Topic: Media Research Center
How desperately does the Media Research Center cling to its narrative that right-wing extremists must never be "censored" no matter how much hate and misinformation they spread? It has cometo the defense of Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican who can't accept that she lost and is clinging to conspiracy theories to bolster claims of election fraud that she can't prove. Luis Cornelio wrote in an Aug. 14 post headlined "Damning Report Reveals Big Tech’s Interference in Kari Lake’s Election":
Newly obtained emails expose how social media platforms helped turn Arizona, once a reliable red state, into a hub of leftist politicians.
The Arizona Capitol Oversight, a non-profit organization, unleashed on August 10 emails exposing how Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, as then-Arizona secretary of state, coerced Twitter and Facebook to censor her leading opponents ahead of her contentious bid for Arizona governor in 2022. According to the damning report, Hobbs sought to “improve her political posture” ahead of the 2022 election. In one of the emails, dated November 12, 2020, Hobbs whined that she came under fire after the resurfacing of a 2017 tweet where she associated Trump voters with the “neo-Nazi” and sought special protection from one social media platform.
The emails indicate that Twitter pushed back against Hobbs’s hissy fit that Twitter was not doing enough to protect her, asking her to provide more evidence of her assertions. Hobbs responded back claiming, “I am not sure I can provide the information you are asking for because I reported and then blocked multiple users at the same time.” As if that wasn’t enough, Hobbs then aimed her censorship demands at Facebook, emailing the company on November 23 2021 to remove an unrelated post. The post in question was related to the Arizona elections.
Oddly, Cornelio didn't mention Lake at all in his post, only in the headline. He also didn't describe Arizona Capitol Oversight as anything beyond his euphemistic label of "a non-profit organization." In fact, it's run by Brian Anderson, a former staffer for Hobbs' predecessor as governor, Doug Ducey, so there's clearly some political bias at work in this report.
Cornelio went on to rant that Hobbs was trying to "censor posts that contained so-called misinformation." In fact, she was trying to fight undisputed lies and misinformation; as we've documented, one tweet she sought to have removed falsely claimed that the state's voter registration system is controlled by foreigners. Again, Cornelio did not explain why lies and misinformation in spcial media should never be corrected.
Cornelio then undermined the entire premise of his outrage with one sentence: "The censorship collusion continued from November 2020 all the way to the run-up of her gubernatorial campaign announcement." That's right -- all this happened even before Hobbs announced her gubernatorial campaign.In other words, this biased report is nowhere near as "damning" as Cornelio wants us to believe.
How can there be "election interference" in a campaign that hadn't even been declared? Cornelio did not elaborate.
