On August 6, a number of giant online media companies, including Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify and Pinterest, took the seemingly coordinated decision to remove all content from Alex Jones and his media outlet Infowars from their platforms.
Jones, perhaps the internet’s most notorious far-right conspiracy theorist, has claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, the Democratic Party is running a child sex ring inside a DC pizzeria and that the Las Vegas shooting was perpetrated by Antifa. Despite or perhaps because of such claims, his website Infowars has built up an enormous following: 3 million Americans, almost 1 percent of the population, visited the site in July 2018, according to Alexa.
Alex Jones: First they came for the conspiracy theorists….
The reaction from the media to the decision to ban Jones and Infowars was largely celebratory. On the Late Show (8/7/18), Stephen Colbert joked that it looked like “Infowars just lost their war on info.” The Daily Beast (8/9/18) urged readers to “shed absolutely no tears for Alex Jones,” while Salon (8/9/18) and CNN (8/9/18) put pressure on Twitter to follow suit, with the former asking, “Why is Alex Jones still allowed on Twitter?”
Some worried about a slippery slope of corporate censorship. Writing in Rolling Stone 8/2/18), Matt Taibbi warned: “The endgame here couldn’t be clearer. This is how authoritarian marriages begin, and people should be very worried.”
Yet this appeared to be a minority opinion. Media critic and news presenter David Doel shared his message to progressives via Twitter (8/6/18):
Lefties defending Alex Jones right now: I hear you, on the surface it appears to set bad precedent to give massive corporations control over who’s silenced. But if you aren’t performing hate speech, libel or slander on a regular basis, then I don’t know what you’re worried about.
Unfortunately, Facebook immediately used this new precedent to switch its sights on the left, temporarily shutting down the Occupy London page and deleting the anti-fascist No Unite the Right account (Tech Crunch, 8/1/18). Furthermore, on August 9, the independent, reader-supported news website Venezuelanalysis had its page suspended without warning.
The site does not feign neutrality, offering news and views about Venezuela from a strongly left-wing perspective. But it’s not uncritical of the Venezuelan government, either, and provides a crucial English-language resource for academics and interested parties on all sides wishing to understand events inside Venezuela from a leftist perspective, something almost completely absent in corporate media, which has been actively undermining elections (FAIR.org, 5/23/18) and openly calling for military intervention or a coup in the country (FAIR.org, 5/16/18).
My latest book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting, detailed the complete lack of diversity, and the strict adherence to an anti-Chavista editorial line, across corporate media. Venezuelanalysis, praised by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and John Pilger, offers an alternative perspective.
The abrupt nature of its de-platforming is a worrying development for alternative media. Following an appeal and a public outcry on social media, Venezuelanalysis was reinstated on Facebook. However, the social media site offered no explanation for what happened.
Facebook recently announced it had partnered with the Atlantic Council in an effort to combat “fake news” on its platform (FAIR.org, 5/21/18). An offshoot of NATO, the Council’s board of directors is a who’s who of neo-conservative hawks, including Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger and James Baker; CIA directors like Robert Gates, Leon Panetta and Michael Hayden; retired generals like Wesley Clark and David Petraeus; as well as senior tech executives.
Forty-five percent of Americans get their news from Facebook. When an organization like the Atlantic Council decides what news we see and do not see, that is tantamount to state censorship.
Venezuelanalysis (8/9/18) had its page temporarily removed from Facebook.
Venezuelanalysis (12/13/17) exposed that the Council was working closely with the Venezuelan opposition, donating over $1 million to it, part of a wide-ranging effort at regime change against multiple progressive governments in the region (Brasilwire, 12/28/17). That Facebook censored a news site responsible for investigating its partner is a worrying development in journalism.
