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Glenn Greenwald

Photographer: Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images

Photographer: Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images

Glenn Greenwald, one of the original founders of the The Intercept, said Thursday that he had resigned from the publication.

The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercepts editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Greenwald, best known for his reporting on American and British global surveillance programs that were based upon documents provided by Edward Snowden, said in a post published on Substack.

The Intercept said in a statement that Greenwalds decision resulted from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship.

A brief glance at the stories The Intercept has published on Biden will suffice to refute those claims, the publication said.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Continued here:
Glenn Greenwald Resigns From The Intercept, Cites Censorship - Bloomberg

Ashley Catherine Fontones|Pocono Record

For this week's Group Editorial, the Pocono Record asked readers to share their thoughts on censorship. The prompt was: "Should social media platforms participate in media censorship? Should the government?"

Last week's prompt: Is voting a privilege, right, or obligation?

Editor's response: Readers cherish their right to vote | Fontones

While this has been a hot topic of debate in the political stratosphere, the prompt only recruited one response. I think this has more to do with the fact that the election is days away, and you readers definitely have more pressing matters to attend to.

This week, I've decided to move forward with our Group Editorial, but rather than have me respond to readers in my Sunday column, I'm going to respond right here. Why not? This topic is not going away any time soon,and if you would still like to sound off, please consider submitting a letter to me on the topic (please keep those letters to 300 words.)

Longtime letter writerDianne Kurkowski-Worm of Stroudsburg was our lone participant this week. Here is her response.

The American people should shudder at the mere thought of censorship in the United States of America.And yet, it has happened.

The New York Post is a venerable newspaper, founded by Alexander Hamilton.It recentlypublished a story aboutfinancial dealings between Hunter Biden and foreign entities.They probably would not come out with such a story for no reason.

Yet a tech giant has decided to take the New York Post off its platform and not publish this story.Unless one has read the originalNew York Post story, the American people have no idea what that story said.Right before the election.How convenient.And the mainstream media is not covering it either.One might wonder why.

It probably would surprise no one that Silicon Valley is most decidedly liberal.Even so: Who gets to decide what is "misinformation?"Mark Zuckerberg, who dreamed up Facebook in his basement?A newspaper editor?A government official?

The answer is no one should censor any kind of news or withhold any kind ofinformation.Especially right before an election.

It is bad enough for the past four years the American media has been so biased in its reporting it might as well be considered censorship.This latest instance with the tech giants is enough to make one's heart palpitate.

I don't want to live in the western hemisphere version of Communist China.Do you?

More than a decade ago, I embarked on my first real job in the media industry. It was an internship in Manhattan, and this was back when internships were completely unpaid.

I was a nervous, college student from Pratt Institute, showing up to my own cubicle in Viacom's Standards and Practices department. For those of you who may not be familiar with the term Standards and Practices, when it comes to television, the department may have a hand in network censorship. I worked in the MTV division, so there was plenty of material to learn from.

Near the end of the internship, we began focusing on the internet. Use of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter were just taking off at the time, and online streaming services like Hulu or Netflix were still relatively new. "Fake news" was not a trending search topic.

I've written about "Fake News" once before. Early on in the pandemic, a chain text message circulated throughout the Poconosregarding the president's impending use of the Stafford Act. The text message usually started off the words: "They activated 3 of my friends who are a part of the National Guard this morning..."

Editorial: The text message is fake.

The text was quickly proven to be fake, but some people in my personal circletook it seriously. The panic the Stafford Act text causedback in March is one example of real world consequences.

I believe in responsible censorship, but my definition of it may surprise you. Censorship should involve carefully researched standards on what type of content should be released to what type of audience. When it comes to a for-profit company like Facebook, they reserve the right to monitor content and remove it at their discretion.

When governments get involved in censorship, that is where the line is blurred.

The Federal Communications Commission is prohibited by law from trying to prevent or censor broadcast material. It is also barred from making any regulation that would interfere with freedom of speech.The FCC is allowed to act, however, when indecent material is involved or at risk of being broadcast to children. Obscene content is not protected by the first amendment.

Such laws exist to protect the first amendment, and in turn freedom of the press. But does such a law apply to a private company like Facebook? The FCCguidelines I referred topertain specifically to radio and television. Guidelines recommend that individual stations make decisions on whether or not to air content.

When it comes to social media, the FCC addresses the industry in the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Section 230 of the act protects social media companies from liability for the content posted by users, and allows them the freedom to remove objectionable posts.

Removing the content entirely does not read as traditional media censorship to me, nor are we at this time anywhere close to a "communist state." It would appear that the law protects a social media platform's right to discern whether or not a post should be removed.Still, Facebook's removal of the New York Post article could set the precedent for future actions. Discretion should be the key word that comes to mind whenever a platform moderator is tasked with investigating a post or link.

Facebook was, at one point, making progress on this front.

Over the summer, Facebook put disclaimers on links that were questionable. The message readers received was something akin to: "The content of this link could not be verified by a fact check, and therefore may contain misinformation. Proceed with caution."

I appreciated this approach. Shouldn't readers have the right to assume the risk?

