Category: Media

Observation O’ The Day:
I remember when “serious” figures on the right mocked some of us for our alleged obsession with media bias. – Glenn Reynolds

Propaganda Works

Have you noticed that Republicans have been losing a lot lately?

This, in an environment where most Americans think that Democrats are screwing up the country. Why do you think that is?

Sure, hatred of Trump has something to do with it. Abortion politics has something to do with it. A lot, actually. Each of you can name an issue where Republicans are in bad odor with ordinary people, but add them all together and one thing becomes clear: propaganda works.

Why is Trump so unpopular? Was it because things got worse under his presidency? Uh, yeah, no. Things got immeasurably better, and even a lot of people who hate him will say that.

Is abortion such a drag on Republican prospects because people don’t agree that late term abortions are immoral, except in extreme circumstances? That’s not what the polls say.

Why do people think Republicans are all-in on banning books? Has anybody suggested making the publishing of any books illegal? Of course not. Democrats actively campaign to prevent the publication or sale of books they don’t like, but Republicans don’t.

So what is it?

It is the steady drumbeat of propaganda portraying Republicans as Nazi White Supremacists who want to force 11 year-olds to birth babies, schoolmarms who hate gays, and White Supremacists who hunt minorities in the dead of night. We wanted to kill grandma and deserved to be put in camps:

You can’t escape the propaganda. It is everywhere. In the schools, in the classrooms, on every university campus, and in the MSM.

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Photographers Without Borders: AP & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions

On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.

AP: Photojournalists or Infiltrators?

Four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.

Eslaiah, a freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

HonestReporting has obtained screenshots of Eslaiah’s now-removed tweets on X in which he documented himself standing in front of the Israeli tank. He did not wear a press vest or a helmet, and the Arabic caption of his tweet read: “Live from inside the Gaza Strip settlements.”

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The Trace interviews less-lethal gun maker by claiming story is for tech magazine

The Trace – former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun propaganda factory – has proven once again it is completely devoid of ethics and reliable only as a source of fake news.

The Trace wants the public to believe it’s an actual newsroom comprised of actual journalists. It calls itself “The only newsroom dedicated to covering gun violence.” Staffers refer to themselves as journalists, rather than anti-gun activists who are paid by Bloomberg to create his propaganda. The Trace and Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety even share the same president, John Feinblatt.

A Trace story published Thursday titled “Shoot, Don’t Kill,” extolls the benefits of less-than-lethal technology by examining several weapons made by Byrna Technologies, Inc., which use a 12-gram CO2 cartridge to launch .68 caliber projectiles at approximately 330 feet-per-second.

“Users can also opt for ammo loaded with tear gas or oleoresin capsicum, an extract of hot peppers, which can induce nausea, difficulty breathing, and a terrible burning in the throat, lungs, and eyes,” the story states.

The Trace story quotes Byrna’s founder, president and chief executive officer, Bryan Ganz. However, on Friday Ganz told the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project that he had never even heard of the Trace until the story appeared Thursday morning. The freelance writer who wrote the story claimed it would appear in a different publication.

“Originally, he said it was supposed to be published in Wired magazine,” Ganz said Friday. “But once we gave him the quotes, we had no control over where the article was published.”

The story was written by Ted Alcorn, who describes himself in the story as an “independent journalist whose reporting has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.” Alcorn’s bio also shows he was “the founding research director of Everytown for Gun Safety and a policy analyst in the New York City mayor’s office.”

Until he saw it Thursday morning, Ganz had no idea his story would appear on one of the leading websites of the gun-ban industry.

“Our attitude is that the more people who discuss it, the better, I guess,” Ganz said.

Alcorn used a bit too much editorial license and took things a bit too far, Ganz said, especially when he implied that gun owners would somehow realize that their firearms were “problematic,” and switch to his weapons for their reduced lethality.

“It’s easy to see why gun owners might perceive a less lethal offering as an admission that traditional guns are problematic. But over the last century, the primary use of firearms has changed,” the story states. “Lethality was essential when they were mainly tools for hunting animals or national defense, but now nearly three-quarters of people who own guns say they do so for self-protection against other humans.”

“I never said anything like that,” Ganz said. “I support the Second Amendment, and I’ve carried concealed for years. I’ve been a gun owner my entire life.”

