Jonathan Turley: Social Media Has Become ‘State Media’

[Valin]

Breitbart News

Lucas Nolan

19 Oct 2020

In a recent op-ed, legal scholar Jonathan Turley refers to Twitter and Facebook as “state media” after they attempted to stop the viral spread of the recent New York Post bombshell reports about Hunter Biden, Burisma, and the alleged involvement of Joe Biden in their business dealings.

In an op-ed published in the Hill titled “Censoring the Biden story: How Social Media Becomes State Media,” legal scholar Jonathan Turley criticized social media giants Facebook and Twitter for their censorship of a recent story from the New York Post which could be damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign.

Breitbart News recently reported on the story that indicated that Joe Biden may have met with an adviser to the board of Burisma while he was Vice President, arranged by his son Hunter, who was working as a lobbyist for the company at the time. Joe Biden has previously said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

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[Valin]

Facebook's Effort to Suppress the Hunter Biden NY Post Story Gave it Half the Reach of Major Anti-Trump Scoops

Paul Bond

10/19/20 at 4:19 PM EDT

In the moments after the New York Post published what it called a "smoking gun" story about Hunter Biden's emails last week, both Twitter and Facebook worked to limit the article's circulation. Each company gave a different reason for doing so: Twitter said it violated the company's "Hacked Materials Policy," while Facebook said it would reduce the story's visibility until fact checkers could weigh in.

While Twitter's actions had little impact on the reach of the story, data shows that Facebook's suppression of the article caused it to reach roughly half the readers that major anti Trump scoops — like the Atlantic's article on Trump's alleged comments about American's who died in war and The New York Times' story on the president's tax returns — did.

According to data compiled by Newswhip, which tracks such things, roughly 1.94 million people engaged with the Post's Hunter Biden story in the first 24 hours after publishing, and a total of 2.12 million readers as of Sunday. In comparison, 3.69 people read the Atlantic article accusing Trump of calling fallen soldiers "losers and suckers," in the first 24 hours of its publishing and 6.86 million people read the story as of Sunday. About 4.12 million people read the New York Times story on Trump's tax returns in its first 24 hours, and 5.37 read it as of Sunday.

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