Our next prompt: What are you thankful for?

Those interested should submit 200-400 words on the topic by Nov. 11, to make Fridays print edition. If the group fills up, we will give you a head start on our next prompt. Email afontones@poconorecord.com for more info.

- Ashley Catherine Fontones is the Managing Editor at the Pocono Record. For more information on Group Editorials, email her at afontones@poconorecord.com.

See the original post here:
Group Editorial: The line between censorship and culling spread of misinformation - Pocono Record

Kingsview Wealth Management CIO Scott Martin discusses Amazon's third-quarter earnings report and the growth of AWS.

This week Americans learned how powerful the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook are when it comes to censoring and controlling content on social media.

And as earnings rolled in from this trio, plus Apple and Amazon, investors were reminded just how powerful these big tech giants are.

The combined market value of these five companies, led by Apple which is the worlds most valuable at nearly $2 trillion, is sitting at $5.5 trillion which equates to 19.7% of the S&P 500, as tracked by Dow Jones Market Data Group.

Those combined figures are equal to roughly half of the total world wealth growth last year (in 2019, total world wealth grew by $9.1 trillion for a total of $360.6 trillion). That value could rise following strong revenue numbers reported after the bell on Thursday.

APPLE'S TIM COOK SAYS IPHONE 12 'OFF TO A GREAT START' AS EARNINGS TOP EXPECTATIONS

Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google pulled in a combined $228 billion in quarterly revenue reported after the close of trading Thursday, while Twitters haul was just under a billion.The big money may get even bigger for the likes of Amazon.

Give or take another couple of quarters, this is a company boys and girls thats gonna be basically making in a year maybe a half-trillion dollars, said Kingsview Wealth Management CIO Scott Martin during an appearance on FOX Business.

AMAZON SCORES RECORD SALES FOR ANY THREE-MONTH PERIOD EVER

Earlier this week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, were grilled by members of the Senate Commerce Committee over censorship.

TWITTER CEO DORSEY PRESSED BY CRUZ ON RESTRICTING HUNTER BIDEN STORIES: 'WHO THE HELL ELECTED YOU?'

Zuckerberg and Dorsey struggled to identify a single liberal individual or organization that has been censored by their platforms.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

In recent weeks, Twitter has come under fire for two high profile examples of censoring. On Thursday it briefly suspended the account of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) CommissionerMark Morganafter he touted the success of the wall along the southern border.

This followed the locking of the New York Posts Twitter account following the organizations reports on Hunter Bidens overseas business dealings and his connection to his father Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden during his tenure as President Obamas Vice President.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP

Read more:
Big tech, amid censorship, earns billions and dominates S&P 500 - Fox Business

Two Trump Energy Department appointeeswith deep ties to Koch Industries and the Koch donor network have been burying reams of agency research that looks favorably on renewable energy, according toan in-depthinvestigation by Grist and InvestigateWest.Published October 26, the investigation reveals how the appointed high-ranking officials mandated political review of research, watered downreports, and slow-walked or shelved scientific findings and studies when they favored renewable deployment over continued reliance on fossilfuels.

Documents obtained by InvestigateWest reveal clear political interference in the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), much of it coordinated by Dan Simmons, the offices Assistant Secretary, and Alex Fitzsimmons, the former Chief of Staff to Simmons. While the article notes the lobbying histories of DOEs top brass, Simmons and Fitzsimmons also have recent ties to the Kochnetwork.

Before being tapped by the Trump team to run lead on renewable energy policy,Simmons had a long career promoting fossil fuels, bashing renewables, and even calling for the elimination of the very office he was tapped to run.

From 2008 until he took over EERE in 2017, Simmons worked at the Institute for Energy Research(IER), a free-market think tank that receives the majority of its funding from dark money groups associated with the Koch network and from oil refinery trade groups. Simmons was vice president of policy at IER and had the same title at IERs lobbying arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA). In 2015, while Simmons was in charge of policy, AEA actually recommended that Congress eliminate EERE.

Excerpt from 2015 American Energy Alliance report calling for Congress to eliminate the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and RenewableEnergy

Simmons antagonism to renewable energy before he joined the DOE cannot beoverstated.

As the utility industry watchdog Energy and Policy Institute has noted, he routinely traveled the country for IER and AEA to bash renewable portfolio standards, relying on inaccurate and cherry-picked data. Before joining IER, Simmons served as the director of the American Legislative Exchange Councils (ALEC) Natural Resources Task Force, where he helped to write [ALECs] anti-clean energy playbook. ALEC functions to connect state legislators with corporations and create mock legislation that serves as models for actualbills.

Simmons prior employers share extremely close ties to petrochemical billionaireCharles Koch and the extensive Koch donornetwork.

The Institute for Energy Research was founded by Charles Koch himself and is currently run by the former top lobbyist for Koch Industries. The AEA and IER both receive funding from foundations in the Koch donor network, and the countrys leading oil refiners trade group, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), gives three times more to AEA than it does to any othergroup.

The ties between ALEC and the Koch network are well documented, with the pro-business group receiving at least $3.3 million from Koch-controlled foundations and Koch Industries maintainingalongstanding and influentialmembership.