SCOTUS Grants Cert to Bump Stock Case

The Supreme Court will decide whether the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks, implemented by the ATF in 2018 after the Route 91 music festival shootings in Las Vegas, was a proper exercise of agency authority or an overreach on the part of the administration. On Friday the Court granted cert in a case known as Garland v. Cargill; one of several cases that have been bouncing around the lower courts since the ban was first put in place.

The Court’s granting of the case wasn’t exactly a surprise, for a couple of reasons. The Solicitor General had sought Supreme Court review, but there are also splits in the federal appellate courts over the legality of the ban. The Fifth Circuit has ruled the bump stock ban was improperly put into effect, while the D.C. Circuit, Sixth Circuit, and Tenth Circuit have all allowed the ban to remain in effect.

The question before the Court is whether a bump stock can be considered a “machine gun” under the statutory definition provided by the National Firearms Act; “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.”

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Ninth Circuit Rules California Law Banning Firearms Advertisements Likely Violates the First Amendment in NRA-Backed Case.

NRA scored a legal victory in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against an overbroad California law that bans firearms advertisements that may be attractive to minors.

In June of 2022, the California Assembly passed and Governor Newsom signed AB-2571 into law. NRA filed suit shortly thereafter. The bill as originally drafted was so overbroad that it effectively banned advertising youth-hunter-education programs. The NRA’s lawsuit pointed that out, and the state promptly amended the statute so that it only bans advertisements of firearms products “in a manner that … reasonably appears to be attractive to minors.” But that didn’t fix the law’s overbreadth problem. It still banned advertisements featuring a parent hunting or shooting with their minor child.

The Ninth Circuit rightly recognized that the law was overbroad and banned truthful advertisements related directly to the Second Amendment—which the First Amendment forbids. The court remanded the case back to the trial court for further proceedings. The state, however, is refusing to accept the obvious. It has asked for an extension of time to seek a rehearing en banc, before 11 judges on the Ninth Circuit.

We look forward to continuing the fight in this case for our members.

The Case is captioned Safari Club International v. Bonta. United States Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation and Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation are also parties to the case.

BLUF
The corporate media refused to correct the President’s lies. Now, Democrat politicians, anti-gun billionaires, and the mainstream media think that ordinary people like you should be disarmed because you’re too dangerous. I have to ask, too dangerous to whom?

Lies My President Told Me

I understand the graft and corruption that are President Biden’s normal mode of business. What I can’t accept are the President’s lies about us. We are far better than he claims, and I refuse to let my neighbor’s be blamed for our President’s failings.

-President Biden said that more children die from being shot than from all other causes. That isn’t true. What the President refused to say is that honest gun owners like you and your neighbors prevented over 30-thousand murders a year because they had a firearm to defend the people they love. Did the President ignore the lives you save because he is too forgetful, or because he is too bigoted against us?

-The President said we have to stop the epidemic of gun violence we hear and see on the news. The President refused to say that the nightly violence we see and hear is from our failing Democrat controlled cities. The president refused to mention that most counties won’t have a single murder this year. He ignored that the worst 2-percent of our counties account for over half of our murders. The worst 5-percent account for about two-thirds of our murders. Even within those failed Democrat controlled cities, most of the murders are within a few zip codes. What our President can’t say is that we are seeing an epidemic of political failure and corruption on the nightly news. Democrats destroyed our once beautiful cities like Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington DC. Now those politicians need to blame you.

-The President said that modern rifles were the cause of this violence. He didn’t tell you that the overwhelming majority of murders, even mass-murders, are committed with handguns. He ignored that more of us are beaten to death with hands and feet than are killed with modern rifles. The President didn’t mention that you and your neighbors use a “modern rifle” to protect yourself thousands of times every month. You didn’t know that because the corporate media refused to correct the old man’s lies.

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From the First Sentence, You Knew This Was Going to Be a Funny WaPo Article About Guns

Let’s be fair for a second: this Washington Post piece on firearms in Texas could have been worse. It could have read like something from a Moms Demand Action pamphlet, but it’s probably as fair as possible for the publication. Maybe I’m being too nice, but the first sentence had me wondering whether this piece would go off the rails. Also, do these people live under a rock?

First, the headline: In Texas, guns are everywhere, whether concealed or in the open.

And the opening sentence: To live in Texas is to live surrounded by guns.