Venezuelanalysis’ statement (8/9/18) on its removal noted that “Facebook appears to be targeting independent or left-wing sites in the wake of Russiagate.” As I previously argued (FAIR.org, 7/27/18), the utility of the Russian “fake news” scandal is that it allows corporate media to tighten their grip over the means of communication. Under the guise of combating fake news, media organizations like Google, Bing, Facebook and YouTube have changed their algorithms. The effect has been to hammer progressive media outlets. AlterNet’s Google traffic fell by 63 percent, Media Matters by 42 percent, TruthOut by 25 percent and The Intercept by 19 percent (WSWS, 8/2/17). Sites like these that challenge corporate perspectives are being starved of traffic and advertising revenue.
On August 13, the situation escalated as Facebook, citing a clause in its terms of service barring “hateful, threatening or obscene” media, deplatformed TeleSUR English, an English-language Latin American news network. TeleSUR is funded by a number of Latin American states, including Venezuela, and offers news and opinion from a progressive viewpoint. It was set up precisely to provide an alternative to Western corporate-dominated media. In its statement on its censorship, TeleSUR English (8/13/18) noted, “This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting down of pages that don’t fit a mainstream narrative.”
Facebook’s claim to be concerned about the spread of hate speech if it weren’t meeting with the far-right to coach them on how to use the social media platform for recruitment and micro-targeting (Bloomberg Businessweek, 9/29/17).
That Facebook’s stated concern about stopping the spread of hate speech is genuine is challenged by the fact that the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party went to Facebook headquarters in Berlin in 2017 to discuss how it could use the platform for recruitment and for micro-targeting in the German elections, as Bloomberg Businessweek (9/29/17) reported. Through Facebook and with the help of American companies, AfD nearly tripled its previous vote share, becoming the third-largest party in Germany, the far right’s best showing since World War II.
The Russian fake news scandal has provided enormous media monopolies an avenue to try to reassert control over the means of communication. This latest action by Facebook is part of a worrying trend towards greater censorship of media. It is unlikely it will end here. Progressives should not necessarily shed tears for Jones, but they should be aware that their media is next in line, and that Jones’ deplatforming sets a dangerous precedent that is already being used against them.
Following an appeal and a public outcry on social media, both Venezuelanalysis and TeleSUR English were reinstated on Facebook, with the latter being told being told its suspension was due to “instability” and “suspicious activity,” though it had earlier gotten a message accusing it of “violating our Terms of Use.” As Venezuelanalysis (8/9/18) noted, “the whole thing is extremely mysterious, to say the least.”
My guess would be that Venezuelanalysis was banned from Facebook because of frequent plagiarism. However, a conspiracy makes for much more interesting reading. Adjusts tin-foil hat. Calling it “independent” is pretty funny too considering they often copy/paste right from TeleSur. It’s very clearly an English-language propaganda operation. I doubt any Venezuelan political asylees are supporting it.
TeleSur is hardly a good proxy for a “progressive” news outlet. It’s basically a state-owned propaganda outlet — much like RT, Voice of America, Al Jazeera, or Deutsche Welle. Handle with care and caution. For example, TeleSur has zero critical news about ALBA members in good standing. If it was your only source, you’d never know that Venezuela was in the midst a humanitarian crisis. Although it is entertaining to see them turn critical now of Ecuador, Brasil and Argentina.
>My guess would be that Venezuelanalysis was banned from Facebook because of frequent plagiarism
Examples? I also don’t think plagiarism is against the Facebook TOS.
Oh I also forgot to quote this:
>For example, TeleSur has zero critical news about ALBA members in good standing. If it was your only source, you’d never know that Venezuela was in the midst a humanitarian crisis.
Didn’t the article literally just say there are ZERO American media news outlets (maybe Democracy Now but that doesn’t really count as mainstream news) that show any portion of Chavez, Maduro, Chavismo, or the Bolivarian Revolution in any light that isn’t wholly and completely negative?
My point is handle with care and know where your news is coming from. You will not get the complete story by looking at TeleSur, which is funded by ALBA, or any other state-supported news source. It is the “rose colored glasses” version of events in those countries.
I also agree that you will not get a complete story from American MSM. You have to read from all sources to get an understanding of the full story. However, the fact that the MSM in the USA even reports on Venezuela is a minor miracle. I’d be surprised if the average American person could locate it on a map.
