressed those risks and how modern social media has re-created some of them.”

He then sections the article into; The Historical Background, The American Founders Recognized the Risk of Mobs, The Founders Addressed How to Curb Mobs, Enter Technology, Addressing the Problems, and Repealing or Enforcing Section 230. These sections illuminate the issue of mob actions on Social Media and their deleterious effects on society.  In other articles by him, he addresses the legal issues of Social Media regulation in the context of a lawsuit by President Trump against Twitter., While this lawsuit has been dismissed, the issues remain. These articles are:

• “Trump v. Twitter, Part 1: How Social Media Censorship Abuses Federal Law”
• “Trump v. Twitter, Part 2: Can a private company violate the First Amendment?”
• “Twitter v. Trump, Part 3: Trump’s best ‘free speech’ claim against Twitter”

Given Social Media's actions in the last Presidential election of canceling conservative voices, the promotion of disinformation on physically violent mob actions, and suppressing news stories unfavorable to President Biden, we have seen how social media can interfere and change the course of elections in America. This is an issue that needs to be addressed and resolved if we are to have Free Speech and the dissemination of contrary or unpopular ideas in America – which is essential to preserve the "Freedoms, Liberties, Equalities, and Equal Justice for All" in America.

11/23/22 Campaign Financing and Media Bias

The 2022 mid-term elections saw a tremendous amount of money being fed into the troughs of candidates in close or contested Congressional districts and Senate races. In many cases, one candidate often had two to three times or higher as much money as their opponent, and in all cases, it is the Democrat candidate that has the money edge. Much of this money edge is through Out-of-State Money fundraising from wealthy donors and special interest groups. This raises the issues and concerns that I have written about in my Article “Campaign Financing and Independent Expenditures”.

The predilections and biases of the "Mainstream Media", "Social Media", and "Big Tech", were also on full display with consistent negative coverage of Republican candidates and favored coverage of Democrat candidates, as I have examined in my Articles "Modern Journalism" and "Who Needs Government Suppression When You Have Big Tech Suppression".

With such thumbs on the scale by these actors in favor of Democrat candidates, it is no wonder why Republican candidates had a difficult time getting their message across and must allocate much of their resources to defending themselves rather than espousing their positions on the issues. This one-sidedness bodes ill for free and fair elections in which both sides have an equal opportunity to present their case to the American electorate. It has also contributed to a loss of faith in our elected representatives and our democratic institutions, as many Americans are cynical that elections are being purchased and propagandized for Democrat candidates. Until we address the issues of Campaign Financing and Media Bias, the cynicism of the American electorate is justifiable.

The question is, however, what can be done about this? The answer is, unfortunately, that there is little that can be done about this. Our First Amendment Rights of freedom of speech and the press allow for this situation to occur, as it should be to preserve our Liberties and Freedoms. The danger is that a cynical electorate results in the crumbling of our foundations of democracy and is injurious to the health and welfare of our democracy. A crumbling that could result in the collapse of our society and the loss of our “Freedoms, Liberties, Equalities, and Equal Justice for All” and is antithetical to our ideals as expressed by President Abraham Lincoln that “… government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

12/02/22 An Insider Comment on the News Media

Former Rolling Stone contributing editor and reporter Matt Taibbi, now with Substack and not a Trump fan or a conservative, recently made the following comment on the modern news media that every American should ponder:

“I love the news business. It’s in my bones. But I mourn for it. It’s destroyed itself.

My father had a saying: “The story’s the boss.” In the American context, if the facts tell you the Republicans were the primary villains in this or that disaster, you write that story. If the facts point more at Democrats, you go that way. If it turns out they’re both culpable, as was often the case for me across nearly ten years of investigating Wall Street and the causes of the 2008 crash for Rolling Stone, you write that. We’re not supposed to nudge facts one way or another. Our job is to call things as we see them and leave the rest up to you.

We don’t do that now. The story is no longer the boss. Instead, we sell narrative, as part of a new business model that’s increasingly indifferent to fact.

