Brian Stelter, CNN’s prominent commentator, appeared in a panel discussion on BBC Radio 4’s “The Media Show.” At a juncture where online censorship and bias is at its highest, Stelter suggests that social media platforms are falling short when it comes to censoring. “…And honestly, they’re not even doing one-tenth of what they should be doing,” said Stelter.
“It’s because there’s asymmetric lying and asymmetric nastiness right now in American politics,” Stelter explained. “Look at Joe Biden’s ads versus Donald Trump’s ads. Look at who’s more negative, look at who’s lying more often. Asymmetric nastiness is a sad consequence of our politics right now. There’s a lot more indecency and BS… being spread by the right. It’s sad, hopefully it will stop, but right now it’s true and that’s what the platforms are reacting to.”
The panel discussion featuring Stelter and a few more prominent media executives was about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and how Big Tech platforms such as Facebook and Twitter tried to suppress the news from spreading.
Sara Fischer from Axios initiated the discussion by stating that Big Tech platforms have been warned by the intelligence community about “illegally hacked or illegally obtained information” and that explains why social media platforms are inclined towards censorship.
It is worth noting that no one from Joe Biden’s team has officially declared any of the emails in circulation to be inauthentic.
The Chief Congressional Correspondent of Washington Examiner, Susan Ferrechio, said that there was a certain double standard as Facebook and Twitter are swift to suppress news that may be damaging to Biden, but the same is not true for conservatives such as Trump. She also added that “illegally obtained information” about Trump is allowed to remain on Big Tech platforms and there is no immediate action against such disinformation.
Fischer, however, came to Big Tech’s defense and said that conservatives get censored across the platform as “they are doing things that violate their policies more so than other leaning-groups.
“It’s not that it doesn’t exist on the left. I just think that in America right now, we are seeing some of the movements on the right that tend to trigger the policy violations on these platforms.”
At a point in the discussion, Amol Rajan, BBC News media editor, asked Stelter if social media platforms were using their “editorial judgement as to what should and shouldn’t be in the public domain.” Rajan also went on to suggest that social media platforms were now into what can be termed journalism.
Stelter agreed with Rajan and said that Big Tech social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook were acting “more and more like the newsroom.”
“The platforms screw up all the time and they’re barely cleaning up the sewer that they have allowed to exist,” said Stelter.
