Musk interviewed Alice Weidel, candidate for chancellor for the German party Alternative for Germany (AfD), during a Jan. 9 X Space and made the case that “free speech is the bedrock of democracy.” Weidel explained to Musk that the interview was being closely observed by E.U. goons seeking to enforce a draconian censorship law: “Now while we talk, 150 bureaucrats of the European Union are watching us, our conversation, to enforce this ridiculous Digital Services Act (DSA), that is nothing else than a censorship on free speech.”

And Weidel isn’t being paranoid here. Politico reported on Thursday that bureaucrats would be listening in. Politico also discussed their investigative powers and mentioned that the EU is already investigating X for refusing to censor free speech in July 2024.

During his discussion with Weidel, Musk defended free speech, telling Weidel: “Without freedom of speech, people are obviously not able to say what they want to say and then they cannot make an informed vote. So if people are simply fed propaganda and have no access to what’s really going on, then they can’t make an informed vote and you don’t have a real democracy, so that’s why I say free speech is the bedrock of democracy.”

Musk followed with another jab at censorship: “It’s actually quite easy to tell who the bad guys are: It’s like who wants to shut down freedom of speech? They are the bad guys. It’s very clear.” […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org

On Wednesday, Fu relied on “experts” who naturally told her what she wanted to hear. Championing one side’s experts is one reason why fact-checkers have burned their credibility. For example, in 2022, PolitiFact rated Sen. Mitch McConnell “false” because liberal experts disagreed with his take on a Democratic “voting rights” bill; the fact that PolitiFact also interviewed CATO’s Ilya Shapiro, who agreed with McConnell, had no impact on their rating.

Fu also warned, “Fact-checkers say that they’ve noticed misinformation go unchecked on X. Science Feedback, a fact-checking organization in the U.S. that was part of Meta’s program, analyzed X posts from the 2024 European Parliament elections. It found that out of the 894 tweets that professional fact-checkers identified as containing misinformation, only 11.7% had a Community Note attached.”

Because the European Fact-Checking Standards Network only provides its data upon request, readers are left to simply guess what those 894 tweets said, although climate-related issues are likely disproportionately represented. Furthermore, it is not like the fact-checkers fact-check everything themselves. Likewise, while PolitiFact may find it necessary to put a label on posts about Donald Trump not being dead, most people do not waste their time visiting such pages.

Back home, Fu writes, “A separate analysis by Poynter and Faked Up into Community Notes made on Election Day in the U.S. found that only a small percentage of notes were rated as helpful.” […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org

In November, Carr, recently picked by President-elect Donald Trump to chair the FCC, wrote a letter obtained by Newsmax to the CEOs of Microsoft, Apple, Meta and Alphabet (Google) to challenge the tech companies on censorship and potential ties to Orwellian “media monitors” like NewsGuard. NewsGuard fired back a letter in December, manipulating and denying facts to cry foul. MRC has repeatedly exposed the egregious leftism infused in NewsGuard’s ratings system across multiple studies.

NewsGuard co-CEOs Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill denied that NewsGuard “favors censorship,” asserting, “The opposite is true and is imbued in everything NewsGuard does. NewsGuard was founded in 2018 explicitly as an alternative to government censorship of the internet.” Undermining the claim, however, is the fact that NewsGuard received funding from the U.S. federal government.

“The fact that NewsGuard can claim to be an alternative to government censorship while receiving funding from the government defies logic,” MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider blasted. “It’s doublespeak! NewsGuard is in fact a prototype of the very kind of dystopian Ministry of Truth that Americans should be unnerved about. For Crovitz and Brill to brazenly attempt to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes now and play the victim is more proof why nobody should take anything they say seriously without a bucket of salt.”

Previous statements from NewsGuard leadership also undermine the co-CEO’s claim. Brill, who falsely accused the Hunter Biden laptop scandal of being a Russian “hoax” in 2020 (even though the new letter denied NewsGuard ever labeled it Russian disinformation), slammed the concept of free speech and urged “gatekeepers” to censor it by saying earlier this year, “The idea that everybody can have an opinion, [for instance] about who won the election … I think that is a dangerous idea.” […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org

In a Dec. 24 press release, Hochul’s office bragged about alleged “Online Safety Legislation.” One bill in particular, S895B/A6789B, “Requires Social Media Companies To Disclose Their Terms of Service Relating to Hate Speech.” But “hate speech” is a vague and easily abused term, often weaponized by anti-speech leftists like Hochul and Big Tech censors as justification for draconian censorship.