Yes, and yes, Washington Post. The piece is peppered with statistics about gun ownership, carry laws, and interviews with various individuals of all races in New Braunfels, Texas, which rests outside San Antonio. White, black, and Latino residents all offered quotes explaining the culture here, which may seem like an alien world but has been commonplace for generations.

The piece did at least acknowledge that, but a quick review of gun laws would point to some shocking revelations for anti-gun liberals, specifically since while the article frames Texas as gun land, Virginia is just as heavily armed. In fact, for years, Virginia’s carry laws and reciprocity agreements were just as good, if not better, than in the Lone Star State. It’s not just Texas, folks (via WaPo):

Each morning, men here strap guns inside suits, boots and swim trunks. Women slip them into bra and bellyband holsters that render them invisible. They stash firearms in purses, tool boxes, portable gun safes, back seats and glove compartments.

Neighbors tuck guns into bedside tables, cars and trucks. They take guns fishing, to church, the park, the pool, the gym, the movies — even to protests at the state Capitol. The convention center hosts gun shows where shoppers peruse AR-15s and high-capacity magazines outlawed in other states. Texas billboards offer an endless stream of advertisements for ammunition, silencers and other accessories.

It has been legal here to openly carry long guns like rifles for generations. But Texas’s gun-friendly attitude isn’t just a relic of the Old West and ranching: Many restrictions on handguns were loosened only recently. Two years ago, state lawmakers gave those 21 and older the right to carry handguns without a permit; in 2015, they gave those with concealed handgun permits the right to carry on public college campuses. […]

Unlike California and some other blue states, Texas has no state firearm sales registry, no required waiting period to buy a gun, no red flag law guarding against the mentally ill or violent having weapons, no restrictions on the size of ammunition magazines and no background checks for guns purchased in a private sale.[…]

New Braunfels includes one of the top urban Zip codes in Texas for new handgun licenses per capita last year: About 213 per 10,000 people, according to state records; overall, the surrounding county had 155 permits issued per 10,000 people.

By contrast, most San Francisco-area counties had issued fewer than six concealed handgun licenses per 10,000 residents since 2012, according to the most recent California Department of Justice data from last year, although applications surged late in the year following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against local restrictions in New York, and California lawmakers responded earlier this month by passing a law that further restricts who can receive a permit.

The interviews with the residents, probably meant to cast them as paranoid or crazy, are rather mainstream. Their reasons behind owning guns are also not out of the ordinary. Some quoted in the piece owned AR-15 rifles, which means in the eyes of liberals, these people are paranoid. Again, these are law-abiding citizens who own firearms, which isn’t abnormal, no matter how hard the Left tries to make it so. San Francisco is a crime-ridden hell hole, with hordes of homeless people and drug addicts defecating all over the city. These aren’t areas to compare when it comes to public safety.

If you want to glean how law-abiding gun owners live in Texas, this piece has some good insights, but we all know that probably wasn’t the intent. We have a Second Amendment, liberal America. Tens of millions of Americans own a ton of firearms, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Also, it’s funny how they tried to make this place seem like a lawless enclave of America with no red flag laws, waiting periods, or gun registries. Most states don’t have any of those laws on the books. Red flag laws have had mixed success. They sound like good policy, but constitutional guardrails are still lacking. Most states have no gun registry requirement, and waiting periods are also uncommon. If you pass a background check, you get the gun. It’s as simple as it should be for law-abiding Americans.

Charles Glasser – 

The Washington Post: We have to destroy the First Amendment in order to save it. In what has to be the most blockheaded analysis I’ve read in years, The Post ran a story this afternoon titled “Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks.”

Of course the conservatives and libertarians are leading the charge. It’s the fight against government coercing, cajoling or even cooperating with publishers (electronic and otherwise) to suppress right-leaning views.

To paraphrase James Carville: “It’s the Constitution, Stupid.”

The people who want to censor the right have put a new dress on their pig.  The Washington Post painted it thusly:

“The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online.”

“See, we have a First Amendment right to figure out how to suppress others’ speech. We’re the real victims here.”

As you may remember, as The Hill reported on Missouri v. Biden:

“A federal appellate court concluded Sept. 8 that multiple White House, surgeon general, FBI and CDC officials likely breached the fine line separating permissible government persuasion and jawboning from illicit “coercion and significant encouragement” when they repeatedly — and often successfully — lobbied social-media companies “to remove disfavored content and accounts from their sites.”

