Topic: Media Research Center
The bad and unsavory news about Elon Musk and Twitter (well, X) continues to pile up:
- Musk stole the @music username without compensation from a user with half a million followers who had been using the account since 2007.
- More than 2,200 Twitter employees Musk dumped in a mass firing after he bought the company tooks their claims for promised severance pay into arbitration, but Twitter has refused to pay the filing fees -- totaling more than $3 milloin -- that would allow those arbitration cases to move forward.
- The Twitter account of a man accused of murdering a woman over a Pride flag was originally allowed to stay live even though the alleged killer made numerous anti-LGBTQ and anti-Semitic messages on it, insisting that the account didn't violate its policies. It was not until a story was published about that decision that Twitter abruptly suspended it.
- Musk is continuing to amplify the Twitter accounts of QAnon conspiracy theorists and white nationalists by interacting with them through his own account.
The Media Research Center doesn't want its reader to know about any of that -- it has Musk PR to create. Luis Cornelio wrote in an Oct. 3 post:
President Joe Biden whined that X (formerly known as Twitter) is not as aggressively engaging in widespread censorship of constitutionally protected free speech.
Speaking to the leftist zealots at ProPublica on Oct. 1, Biden accused, without evidence, X owner Elon Musk and right-leaning media outlets of igniting an imaginary increase of misinformation online. In the same disturbing interview, Biden claimed — again with no evidence — that Americans can’t differentiate real news from fake news. “Where do people get their news?” Biden asked before answering his own question, “They go on the internet, they go online and you have no notion whether it's true or not.”
The increase in misinformation on Twitter isn't imaginary at all. The shutdown by Musk of trust and safety teams and the revoking of bans on accounts who spread hate and misinformation, as well as rendering the blue check meaningless as a sign of credibility, meant that misinformation and hate has, in fact, increased on Twitter.But rather than address facts,Cornelio cheered that Musk insulted Biden:
Musk, known for his witty and hilarious clapbacks, reacted to Biden’s claims, saying, “The corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s literally looks more alive than Biden.” His response, a reference to a 1989 comedy film where two individuals parade their dead boss around, marked a direct jab at Biden’s cognizance.
Cornelio didn't expalin how Musk's petulant insult was either witty or hilarious. He then chose to hurl some insults of his own:
Biden’s assertions came during the segment where journalist John Harwood claimed that Fox News, alongside other outlets that do not conform to White House talking points, are a danger to democracy (or in other words, the Democratic Party). Specifically, he asked, “Do they drive the threat that you're concerned about? Are they simply reflecting a sentiment that already exists in the country?” In turn, Biden replied, “They do both. Look, there’re no editors anymore.”
Doing the left’s bidding, Harwood then drew attention to Musk’s promise to promote free speech on X. “What about what Elon Musk has done to Twitter, lowering guardrails against misinformation? Does that contribute to it?” the so-called journalist asked. “Yeah, it does,” Biden replied before claiming that he was going to write a book about the changing media landscape. “Look, one of the things that I said to you when I thought I wasn't going to run, I was going to write a book about the changes taking place.”
Who would’ve thought that Biden — notoriously known for his incoherent and gaffe-plagued speeches, was also a social media and communications expert? “Most of this directed over the years were these fundamental changes in society by changing technology, Gutenberg, printing and the printing press changed the way Europeans could talk to one another, all the way to today,” Biden claimed.
Again, Cornelio refused to address the substance of what Biden and Harwood were talking about -- and he certainly wasn't going to bring up the fact that Fox News did, in fact, help endanger democracy by lying to its viewers and the country about election fraud, for which it had to pay Dominion $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit. Then again, Cornelio isn't much of a social media and communications expert either, given his embrace of lies and hate on social media because not only they advance right-wing narratives, it's a right-wing narrative to dishonestly portray any efforts to address hate and misinformatoin online as "censorship."
The fact that Cornelio would rather play insult comic instead of having a serious discussion of how Musk is mismanging Twitter tells us he doesn't actually care about "free speech" at all -- he's only interested in being Musk's PR boy.