Before his time at ALEC, Simmons was also a fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the prototype for Koch influence in academia, a research center which has been funded and controlled by Charles Koch and his associates since the1980s.

Simmonstapped Alex Fitzsimmons to serve as his chief of staff when he took over EERE. The two had worked together at IER and AEA, where Fitzsimmons worked as the Manager of Policy and Public Affairs.In addition to managing research, communications, and outreach at IER and AEA, Fitzsimmons was also a spokesman and Communications Director for Fueling U.S. Forward, a pro-fossil fuelscampaignexposed by DeSmog as being funded by Koch Industries. According to its website, Fueling U.S. Forward was dedicated to educating the public about the value and potential of American energy, the vast majority of which comes from fossil fuels, before it shuttered in2017.

According to the Grist/InvestigateWest investigation, written by journalist Peter Fairley, Simmons and Fitzsimmons created systems and workflow that deliberately buried any of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's research that could be perceived as supportive of a transition to renewable energyresources.

In all, the department has blocked reports for more than 40 clean energy studies, Fairleyreported. The department has replaced them with mere presentations, buried them in scientific journals that are not accessible to the public, or left them paralyzed within the agency, according to emails and documents obtained by InvestigateWest, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees at the Department of Energy, or DOE, and its nationallabs.

Documents obtained by InvestigateWest show how Trump appointees mandated a tiered system of review for release of studies, with EE-1 referringto Dan Simmons, while PDAS refers to Alex Fitzsimmons, thenthe office's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.Credit: Peter Fairley/InvestigateWest on DocumentCloud.

Onedocument obtained by InvestigateWest shows how Fitzsimmons established a system that enabled politically appointed officialsto intervene and, if necessary, consult their superiors before politically sensitive reports went out. Researchers and scientists were ordered to designate certain studies including those that compared renewables to fossil fuel resources and those that projected future penetration of renewable energy supplies be flagged for review by Simmons and Fitzsimmons. The two could then block the findings or request that the scientists and researchers alteredtheirresults.

There are dozens of reports languishing right now that cant be published, Stephen Capanna, a former director of strategic analysis for the Energy Departments Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, told Grist. This is a systemicissue.

Main image:Daniel Simmons, Acting Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, in October 2017. Credit:Dept of Energy Solar Decathlon, publicdomain

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The Koch Operatives Behind the Trump Energy Department's Renewables Research Censorship - DeSmog

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Facebook and Twitter "spent years preparing to face" the kind of controversy that came with the New York Post's publication of emails allegedly taken from the computer of Joe Biden's son Hunter, said Robert McMillan at The Wall Street Journal. They still ended up with a mess. Twitter, which initially blocked users from sharing the article (and even froze the Post's official account), did "an about-face" after an outcry from Republicans and said it would change its ban on hacked content "unless it's directly shared by hackers." Meanwhile inside Facebook, "executives had performed role-playing exercises about how to respond to an email dump." Following the playbook they developed, Facebook flagged the Post's articles for fact-checking and limited their exposure in news feeds. That didn't shield Facebook from widespread criticism: Republicans lawmakers complained of censorship, even as the Post's articles stayed at the top of the most-shared charts.

"What were they thinking?" asked Matthew Walther at The Week. The platforms' explanations of their actions "are not credible." If Facebook was really concerned about users sharing "unconfirmed" reporting, it wouldn't have waited until last week to block Holocaust denial. It looks instead like "the deliberate use of long-tolerated monopoly power to influence the course of an election." The fallout could well mean that those monopolies as we know them now "will not survive another presidential election." Imagine if these Silicon Valley giants united to ban all content critical of President Trump and promote criticism of Biden, said Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept. Twitter's rationale about blocking documents taken without authorization is unjustifiable and dangerous. What about The New York Times' reports on Trump's leaked tax returns? Anyone cheering for Twitter or Facebook now is "being short-sighted and myopic."

If you're complaining that there is no simple rule telling social media companies what to publish, you've fallen for a false narrative about "censorship," said Max Boot at The Washington Post. "Social-media companies have no obligation to pass along possible Russian disinformation," and it "would be the height of irresponsibility" to broadcast these stories without some fact-checking first. After they got burned in 2016, "it's entirely understandable and proper that Facebook and Twitter exercise some caution." That's not censorship. "It's editorial judgment," and we need more of it.

These platforms have never been neutral, said Kevin Roose at The New York Times. They've been controlling what we see for years. It's just that "their decisions were often buried in obscure 'community standards' updates or hidden tweaks to the black-box algorithms that govern which posts users see." They've just made their "high-stakes decisions" more visible. But Facebook and Twitter still haven't provided nearly enough visibility into their decision, said Andy Kessler at The Wall Street Journal. On the contrary, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's explanations and reversal have given "his adversaries the fuel to burn his tweet house down." If the social media giants with their multibillion-dollar valuations want to survive this, they'll need to go much further on transparency. I want to see Facebook's community standards "chiseled in stone" and detailed explanations for each banned post.

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

Originally posted here:
Is social media censoring speech or combating disinformation? - The Week Magazine