[…]

With editors now more concerned with retaining audience than getting things right, the defining characteristic across the business — from right to left — is inaccuracy. We just get a lot of stuff wrong now. It’s now less important for reporters to be accurate than “directionally” correct, which in center-left “mainstream” media mostly comes down to having the right views, like opposing Donald Trump, or anti-vaxxers, or election-deniers, or protesting Canadian truckers, or any other people deemed wrongthinkers.

In the zeal to “hold Trump accountable,” or oppose figures like Vladimir Putin, ethical guardrails have been tossed out. Silent edits have become common. Serious accusations are made without calling people for comment. Reporters get too cozy with politicians, and as a result report information either without attribution at all or sourced to unnamed officials or “people familiar with the matter.” Like scientists, journalists should be able to reproduce each other’s work in the lab. With too many anonymous sources, this becomes impossible.

We had an incident a few weeks ago where the lead of a wire service story read, “A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland.” That’s the kind of story where if you get it wrong, you can start a war, but they still put all their chips on one unnamed source. That’s very risky practice even if you’re right.

That story turned out to be wrong, which sadly is no longer uncommon. In the Trump years an extraordinary number of “bombshells” went sideways. From the “pee tape” to the Alfa Server story to speculation that Trump was a Russian spy (recruited before disco) to false reports of Russians hacking a Vermont utility to an evidence-free story about Trump’s campaign manager somehow sneaking undetected to meet the most watched human on earth, Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, we’ve accumulated piles of wrong stories.

I’m no fan of Donald Trump. I wrote a book about the man called Insane Clown President. But I’ve compiled a list of over 100 of these “bombshells” that went belly up, from “Bountygate” to MSNBC saying Russian oligarchs co-signed a loan for Trump to countless others, because these stories offend me. A good journalist should always be ashamed of error. It bothers me to see so many of my colleagues so unashamed.

[…]

The excuse, “At least we’re not Breitbart,” doesn’t even hold. Think about another of these bombshells, the one in which Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen supposedly went to Prague to meet with Russian hackers. This story came from the now-disgraced dossier of former British spy Christopher Steele. It’s been refuted multiple times, including by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who flatly declared Cohen “never traveled to Prague.” Yet the tale will not die.

From MSNBC to CNN to McClatchy we’ve had leading media outlets continue to take seriously the idea that Donald Trump’s lawyer traveled to Prague to scheme with “Kremlin Representatives” over how to fix the election using Romanian hackers, who according to Steele would afterward retreat to Bulgaria, and use that country as a “bolt hole” to “lie low.” If that’s not a conspiracy theory, I don’t know what is.

This story is every bit as nuts as the idea that the 2020 election was stolen.”

My article, "Modern Journalism", has made the same points about the news media with different examples, and, as I have said before, they are no longer journalist but propagandist. His full comments and my article point out the sorry state of news media in America and are well worth the read.

09/14/23 Media Lies and Cover-ups

From the Presidential campaign through the administration of President Trump in 2015 to 2019, we were inundated 24/7 with media lies like "Russian Collusion," "Putin's Puppet," "Election Rigging," and the "Steele Dossier." When all such "evidence" was proven to be a complete fraud fabricated through Hillary Clinton's surreptitious hiring of and collusion with a discredited ex-British spy, Christopher Steele, and a Russian fabulist at the Brookings Institution, Igor "Iggy" Danchenko, and a Clinton toady in Moscow, Olga Galkina, as examined in the NY Post article “Inside the Clinton dossier and the con behind the Russiagate scandal”. Their reporting on the two Impeachments of President Trump and the “Insurrection” of 2021 was so one-sided that a majority of the American people reacted with antipathy to their reporting. They also responded to allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election by denials or cover-ups without any investigative reporting. In any of this, did the media apologize for the disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation that they spread? Were any of the Pulitzer Prizes or other news media awards rescinded for these lies and cover-ups?