In the release, Hochul’s office detailed how the S895B requires social media companies to inform users about terms of service, while also requiring social media “to submit to the [NY] attorney general certain terms of service reports,” and offer “remedies for violations.”

MRC Vice President for Free Speech America Dan Schneider set the record straight:

“We have all seen how the New York AG uses and abuses her office. Her ‘suggestions’ to the Big Tech platforms are really demands that, if not complied with, will result in her bringing all kinds of cases against them. If they don’t censor enough political speech, these tech companies can expect to be sued for not complying with business records laws, not enforcing enough diversity requirements, or not tying their shoes correctly. This is thuggish legislation designed to silence political opposition from the right. It is un-American and unconstitutional.”

Disturbingly, Assembly member Grace Lee (D-District 65) praised the legislation in the release while citing COVID-19 speech as justification for the Orwellian legislation. Lee hysterically whined about “hate and disinformation spread[ing] like wildfire” online and railed against Big Tech platforms for not censoring enough. “These companies have a responsibility to protect users from this hate, but have failed to do so,” she said. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the Murthy v. Missouri lawsuit have both revealed that the federal government pressured social media companies to censor free speech about COVID-19, including humor and satire. […]

— Read More: mrcfreespeechamerica.org

The AI chatbot eagerly volunteered this response after MRC researchers tested how it would respond to questions about Musk and false claims of racism. Without qualification, Grok listed several other false or selectively characterized accusations against Musk, including claims that he has endorsed “Racist Conspiracy Theories,” or that his willingness to call out a Scottish official for racism somehow makes Musk racist.

MRC Vice President for Free Speech America Dan Schneider argued that “Grok’s disparagement of Musk and his pro-free speech values is indicative of a larger issue at X. There is still a seditious left-wing element left-over from the Jack Dorsey era which continues to push politically-motivated lies and misinformation as part of their radical agenda.”

Schneider continued, “It is important to always keep in mind that ‘algorithms’ do not write themselves; people do. And the people at any social media company who push false narratives for their political purposes should be rooted out and removed. They seem to be attacking their own boss and their own company specifically because they oppose X’s new commitment to free speech focus.”

For all of its claims regarding Musk, Grok only cited media outlets proven to have a leftwing bias, such as CNN, The Guardian, Mother Jones, BBC News, NBC News and The New York Times. At no point did it cite any right-leaning media. […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org

The Media Research Center discovered Tuesday that Google had once again rigged its general search and news tab results filling them with media sources hostile to Trump and the people he has nominated to serve in his administration. Leftist and legacy media articles greatly outnumbered articles from news outlets considered “right” or “lean right” by media ratings firm AllSides. After comparing the search results to the AllSides media bias list, MRC researchers found eight times more left-leaning articles in the general search results than U.S.-based “lean right” or “right” articles. Google similarly supplied nearly six times as many left-leaning articles for its news tab search.

Google provided scarcely any articles categorized as “lean right” or “right” by AllSides to go along with these vicious attacks and this stacked deck of leftist and legacy media. For the news tab search results, Google provided 176 left-leaning articles compared to only 31 U.S.-based “lean right” or “right” articles. The general search results included a paltry 12 “lean right” or “right” articles, badly outnumbered by the 96 leftist articles in the results. Furthermore, Google failed to show a single U.S.-based “lean right” or “right” article for over 65 percent of nominees that the search giant provided articles for in general search.

Google truly distinguished itself by pushing outlets that stoke hatred against nominees like Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI director nominee. Google filled Patel’s general search results with attacks and elevated a fearmongering Slate article with the headline “We’ve Seen Kash Patel’s Enemies List. It’s Terrifying” at the top of the page. Other articles by leftist outlets such as NPR, CNN, The Guardian, The Daily Mail and NBC News spread fear about Patel.

