I’ll offer you a little bit peek backstage right here at Poynter.
My Poynter colleague Angela Fu began engaged on a chunk a few weeks in the past concerning the relationship (or, extra precisely, the nonrelationship) between X and fact-checkers.
That piece — “It’s easy to find misinformation on social media. It’s even easier on X” — was printed on Poynter’s web site on Thursday.
In it, Fu writes, “A platform that used to downgrade hoaxes, conspiracy theories and false claims has change into one the place even the boss now spreads the stuff. That change didn’t occur instantly, however the shift of X from a helpful info supply to a locus of misinformation has alarmed fact-checkers worldwide.”
The boss of X, in fact, is Elon Musk, who seemingly spends his days arising with new methods to make use of his social media platform as a toy for misinformation and divisiveness. In fact, he has each proper to endorse somebody for president. On this case, he made it clear that he helps Donald Trump for the White Home.
Nothing unsuitable with that, and that’s not what that is about.
Let’s return to what Fu wrote in her story: “The connection between massive know-how firms {and professional} fact-checkers has always been contentious, with fact-checkers accusing the platforms of not doing sufficient to fight the unfold of misinformation. However no less than there’s a relationship. Meta — which owns Fb, Instagram and WhatsApp — partners with independent fact-checkers to overview and fee posts on its platforms, for instance. TikTok operates a similar program.”
Fu continues, “X underneath Elon Musk has proven little interest in doing the identical. It doesn’t have a proper relationship with fact-checkers and as an alternative depends on its crowdsourced fact-checking program ‘Neighborhood Notes,’ Maldita.es co-founder and CEO Clara Jiménez Cruz mentioned. Whereas specialists acknowledge that there are some benefits to the Neighborhood Notes system, it additionally has its flaws, permitting many items of mis- and disinformation to go unchecked and viral.”
Jiménez Cruz mentioned, “It doesn’t solely contain misinformation itself, but in addition hate speech and different types of manipulative content material.”
Fu writes, “The end result, fact-checkers say, is a worse expertise for customers as deceptive and hateful posts muddle individuals’s feeds and disinformation campaigns run rampant. Many fear concerning the results of these campaigns, particularly throughout a yr when almost half the world’s inhabitants votes in nationwide elections.”
So let’s get again to Musk. Prior to now couple of weeks, he posted a creepy and cringy tweet about Taylor Swift, then adopted that up with a dangerously irresponsible response to an X consumer who posted after a second obvious assassination plot in opposition to Trump, “Why they wish to kill Donald Trump?”
Musk wrote, “And nobody is even attempting to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” He then included a “individual pondering” emoji.
Musk ultimately deleted his comment — 9 hours after he posted it and after it had greater than 4 million views. He then adopted up with two flippant posts that mainly mentioned he was joking.
And now right here’s one other instance of Musk appearing like a donkey. It’s CNN’s Liam Reilly with “Elon Musk boosts fake Trump rally bomb threat and false claims about the election.”
Reilly additionally identified one other time, simply this week, when Musk shared a false video involving that entire baseless story about Haitian immigrants consuming pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Once more, this all occurred since Fu began engaged on her story.
As Fu wrote, “Musk has emerged as a significant spreader of misinformation, amplifying false claims to his 197 million followers. The Center for Countering Digital Hate discovered that Musk made 50 false or deceptive posts concerning the U.S. elections between Jan. 1 and July 31, producing almost 1.2 billion views, and The Washington Post reported final week that Musk’s on-line posts have coincided with harassment campaigns in direction of election directors.”
Remember to try Fu’s story for extra.
- Whereas Musk goes all in along with his assist for Trump, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is attempting to remain out of politics, according to this piece from The Washington Post’s Will Oremus and Cristiano Lima-Strong. Zuckerberg has not endorsed anybody for president and, not too long ago, wrote a letter to Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio about politics, saying, “My aim is to be impartial and never play a task a technique or one other — or to even look like enjoying a task.”
- The Related Press’ David Bauder with “A news site that covers Haitian Americans is facing harassment over its post-debate coverage of Ohio.”
- And right here’s The New York Instances’ Benjamin Mullin with “Threats Against Haitians Land at the Doorstep of The Haitian Times.”
- The New York Instances’ Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson with “On YouTube, Major Brands’ Ads Appear Alongside Racist Falsehoods About Haitian Immigrants.”
- The large story getting a ton of buzz on Thursday was this CNN KFile investigation from Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck about controversial North Carolina gubernatorial candidate (and present lieutenant governor) Mark Robinson: “‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum.” (Warning: the story incorporates language that some would possibly discover offensive.) Robinson is denying the story, nevertheless it positive looks like CNN’s reporting does tie Robinson to feedback made between 2008 and 2012. There are components of this story which might be fairly disturbing and CNN wrote, “CNN is reporting solely a small portion of Robinson’s feedback on the web site given their graphic nature.”
- The Washington Publish’s Jonathan Baran and Emily Giambalvo with terrific evaluation of audio and visible proof in “New audio disputes ruling that stripped Jordan Chiles of Olympic medal.”
- For Teen Vogue, Toni Odejimi with “Yamiche Alcindor and Dasha Burns of NBC Talk 2024, Trump, Harris, and Journalism.”
- Washington Publish sports activities media author Ben Strauss with an excellent piece on ESPN basketball analyst Monica McNutt: “No, dude, Monica McNutt does not need your WNBA take.”
- USA At the moment’s Jeff Zillgitt with “‘His future is bright:’ NBA executives, agents react to Adrian Wojnarowski’s retirement.”
- With simply over every week left within the Main League Baseball season, the Chicago White Sox are 36-117 and will make a run at being the worst workforce in trendy major-league historical past. (The 1962 New York Mets went 40-120). Right here’s The Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli and Ken Rosenthal with “An owner who ‘thinks he knows everything’ led the White Sox to historic disaster.”
Have suggestions or a tip? Electronic mail Poynter senior media author Tom Jones at [email protected].
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