At that oral argument, Judge Don Willett had no problem with federal agencies publicly criticizing what they judged false or dangerous ideas. But that wasn’t how Biden’s winged monkeys compelled submission: “Here you have government in secret, in private, out of the public eye, relying on . . . subtle strong-arming and veiled or not-so-veiled threats” said the Judge.

Willett expressed his disgust with the mafia-like tactics of the Biden administration: “That’s a really nice social-media platform you’ve got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.”

 

O’Keefe’s new organization seems to be doing just fine.

Project Veritas Is Dead. Cause Of Death? Pushing Out James O’Keefe.

Project Veritas Suspends All Operations Amid Devastating Layoffs and Fundraising Struggles.

Project Veritas, the conservative organization founded by James O’Keefe, suspended all operations on Wednesday after another round of layoffs, Mediaite has learned.

According to a letter titled “Reduction in Force” that was sent to Project Veritas staffers by HR director Jennifer Kiyak on Wednesday, the organization is putting all operations on pause amidst severe financial woes.

“In the interest of preserving the possible future existence of Project Veritas we need to put operations on pause and, as communicated since the Spring, another Reduction in Force (“RIF”) is necessary,” Kiyak wrote.

Six staffers were laid off from the embattled organization this week, sources said, including all remaining journalists and one development associate. One former Project Veritas staffer said just 11 people remain on the non-profit’s payroll, including CEO Hannah Giles.

Kiyak wrote in the letter that the group cannot “carry the present staff count any longer” and reminded those being laid off of their nondisclosure agreements.

O’Keefe, a right-wing activist who gained fame and notoriety for his sting operations against liberal groups, launched Project Veritas in 2010. He left the organization earlier this year amid allegations of improper spending of funds on personal luxuries. He was replaced by Giles as CEO, who has overseen the rapid decline of the once well-funded group that has in recent months struggled with layoffs, the resignations of board members, and fundraising struggles.

Earlier this month, Mediaite reported on an internal meeting during which Giles said the organization was “bankrupt.”

One of the journalists let go in the bloodletting on Wednesday is Bobby Harr, a former lead investigative reporter with Project Veritas. Harr told Mediaite he was “confused” when he was officially laid off on a phone call with Giles and Kiyak Wednesday afternoon – because he had already been let go from the organization last month.

“I was confused by this as my job was actually cut during the first round of layoffs while I was on medical leave,” he said. “I was locked out of my work phone and laptop as of that day and my paychecks stopped.”

Christian Hartsock, the former chief investigative journalist at Project Veritas who was laid off in August, said he was shocked to learn the organization was still running.

“I have no idea what ‘operations’ there are to suspend,” Hartsock told Mediaite.

Giles, he said, “canned the entire production staff of a production company, and the entire journalist leadership staff of a journalism company over a month ago. So what exact ‘operations’ has she been continuing with remaining donor money — given for the sole purpose of journalism production — for the past month?”

Harr said the collapse of Project Veritas has not come as a surprise given the events of recent weeks.

“Suspending operations is one of those things that we all knew was coming after the mass layoffs occurred, but still cut like a knife when it officially happened,” Harr said. “Lack of funding and poor management amplified the damage that James O’Keefe already did to the organization prior to the days of Hannah Giles, who then delivered the final blow.”

O’Keefe’s attorney Jeffrey Lichtman told Mediaite in a statement: “It appears that in the few months since Project Veritas ousted James, it continued to spend money at the same rate, blowing through the many millions of dollars James had previously raised for it — despite PV having no new sources of fundraising. This is highly suspect and we would welcome a full audit of PV’s finances to learn where that money was actually spent.”

Harr expressed disappointment with the mismanagement of the organization he spent more than three years working for.

“I was provided no severance pay,” he said. “The organization used to thrive and prosper. It’s truly sad to see what can happen to great opportunities with a surplus of resources when the wrong people are in power.”

Random Thoughts on Hunter Biden, Domestic Violence, and Disarming Those Who Haven’t Been Convicted of a Crime.

One of the most entertaining aspects of Hunter Biden being indicted on three gun-related charges due to his drug use is the reaction of those on the left side of the political spectrum. They’re screaming that given how few people are prosecuted for lying on 4473 forms, the only reason he’s been charged is his prominent father.

