Monday afternoon brought about the fifth dump of the Twitter Files and the second to focus on the social media site’s obsession with conjuring up a set of reasoning in early 2021 to ban then-President Trump. Journalist Bari Weiss showed how Twitter’s workforce was hellbent on silencing viewpoints contrary to their liberal politics while ignoring rampant hate and anti-Semitism from world leaders.
Once again, the major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored this during their flagship Monday night and Tuesday morning shows in favor of topics such as Lizzo befriending Adele, the royals, and proclaiming how it shouldn’t be taboo to talk openly about elderly people needing to have sex.
This act of censorship denialism means the network total remains at zero for ABC and NBC and 26 seconds on CBS.
>> Check out our network round-up on the Twitter Files here, here, here, and here (along with the Jim Baker thread here).<<
Over on an actual newscast, the Fox News Channel’s Special Report opened the show with a nearly three-minute-long report on the findings. Host Bret Baier announced:
Breaking tonight, a fifth installment of Twitter Files drops, revealing some Twitter staffers did not believe then President Trump violated the platforms incitement policy in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot. Nonetheless, employees began building their case to boot the President off the social media site, seemingly in part over public pressure to do so. The latest revelation is getting massive backlash from free speech advocates, but still not getting a ton of coverage on other channels or outlets.
Chief Washington correspondent Mike Emanuel had highlights from Weiss’s thread of reporting, starting with how Twitter employees latched onto a Trump tweet from January 8 insisting his voters “will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any, way, shape or form!!!”
Emanuel then Weiss showed that the tweet triggered “internal debate from unnamed Twitter staffers about whether that was incitement” with one having said “there’s a lot of employee advocacy happening.”
She noted there was limited pushback with one employee insisting that since they’re from China, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.”
Weiss listed examples of this double standard of targeting Trump but not other world leaders with one being a 2018 tweet from Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that didn’t result in him being banned: “#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicate: it is possible and it will happen.”
Emanuel concluded with how then-Twitter executives settled on an excuse (click “expand”):
EMANUEL: Weiss adds Anika Navaroli, a Twitter policy official, admits to not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet. Less than 90 minutes later Vijaya Gadde, then head of Policy and Trust appears persistent, and was met with suggestions from employees that “Trump’s tweet may have violated Twitter's Glorification of Violence policy—if you interpreted the phrase, ‘American Patriots’ to refer to the rioters.”
JONATHAN TURLEY: You have people that sit there and they dress up personal bias as a way of protecting others from harm.
EMANUEL: Today's installment also included Twitter employees saying they were ecstatic after Mr. Trump was banned, expressing happiness over that moment in history.
Baier then had six minutes and 46 seconds on the fifth Twitter Files with his All-Star Panel. Former Special Report host Brit Hume exclaimed the dumps have shown Twitter consisted of “a group of people...who may not have any concept of the idea of Free Speech and what it's about.”
Townhall’s Guy Benson stated that Twitter’s behavior reminded him of the infamous quote from then-Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green after a tough loss in which he said the Chicago Bears were “who we thought they were.”
Benson added another analogy harkening back to the classic Calvin and Hobbes comics: “[I]t's Calvinball where the rules are made up as we go along. The goalposts are flying all over the place. It's impossible to pin down exactly what is allowed and what isn't but they were swearing publicly, oh no, we have these rules...I think that's what really bothers so many people.”
But again, they found other priorities with CBS Mornings behaving like creeps by touting elderly sex and comments from liberal actresses Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin about sex toys for older women. Over on ABC, Good Morning America touted a new trailer for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix series while NBC’s Today was the show that boasted of Lizzo’s friendship with Adele.
This continuation of censorship denialism was brought to you by advertisers such as Geico (on Monday’s CBS Evening News), Subaru (on Tuesday’s edition of NBC’s Today), and Target (on Tuesday’s Good Morning America). Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back peage.