In the Presidential campaign of 2020 and throughout his administration, Joe Biden repeatedly lied when he claimed he knew nothing of his son Hunter's influence-peddling businesses. The president further prevaricated that he was not involved in Hunter's various shake-down schemes. Had journalists just been honest and independent and reported the facts, then-candidate Joe Biden might have lost a presidential debate and even the 2020 election. The public would have learned from Hunter's business associates and his laptop contents, which the media claimed was Russian disinformation but was proved to be true, that Joe was deeply involved in his son's illicit businesses. As the NY Post article “Media’s long con to bury Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal”, the media has been an active supporter of the Hunter Biden laptop lies and cover-ups. As Victor Davis Hanson has written in his article “From One Unapologetic Media Hoax to the Next”, they continue to lie or cover up the truth of the Biden family corruption to this day.

For the last eight years, the discredited media has never expressed remorse for any of the damage they did to the country. And they will not apologize again when the latest indictments against former President Trump are eventually exposed as duplicity. No one has ever been fired or apologized for perpetuating journalistic fraud on the masses of fake news stories that are believed by the core of liberal America. But given liberals’ penchant for self-righteousness and insufferable condescension, it’s not shocking that we’ll never get an apology. They can’t admit that they’re wrong because they’re too arrogant and dismiss those who were correct about this story because they view them as inferior. And that is why the media is distrusted and will never learn from their mistakes.

Alas, "Modern Journalism" ethics have sunk so low that they have become the propaganda arm of Democrat Party Leaders and Progressives/Leftists, and they are now a Fifth Column rather than the Fourth Estate in America. This bodes ill for America, as without proper facts and proper reasoning, the American people cannot make proper decisions about the future course of America. And proper facts and proper reasoning to arrive at truths is what proper journalism should be about, for:

"There can be no truths without proper facts and proper reasoning."
  - Mark Dawson

01/24/24 Social Media Censorship

With the rise of Social Media as the primary flow of information and opinion in America, there have been numerous concerns about censorship in social media, as I have examined in my Article "Who Needs Government Suppression When You Have Big Tech Suppression".

Many people argue that a private company is free to permit, censor, or label whatever content it likes on its platform, but I would disagree. Most of these social media companies are not private companies but publicly traded companies. If they wanted to become a private company, they could take out a big loan to buy up their shares and make it a private company (such as Elon Musk did with X—formally known as Twitter). But as they are publicly traded companies, shareholders own it, which means that shareholders get the final say on what is allowed or disallowed on their platform.

But there is even a larger question as to whether there should be any censorship, as they have become the largest disseminators of opinion and information to Americans. When censorship constricts the information and opinion flow, it makes for an ill-informed public that can be manipulated into ill-informed decisions.

The "Mainstream Media" and "Social Media" are different as to their legal responsibilities for what they publish. The Mainstream Media is subject to civil torts of slander and libel, while Social Media is exempt from civil torts for what their members post. The Mainstream Media must be circumspect in what they publish, while Social Media has no such circumspection. Thus, social media has free reign over their content, while mainstream media must be careful about what they permit in their content. A free reign that they utilize to censure posts with which they disagree, as well as label posts as disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation at their discretion. Some Social Media companies contract with an outside company to scan and provide this censuring or labeling, but these outside companies have their own predilections, and the nefarious results are the same.

Consequently, it is time that we reexamine the legal protections of Social Media. As these legal protections for Social Media were passed in 1996 when Social Media was in its infancy, and it is now a fully mature technology, we need Congress to reexamine this issue of the First Amendment rights of the posters to Social Media. This is a very thorny problem to address, which has many considerations of individual First Amendment rights versus private and public Social Media ownership rights.

Regrettably, as Congress is loath to get involved in these thorny considerations, I do not expect much action from them. Consequently, this issue will probably be resolved (sporadically) through Judicial rulings, which will provide indefinite guidance to both the Social Media companies and their posters as to what are acceptable posts. It will also tie up the Social Media companies and their posters in litigation, which will be time-consuming and expensive for all parties in the litigation.

However, this issue must be resolved, as the consequence of not resolving the issue is that the American people will continue to be ill-informed and make decisions based on incomplete or improper information posted on Social Media.