National media, including the Associated Press — media that quickly spread unverified claims about Donald Trump in 2016 — is slow to investigate current claims that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter may have been paid substantial sums of money for possible access.
The media claim, without evidence, that it may be Russian disinformation but even that claim may be an attempt to stall investigating until the election. That is the problem faced by social media like Facebook and Twitter, whose personal political preferences may affect their policies.
Monday morning, John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence, said on Fox Business, that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not part of a Russian disinformation campaign despite the media’s attempts to claim otherwise.
"Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, [Friday] said that the intelligence community believes that Hunter Biden’s laptop and e-mails on it are part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”
“Let me be clear, the intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports and we shared no intelligence with chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” he continued. “It’s simply not true.”
The Biden campaign has not denied the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails and rather than deny certain meetings took place, has said that no such meetings were on Joe Biden’s official calendar. They claim, without evidence, that the allegations have been previously investigated and debunked.
At issue is what is news, what is information, and what is misinformation.
Outsiders and some of Facebook's own employees, say the company's efforts to revise its rules and tighten its safeguards remain wholly insufficient to the task, as deciding whom to censor places it in the middle of the upcoming election.
“Am I concerned about the election? I’m terrified,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and an early Facebook investor turned vocal critic. “At the company's current scale, it’s a clear and present danger to democracy and national security.”
“This election is not going to be business as usual," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a September Facebook post in which he outlined Facebook’s efforts to encourage voting and remove misinformation from its service.
Other platforms like Twitter and YouTube have also struggled to address misinformation and hateful content, Facebook stands apart for its reach and scale and, compared to many other platforms, its slower response to the challenges identified in 2016.
The company has hired outside fact-checkers, added restrictions — then more restrictions — on political advertisements and taken down thousands of accounts, pages and groups it found to be engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
Unfortunately, some of the selected fact-checkers have been associated with particular interests. And some of the management of social media companies previously worked with political campaigns.
It has started added warning labels to posts that it says contain misinformation about voting and has, at times, taken steps to limit the circulation of what it considers misleading posts. But, by doing so, it has opened the door to removing its protection as a conduit of information, not a publisher. A publisher can be sued for damage.
In recent weeks the platform banned an unverified political story about Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, published by the New York Post, a longstanding New York newspaper. However—and leading to accusations of double standards—Facebook did not ban unverified accusations against Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2016.
Social media also takes sides on COVID-19 research that do not let science function. Science requires challenges to theories and countervailing evidence. Recently infectious disease expert Scott Atlas was banned from Twitter for his criticisms of mask effectiveness.
Facebook faces a number of government investigations into its size and market power, including an antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. An earlier FTC investigation socked Facebook with a large $5 billion fine, but didn't require any additional changes.
Facebook insists it takes the challenge of misinformation seriously — especially when it comes to the election. However, the claiming something is misinformation is not the same as proving that it is. And whether, for instance, Russia or China engage in misinformation does not necessarily mean current emails about influence peddling by Hunter Biden are false. There is also evidence of foreign governments trying to compromise the family members of public officials.
In the mean time, national news media, including the Associated Press are downplaying the Biden emails, even though they appear to have come from a computer at a service center that was not reclaimed by its ostensible owner, Hunter Biden.
Sunday the New York Post wrote an opinion pointing out that the national media is avoiding the Post’s Hunter Biden stories as much as Joe Biden is. "Russian disinformation? This is how the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc., run protection for the Biden campaign. They have ignored or maligned our stories, and claimed the e-mails were 'hacked.'”
In addition to investigations by the New York Post, serious investigation to provide independent confirmation of the allegations raised by the Hunter Biden emails is taking place on social media by investigative reporters who previously have proven reliable.
—AP stories contributed to this report.
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