I bother to read news about Venezuela because my uncle had to leave after he could no longer support his family. He went back to Peru to earn money to send to his Venezuelan wife and daughter. Ironically he went to Venezuela during the 1980s during Peru’s economic crisis to send money back to his family in Peru. Now the tide has turned.
This is an insidious argument that is always used, but is totally besides the point. In a Capitalist state the private Capitalist class holds the purse-strings, in order for it to be able to reach the population at large. Thus by its very nature, the Mass Media and the Press are de-facto totalitarian outlets of propaganda of its view-point. Indoctrination in a Capitalist state is as total as any in a State run media outlet. The bread and butter dogma fed to the gullible population that the Press and the Mass media is “FREE” is in itself a totalitarian indoctrination. There is no ‘free-lunch’… not is there a free press in a Capitalist society.
Was the Jones excision a feint to provide cover for attacking the intended targets?
And even given the dangers of corporate censorship, can a case be made for his being given the boot? Does the equation have to be an “either/or”?
What is FAIR’s opinion about Microsoft alleging websites are ‘spear phishing,’ and has the power to shut them down? The TeleSUR and Venezuelananalysis websites were not affected by Facebook, but Microsoft seems to have undemocratic authority to select and shut down websites. That is worrisome.
1/
If the “violations”, privately owned social media Terms of Service, and judgements of Atlantic Council were applied to MSM these networks would have lost their broadcast licenses that ‘We the people’ are mandated to own and control through OUR FCC.
I note that however loud-mouth and wrong Alex Jones (for example) is about issues he is not responsible for unconscionable global damages resulting from the propagation of unlawful real-life international and domestic crimes that the MSM are complicit with: acts like the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, the surveillence state, the Warren and 9/11 commissions, interference in sovereign states, Wall Street protection, the embedded establishment and deep state, Citizens United, Monsanto emergence and development.
In a landmark case, 1997, the court ruled Fox affiliate WTVT editors and owners could manipulate and suppress news facts that their two journalists had brought to their submitted report regarding the use of Monsanto’s synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) Posilac by Florida dairy farmers. Basically, the court upheld the right of fake news in mainstream corporate news.
It’s the blackout and suppression of critical facts that constitute grave violations of Freedom of the Press especially from the position of the work of journalists of courage and integrity that matters – it matters as much as the blatant manufacture and dissemination of lies and fake news.
And Freedom of the Press as it pertains to public trust and the public interest, must be weighted on the side of journalists on the front lines, those who are the messengers of indiscriminate fact and truth, as opposed to their bosses of private interest and their cabals.
1/
If the “violations”, privately owned social media Terms of Service, and judgements of Atlantic Council were applied to MSM these networks would have lost their broadcast licenses that ‘We the people’ are mandated to own and control through OUR FCC.
I note that however loud-mouth and wrong Alex Jones (for example) is about issues he is not responsible for unconscionable global damages resulting from the propagation of unlawful real-life international and domestic crimes that the MSM are complicit with: acts like the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, the surveillence state, the Warren and 9/11 commissions, interference in sovereign states, Wall Street protection, the embedded establishment and deep state, Citizens United, Monsanto emergence and development.
In a landmark case, 1997, the court ruled Fox affiliate WTVT editors and owners could manipulate and suppress news facts that their two journalists had brought to their submitted report regarding the use of Monsanto’s synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) Posilac by Florida dairy farmers. Basically, the court upheld the right of fake news in mainstream corporate news.
It’s the blackout and suppression of critical facts that constitute grave violations of Freedom of the Press especially from the position of the work of journalists of courage and integrity that matters – it matters as much as the blatant manufacture and dissemination of lies and fake news.
And Freedom of the Press as it pertains to public trust and the public interest, must be weighted on the side of journalists on the front lines, those who are the messengers of indiscriminate fact and truth, as opposed to their bosses of private interest and their cabals.
