The The New York Times Twitter is doing its best to minimize debate about conservative views in the Trump-Covid era, as shown by its odd coverage of a House committee hearing on the social media platform’s biased behavior and pressure from government agencies to push the company toward censorship. Conservative speech.
In Thursday’s paper, Luke Broadwater and Kate Conger find “Five Takeaways from House GOP Hearings with Former Twitter Executives.” But they conveniently avoided the juicy scene of Republican Nancy Mays questioning the medical expertise of Twitter executives to limit the influence of Stanford medical professor Jay Bhattacharya for the sin of questioning the Covid lockdown, instead creating an anecdote to portray Rep. Alexandra Ocasio. Cortez as heroine.
From the start, it was clear that the reporters were only going to talk about the bits that would interest their liberal audience: less FBI meddling, more Chrissy Teigen.
House Republicans on Wednesday summoned former Twitter executives to respond to allegations that the social media platform has tried to silence voices on the right. But the hours-long hearing revealed new ways the agency has failed to limit hate speech or material that could incite violence, sometimes changing its own rules to avoid it.
How the tables turn!
The Oversight and Accountability Committee called the hearing to investigate a decision that the company has admitted for years was a mistake: Blocking an unverified New York Post article About President Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine ahead of the 2020 election, where his father ran against President Donald J. Trump.
“Unproven,” yet? did not times Finally Admit Hunter Biden’s Infamous Laptop Was Actually Authentic? The paper even ran a lengthy exposé in January about Biden’s son’s shady foreign business dealings, including Hunter throwing his then-VP father Joe’s weight in Ukraine.
Their first “takeaway” from the hearing was a silly Twitter spat between President Trump and model Chrissy Teigen, headlined: “Mr. Trump tried to censor model Chrissy Teigen for insulting her. Yet Twitter didn’t delete Teigen’s lewd tweet, making the entire episode Makes a bit of sense.
Under the headline “Twitter changes internal rules to avoid limiting Mr Trump’s tweets”. times A Nothingburger story aired about Twitter changing its rules to allow a mean tweet from Trump aimed at a left-wing “squad” in Congress, giving Rep. Ocasio-Cortez a chance to make a dent and discredit the notion of anti-conservative bias on Twitter. :
“So Twitter changed their own policy after the president violated it to potentially adjust his tweet?” asked Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and the highest-profile member of the squad.
“Yes,” replied Ms. Navarroli.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez responded, “So much for bias against the right wing on Twitter.”
The tweet ended with sympathy for Yoel Roth, a former Twitter executive who said he had to sell his house when he was the victim of online threats.
Journalist Matt Taibbi of The Twitter Files filled in some of the blanks Twitter: “…We showed agencies like the FBI sending out spreadsheets of thousands of names at a time. And Adam Schiff’s office asked to block all searches of his office. But sure, Chrissy Teigen.”
This is written UK audienceBen Domenech wonders what happened to the democratic embrace of free speech:
Republicans like Oversight Chair James Comer read that the federal government and the intel community pushed Twitter behind the scenes to censor speech.