Topic: Media Research Center
Yes, Elon Musk is still handing out selective "Twitter files" documents to hand-picked reporters, and yes, the Media Research Center is still serving as Musk's servile stenographers in promoting them. A July 25 post by Gabriela Pariseau touted an installment starring the MRC's favorite vaccine conspiracy theorist-slash-Democratic presidential candidate, building on attempts a few days earlier to bestow victimhood on him:
The latest Twitter Files installments implicated a new culprit in the assault against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s free speech and provided evidence that government requests to censor were more like orders.
The most recent Twitter Files by Andrew Lowenthal, author of the Network Affects Substack, referred to a House hearing last Thursday at which Democrat [sic] presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. provided testimony. Lowenthal noted that The Twitter Files corroborated Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan(R-OH)’s accusations of Government-Big Tech collusion to censor Kennedy, adding that not only did the White House ask Twitter to muzzle Kennedy but Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz (HI) apparently did the same.
During the hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Jordan pointed out that the Biden administration emailed Twitter sternly asking the platform to silence Kennedy’s views on COVID-19 vaccines two days after the president took office. “Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP,” an email from White House Digital Director for the COVID-19 Response Team Clarke Humphrey to Twitter reads according to screenshots Lowenthal included.
What did Kennedy say that was so objectionable? He noted his opinion of how professional baseball player Hank Aaron died. “Hank Aaron’s tragic death is part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following the vaccine. He received the vaccine on January 5 to inspire other black Americans to get the vaccine,” Kennedy wrote, according to Jordan’s readout at the hearing.
Pariseau refused to tell her readers that Kennedy is an anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist with no credibility, or that he was lying about the COVID vaccine killing Aaron (who died of natural causes). Pariseau also failed to explain why a medical misinformation during a pandemic shouldn't be countered or corrected.
Pariseau went on to tout the latest rantings from "independent journalist Matt Taibbi," failing to disclose that 1) Taibbi split acrimoniously from Elon Musk from the "Twitter files" project, and 2) if Taibbi was uncritically repeating what Musk told him to write about, he's not an "independent journalist."
Autumn Johnson served up more stenography for Taibbi in an Aug. 4 post:
Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi sounded the alarm on government collusion with Big Tech in a recent discussion with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Taibbi discussed his initial bombshell findings blowing the lid off the backdoor channels that the government used to coordinate censorship with Big Tech in addition to the impact the discoveries had on his life. Taibbi said he was “thankful,” for the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit that reached the same conclusions about the Biden administration’s collusion with Big Tech that he did, albeit independently. The bombshell lawsuit cited original research database to track the extent of Big Tech's efforts to censor Biden detractors. When asked what Twitter Files finding surprised him the most, Taibbi said he and his team were shocked to see that the U.S. government “briefed” social media companies on world trends like the war in Ukraine. “That was shocking to me because that showed the entire arrangement in one picture,” he said.
Taibbi also warned against the jargon used by Big Tech social media companies, like the term “de-amplify,” that in reality is just censorship.
[...]
The Twitter Files continue to expose intentional censorship efforts by the government overwhelmingly. MRC Free Speech America reported last month that the latest Twitter Files drop by Andrew Lowenthal, author of the Network Affects Substack, implicated members of the United States government in colluding with Big Tech social media platforms to censor Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
LIke Pariseau, Johnson refused to tell readers that Kennedy is a discredited conspiracy theorist or that Taibbi is no longer part of Musk's "Twitter files" projecct.
Salgado gushed that Donald Trump returned to Twitter after his (fourth) indictment in an Aug. 25 post:
Former President Donald Trump has returned to Twitter, now called X, two years after the platform banned him.
Trump was arrested Thursday in Fulton County, Georgia, on highly controversial charges related to his challenging the officially announced 2020 election results. After his arrest, Trump released his mugshot both on his own TruthSocial platform and on X with the message “ELECTION INTERFERENCE NEVER SURRENDER!” It was Trump’s first tweet since he was “permanently banned” in Jan. 2021.
In Dec. 2022, The Twitter Files revealed what happened behind the scenes when the platform banned then-President Trump in January 2021. Employees compared him to Hitler, despite internal assessments that Trump had not violated the platform’s rules, according to screenshots included in The Twitter Files. The Twitter Files on the platform’s rule-twisting against Trump came soon after the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, restored Trump’s account.
Musk himself quote-tweeted Trump’s mugshot with the comment, “Next-level.”
Salgado didn't mention that Trump's "NEVER SURRENDER!" tweet was accompanied with a mugshot taken when he was literally surrendering to justice. Instead, she gushed further that "Trump’s X post of his mugshot has already gained 154 million views, 1.2 million likes, and 287,000 reposts as of the publication of this piece."
