On Thursday, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell, following a meeting the previous day between some of the nation's top conservative leaders and company officials at Facebook, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "told Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto ... that he 'left encouraged' that the site wants to fix the 'erosion of trust' set forth by allegations of censoring conservative news topics."
An incident the previous week confirmed that Zuckerberg and Facebook have a genuine and serious credibility problem on their hands, as the site's "Trending Topics" monitors characterized a well-known actress's shout-out for the wonderful work done by a DC-area pregnancy and parenthood center as an "anti-abortion message."
Patricia Heaton tweeted the following on May 12:
The tweet went viral on Facebook to the point where its activity earned it "Trending Topics" status.
At that point, Facebook's "Trending Topics" monitors arbitrarily gave it the following description (HT Hot Air):
The video included in the tweet Heaton referenced is entirely about the support young mothers and a father have received from the Center:
Only inadequately supervised, hardened abortion supporters could possibly have interpreted the tweet by the Everybody Loves Raymond actress in support of the Northwest Center's noble work as "anti-abortion."
The mission of the Northwest Center is:
... to promote the dignity of women and a respect for all human life. We seek to accomplish this goal by offering the loving support and comprehensive aid necessary to enable all women to continue their pregnancies, deliver healthy babies, and adequately care for themselves and their children.
The problem, simply stated, is that any time someone uses the word "life" or the term "pregnancy center," the language-policing far-left feels that it is their duty to tell the world: "Don't believe these nice words. This person is really an anti-abortion extremist, and you should thank us for giving her (or him) a proper label."
Someone who wishes to deliberately misinterpret the world around them in such a manner is of course free to do so in their private life and off-the-clock political activities. But they have no business attaching their labeling biases to override the content and clear intent of other people's publicy published tweets and Facebook posts.
One certainly hopes that Bozell is correct in his belief that Facebook recognizes the need to address the "erosion of trust" he cited. Incidents such as these show that the problem is real, and serious.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