In the news tab search result for “Kash Patel,” Google included the Slate article second from the top, while also elevating a Mother Jones article calling Patel a “useful idiot for Putin,” a CNN article implying Patel was paranoid and an NPR article accusing him of feeding “conspiracy theories” to children. […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org

It came a day after the same show whined that Hegseth’s arrival at the Pentagon (if confirmed by the Senate) would be “cultural shock and awe” in ridding the military of its woke elements. That kvetching came at the same time NBC’s Sunday Today raised concern about his goal (along with President-Elect Trump) of bringing accountability to military generals involved in the deadly 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

ABC’s former North Korean news lady for the Kamala Harris campaign — chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce — was put on the case:

ABC’s Mary Bruce on Monday’s ‘Good Morning America’: @PeteHegseth “is also under fire for some of his tattoos depicting religious symbols and phrases that fellow service members flagged to his superiors over confirms they are associated with white supremacists. Hegseth saying… pic.twitter.com/Fisl3w0cCZ

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 18, 2024

Notice that last line: “Hegseth’s post notably not disavowing the supremacists who have adopted the symbolism, though he has in the past.”

Oh, that’s her evidence? Claiming without evidence they’ve been coopted by white supremacists, so Hegseth is guilty by extension? […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org

Carr sent a letter Wednesday to the respective CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple accusing them of “improper conduct” in silencing Americans’ exercising free speech on political, religious and scientific issues. Carr specifically ordered these tech giants to acquiesce to surrendering any documents related to their work with “the Orwellian named NewsGuard” given its history of targeting right-leaning websites by bullying their advertisers.

Moreover, Carr excoriated the CEOs for participating in “a censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies but advertising, marketing, and so-called ‘fact checking’ organizations as well as the Biden-Harris Administration itself” to suppress viewpoints, harm websites’ profitability and delist them by smearing them as “high risk” to advertisers.

Carr relied on MRC studies to make his case that Big Tech platforms working with NewsGuard raise questions about whether this relationship constitutes “good faith” actions within the meaning of the Section 230 liability protections in the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that they enjoy.

For one, reports indicate that NewsGuard has consistently rated official propaganda from the Communist Party of China as more credible than American publications,” Carr wrote citing MRC Free Speech America research. “For another, NewsGuard aggressively fact checked and penalized websites that reported on the COVID-19 lab leak theory. For still another, the Small Business Committee and multiple Media Research Center studies detail numerous instances where NewsGuard apparently does not apply its own rating system in an even-handed manner.

Carr called for the ties of leftist ratings firms like NewsGuard, the government and Silicon Valley to be dismantled: “This censorship cartel is an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled. Americans must be able to reclaim their right to free speech. Indeed, our democracy depends on freedom of expression.” […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org

This is the same Bill Weir who famously declared “even the seagulls” were “awed” with Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

Shortly before 9:00 a.m. during extended election coverage, CNN host Sara Sidner hinted at global warming being to blame for recent extreme weather, and provocatively called Trump a “climate denier” as she set up the segment:

These wildfires are just the latest in a slew of unprecedented severe weather events — including, as you remember, back-to-back hurricanes and extreme heat. President-elect Donald Trump is a known climate denier vowing to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord a second time. His election comes on the heels of startling new data showing worsening effects of delaying action against climate change.

Her reference to a high hurricane frequency being “unprecedented” flies in the face of data showing there have been many times since the mid 1800s that several hurricanes have made landfall in the U.S. in just one hurricane season.

Weir then came aboard and recounted the different possibilities for how many degrees warmer the world might become and argued that it is necessary to cut back fossil fuel burning within five years to prevent dire consequences. He soon took aim at President-elect Trump: “Every country in the world says we’re going to try to hold the line at 1.5, and now we’re here just as maybe the most notorious climate denier in history takes power once again.” […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org

Doesn’t that sound like a hard-charging rerun of 2016? Nothing ever seems to change from the paper that gaudily proclaimed under Trump that “The Truth Is More Important Now Than Ever.”

You can point and laugh, since The New York Times refused to admit that Hunter Biden’s laptop full of corruption details was authentic until 2022, and then it acknowledged reality in a story on page A-20, in paragraph 23. It was buried, almost like an unmarked grave.

Chief White House correspondent Peter Baker’s editorial bubbled over with contempt for how many lies Trump told in the first 300 seconds of an interview with Tucker Carlson on Halloween. “Public appearances by Mr. Trump throughout this year’s campaign have been an Alice-in-Wonderland trip through the political looking glass, a journey into an alternate reality often belied by actual reality.”

Baker thinks it’s amusing that Trump will sell his administration as the greatest ever seen in American history. Baker can’t imagine anyone thinks he and his journalist wife Susan Glasser and his journalist friends sound like the exact opposite. They have sold Trump’s administration as the most horrendous years America has ever seen. […]

— Read More: www.newsbusters.org