Note that the Venn diagram of the people who are making this argument and those who blew a blood vessel when a man whose conviction was overturned for gun possession while under a domestic violence restraining order is almost a perfect circle. Yet the legal principles are virtually the same.

In the domestic violence case, US v. Rahimi, the target is a certified scumbag who’d been involved in at least five prior crimes involving firearms and had beaten the hell out of his girlfriend. Zackey Rahimi was the subject of a domestic violence restraining order which prohibited him from possessing a firearm and had been convicted of violating that order.

When the Fifth Circuit circuit overturned his conviction based on the lack of a history or tradition in this country of voiding the gun rights of people who hadn’t been convicted of a crime, the reaction was as if they’d OK’d human sacrifice, dogs living with cats…you know mass hysteria.

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DHS Awards $20 Million To Program That Flags Americans As Potential “Extremists” For Their Online Speech

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded 34 grants to as many organizations, worth a total of $20 million, whose role will be to undergo training in order to flag potential online “extremist” speech of Americans.

The money will be spent from the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant program for fiscal year 2023, while the recipients include police, mental health providers, universities, churches and school districts.

According to DHS, this program (administered by its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3, and for some reason, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA) is the only federal one of its kind whose goal is “helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities in combating targeted violence and terrorism.”

Those given the money from the grants fund are expected to develop prevention programming at the community level that would stop “targeted violence and terrorism,” as well as come up with innovative prevention ideas, and “identify prevention best practices that can be replicated in communities nationwide.”

In announcing and explaining the need for such spending, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited the Jacksonville shooting. As he remarked while justifying the awarding of grants, the event was racially motivated, and – “[it] made painfully clear, targeted violence and terrorism can impact any community, anywhere.”

DHS claims that the “current” environment is one of heightened – and lethal – threat, based on ideology or personal grievances of “lone offenders and small groups.”

The DHS announcement came on the anniversary of 9/11, but it showed that the focus is now on Americans rather than some foreign terrorist threat (or even foreign terrorist gangs in the habit of “invading” US soil).

And the way the terrorist threat is defined here looks more like a drive to suppress dissent to dominant narratives pushed by the government and large traditional and social media who work in concert with the federal authorities.

Specifically, what opponents of such policy single out as possible reasons to be branded a violent extremists or (domestic) terrorist could be disagreeing, and expressing that opinion online on anything from Covid, vaccines, gun rights, gender and LGBTQ policies, the war in Ukraine, or immigration.

MEDIA WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO BLAME FIREARM INDUSTRY

By Larry Keane

There’s peril when media sets out to confirm a narrative instead of reporting facts. Whether it’s criminal violence in America perpetrated by a deranged lunatic, or by violent drug cartels in countries beyond our borders, some media outlets will find the flawed logic to argue it is American companies that should be punished.

This results in a disservice to readers and erodes public trust not just in their subjects but also in the Fourth Estate.

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The DailyKos (a rabid anti-gun pub) gets pwned by one of its own

Citizens Have An Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms Unconnected With Service In a Militia

The Second Amendment speaks of two separate groups the Militia and the People. If the right to keep and bear arms was meant ONLY to apply to the militia it would read “The right of Militia members to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Or, it would read “The power of the States to maintain armed militias shall not be infringed.”

It reads “The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  It calls for a “Well-regulated Militia” and not a well regulated populace, and all other references to “The People” in the Bill of Rights are also rights of individual citizens.

 The Federal government, the States and their officials hold powers not rights.  For example, Amendment IV “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”  Amendment X “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Article. I. Section. 1. “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Article. II. Section. 1. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Note that they read powers and not rights.

Held:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
Pp. 2–53.

(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but
does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative
clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it
connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.

This decision wasn’t reached in a vacuum.  The vast majority of law review articles dealing with the Second Amendment conclude that it protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.  In fact, when Dr. Lawrence Tribe, the widely published Constitutional Law scholar, author of the Constitutional law textbook that is standard in many if not most of our nation’s low schools, and strong supporter of gun control, announced that he would conduct a study of the Second Amendment.

Citizen disarmament zealots, their organizations, their media allies, and their apologists were elated for they believed that at last a well respected Constitutional law scholar would finally proclaim that the Second Amendment applies only to the Militia and not individual citizens.

In the end they were disappointed.  Like the Supreme Court Dr. Tribe determined that the framers of the Constitution intended that the Second Amendment confers the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms unconnected with service in a Militia.