2/
The current differences between MSM and Social Media Voices are that a) the corporate media is consciously or unconsciously digested by mass audiences as having authority, and b) corporate network media so outweighs viewership and sophisticated and powerful impacts to that of SMV that the current consequences is hardly a register on the dial.
The poor amateur and even more professional presentations of Social Media Voices are generally seen by their viewers and community for what they are in the universal gamut of free expression as opposed to the well healed handful of transnational corporate news casters traded on stock exchanges.
So:
1. SMV should be given the broadest emergency protection -in fact a blanket freeze on user suspensions and terminations- while public scrutiny and investigations focuses on the FCC and the courts with regard to the elephant MSM in da room
2. While the very notion of privately owned social media utilities of monolithic and global communication control with self proclaimed Terms of Service can be determined as being constitutional, in accord with UN rights and international law, and in the national public and universal human interest.
The corporate news services are distorting minds. The “classified” events we need to know, the media collusion with state, the absence of important news are as unethical as the daily distraction stories and outright lies in servicing a real democracy of healthy well-exercised public minds.
If the credulity of information is to be regulated then the authority of corporate news disseminated en mass must surely be the paramount focus, not the assumed innocent or too big to fail model.
The very cultural, ecological, economic and political “centre” deliberately crafted and perpetuated by the USA corporate-cartel broadcasters over generations and apparently conspired to by the FCC is a monumental propaganda crime debilitating organic law, defiling the sciences and global sustainability.
2/
The current differences between MSM and Social Media Voices are that a) the corporate media is consciously or unconsciously digested by mass audiences as having authority, and b) corporate network media so outweighs viewership and sophisticated and powerful impacts to that of SMV that the current consequences is hardly a register on the dial.
The poor amateur and even more professional presentations of Social Media Voices are generally seen by their viewers and community for what they are in the universal gamut of free expression as opposed to the well healed handful of transnational corporate news casters traded on stock exchanges.
So:
1. SMV should be given the broadest emergency protection -in fact a blanket freeze on user suspensions and terminations- while public scrutiny and investigations focuses on the FCC and the courts with regard to the elephant MSM in da room
2. While the very notion of privately owned social media utilities of monolithic and global communication control with self proclaimed Terms of Service can be determined as being constitutional, in accord with UN rights and international law, and in the national public and universal human interest.
The corporate news services are distorting minds. The “classified” events we need to know, the media collusion with state, the absence of important news are as unethical as the daily distraction stories and outright lies in servicing a real democracy of healthy well-exercised public minds.
If the credulity of information is to be regulated then the authority of corporate news disseminated en mass must surely be the paramount focus, not the assumed innocent or too big to fail model.
The very cultural, ecological, economic and political “centre” deliberately crafted and perpetuated by the USA corporate-cartel broadcasters over generations and apparently conspired to by the FCC is a monumental propaganda crime debilitating organic law, defiling the sciences and global sustainability.
Thanks for this excellent analysis. It’s good to see more valuable work from Glasglow following the valuable book “Bad News from Israel.’ People may wish to view our article and video on Internet Censorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqhi16iikxk – when you click the link, you’ll see that YouTube has partially censored this video about censorship — it has placed it behind a warning wall and does not provide the usual sharing mechanism.
scary times ahead as sadly Telesur’s two great flagship program The Empire Files with Abby Martin and The World today/Global Affairs with Tariq Ali both had to close down to the sanctions of mass destruction imposed on Venezuela for having the audacity to be a democratic socialist government now wanting to bow down to the imperial order of the US, Australia, the EU, France, Canada, the UK and Australia and New Zealand. if anyone is interested donate generously to Abby and find out what you can do to help Tariq Ali. http://mediaroots.org/us-sanctions-shut-down-the-empire-files-with-abby-martin/ & https://www.gofundme.com/keep-empire-files-going & https://www.patreon.com/empirefiles here you can help her build her new independent media project. and Protect Wikileaks and RT from further harassments and efforts to shut it down.
Oh my God! What is happening all over the world?!