The Washington Post Calls for Reducing Free Speech to Improve Democracy

In very post-2016 fashion, The Washington Post last week published an article implying democracy might require curbs on freedom of speech. This unsettling approach suggests concerns around “misinformation” on social networks supersede freedom of speech, a move that has elicited intense debate and, rightly so; criticism.

In what appears to be a shift in public discourse towards further censorship, the widely-read Washington Post article critiqued Elon Musk’s reinstatement of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform, X, previously known as Twitter.

The article suggested that the proliferation of what it calls “political misinformation” disturbs democracy, sparking concern amongst proponents of free speech.

The perspective is reflected in the reporting by The Washington Post journalists Naomi Nix and Sarah Ellison. However, their piece lacks critical analysis of the ambiguity surrounding the term “misinformation” and fails to address the consequential question of how to moderate content in situations where politicians’ statements are arguably false or misleading.

The article’s glaring omission of any mention of the First Amendment – a core pillar of American democracy fostering media freedoms – also raised eyebrows amidst media and legal circles.

The Washington Post reporters worryingly suggest the retreat of social media companies from combating online falsehoods could impact the 2024 presidential election. They fault Musk, along with Facebook and YouTube, for taking a step back from reining in what they call misleading claims and conspiracy theories.

Nix and Ellison also critique X for permitting Tucker Carlson’s President Trump interview, which they deem as a platform for Trump to reiterate his allegations about the 2020 election. They contend that social media should only host political content if its accuracy can be proven, posing an unrealistic expectation that conceals underlying issues of censorship under the pretext of curbing “misleading” or “hateful” speech.

BLUF
Well, I generally believe that when government officials don’t want us to know something, it’s because they fear we would think or act in ways they wouldn’t like if we knew it.

It’s democracy in the dark without Nashville shooter manifesto’s release.

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the (sometimes ironic) slogan of The Washington Post.

But it’s also a fair description of what’s happening in Tennessee, as the state Legislature is being called to a special session even as local and federal officials withhold information that might be critical to its decision-making.

Gov. Bill Lee ordered the special session to begin Aug. 21 in response to a March 27 mass shooting in which three adults and three children at the Covenant School, a Christian school in Nashville’s Green Hills neighborhood, were killed.

The Nashville Tennessean article refers only to “a shooter.”

The shooter was a female-to-male transgender shooter named Audrey Hale, aged 28, who left a manifesto before being killed by police.

Hale had chosen to identify as a man, using the pronouns he/him.

The manifesto included detailed plans put together over months to shoot up the school, according to reports just after the shooting from police who had seen it.

Unfortunately, they’re the only ones who have seen it.

Local and federal authorities with access to the manifesto have refused to make its contents public.

Though Hale sent an Instagram message to a friend just before the shooting, saying, “One day this will make more sense. I’ve left more than enough evidence behind,” we haven’t seen that evidence.

Vivek Ramaswamy, running third in the GOP presidential primary, recently called for the manifesto’s release. He characterizes the government position as “stonewalled silence.”

Well, I generally believe that when government officials don’t want us to know something, it’s because they fear we would think or act in ways they wouldn’t like if we knew it.

They seldom keep things secret that would make them look good.

Instead it’s usually something that would reflect badly on them or someone they’re protecting.

What could that be in this case? I don’t know, and they seem determined to keep it that way.

But beyond that, the Legislature is in a curious position.

Lawmakers are being asked to debate and vote on legislative proposals being made only because of the March shooting, even as some of the most important facts are kept secret.

Gov. Lee’s office says he’s called for the release of the manifesto, and it’s the Metro Nashville Police and the FBI keeping the lid on.

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BLUF
Maybe a few honest liberals might come out against this. But don’t hold your breath waiting on a major reaction from the Democratic establishment; unfortunately, this is the exact kind of thing they think the federal government should be doing. And that’s the truly scary part of this whole saga.

Leaked emails expose Biden White House’s attacks on the First Amendment

The “Twitter Files” reporting from last year exposed a disturbing collusion between Twitter executives and officials from the federal government to censor the public’s speech. But new revelations from Congress show that the Biden White House and Facebook have engaged in similar collusion.

On Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who leads the House Judiciary Committee, released internal Facebook emails that show the Big Tech platform was explicitly pressured by the Biden administration to take down specific posts that the president’s allies disliked.