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mark zuckerberg
Dying in Broad Daylight: Media Outlets That Self-Censor for Trump
What we are witnessing is not simply right-wing ascendency in national politics but a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism.
Jan 13, 2025
Two billionaire publishers, the Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos and the LA Times Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked their editorial page editors from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election (a Washington Post editorial cartoonist than quit when her cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos, Son-Shiong and other billionaires abasing themselves in front of Trump was killed). If you believe the Washington Post’s slogan that ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ their owner was the first to switch off the light.
Soon-Shiong also blocked an editorial asking the Senate to perform its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on Trump’s cabinet picks. Next ABC News (owned by Disney) agreed to pay $15 million in a settlement of a Trump defamation lawsuit plus $1 million in attorney fees because George Stephanopoulos said on his Sunday show that Trump was found liable for the ‘rape’ of writer E. Jean Carroll. Actually, he was found guilty of ‘sexual abuse’ because a New York civil jury believed her claim that he forced his fingers into her vagina but was uncertain if he also used his penis. New York law states only penile penetration is considered rape. This was a case ABC could have easily pursued in court but made a political—really a business—decision not to because Disney has less courage than a mouse.
Trump is now suing the Des Moines Register and their pollster for a pre-election poll suggesting he would not do as well as he did in Iowa. And, while you probably shouldn’t be getting your news from Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has also announced the end of fact-checking on his Meta platforms in the U.S. which won him a compliment from president-elect Trump.
While billionaire 'tech bros’ like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg embrace Trump and Trumpism, working journalists are portrayed as part of an elite that he has defined as ‘enemies of the people’ mainly for exposing the machinations of those in power including the president-elect.
It seems likely that top-down self-censorship may preempt the expected legal attacks on critical coverage from the incoming administration that has been promised by Trump’s pick for FBI Director, Kash Patel and, of course, by Trump himself.
This is in large measure the result not simply of right-wing ascendency in national politics but of a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism. Also, helping to undermine the public’s ability to stay informed is the rise of the internet as a selective news source which generates revenue by reinforcing existing biases through algorithmic infrastructure that aims to keep viewers online longer.
While billionaire tech ‘bros’ like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg embrace Trump and Trumpism, working journalists are portrayed as part of an elite that he has defined as ‘enemies of the people’ mainly for exposing the machinations of those in power including the president-elect.
The proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and incitement to hate on social media or through the use of AI fakes also raises questions about who’s left to mediate what passes for news and to sort facts from fabrication...
I’ve worked as a freelance journalist for half a century. According to a study by the job recruitment company Zippia there are close to 15,000 freelance reporters working in the U.S. whose demographics skew slightly more white and female, than the nation as a whole and who earn an average of $61,000 a year compared to full-time journalists who average $86,000. Freelancers make up a third of the 45,000 working journalists in the U.S. so figure your news is coming not from some media “elite,” that promote “fake news,” but working people like myself covering wars, politics, pandemics and the climate emergency.
Earlier in this century I got to train colleagues in Poland, Turkey, Tunisia and elsewhere on environmental reporting. I remember in Turkey going over some of the basics of investigative reporting including always keeping good notes and tapes stored and dated including by year as some stories become beats that can continue over a lifetime. Sergei Kiselyov, a Ukrainian colleague who’d covered the Chernobyl disaster, offered an addendum, “I’d just suggest you also keep your notes and files somewhere other than your home or office so that when the police come to look for them, they won’t be there.” This tip is worth keeping in mind over the next several years.
Most journalists of course are less likely to be jailed than to be laid off. Many of my friends and colleagues who worked in newspapers are now freelancers like myself, the newspaper industry being in a near terminal stage of collapse. This is largely due to loss of revenue to online advertising, corporate consolidation, and hedge fund predation where operating enterprises are bought up, wrung out (staff layoffs focused on older higher-paid reporters doing complex investigative work), and then sold off for parts (printing presses, data-bases, real-estate). This has resulted in massive job loss. Newsroom employment dropped 26 percent between 2008 and 2020 according to a study by the Pew Research Center and continues today. I know of one Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who agreed to a one-third pay cut rather than see a second wave of layoffs further hollow out their publication.
Most journalists of course are less likely to be jailed than to be laid off.
The loss of competitive newspapers has resulted in the absence of a lot of good reporting, particularly at the local and regional level where many papers continue to shut down each year. Since most local TV news stations depend on local newspapers for their hard news this has also had a cascading effect on the public’s ability to access reliable information about those with and in power and how they’re wielding it from zoning boards to local corporations and government agencies. Many people have turned instead to unreliable online social media including bloggers and influencers to get their information.
The proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and incitement to hate on social media or through the use of AI fakes also raises questions about who’s left to mediate what passes for news and to sort facts from fabrication, particularly at a time when much of the public now agree with Donald Trump. An October 2024 Gallup poll found 69% of the public has either “no trust” or “not very much confidence” in the media. When I began working in 1974 over 70% of the public trusted the news media. And with some reason.
When I was covering the wars in Central America I asked my friend photo-journalist John Hoagland how he saw our role. “I don’t believe in objectivity because everyone has a point of view,” he said. “What I say is I’m not going to be a propagandist for anyone. If you do something right, I’m going to take your picture. If you do something wrong, I’ll take your picture also.” He was killed in crossfire a year later. Ironically the best recent movie on how reporters actually behave under fire and under stress is ‘Civil War’ that is set in a near-future America at war with itself.
With the “legacy” network news operations of ABC, CBS and NBC now under the control of Disney, Comcast, and ViacomCBS, major corporations dependent on the regulatory whims of Donald Trump, and with Trump’s talk of eliminating public funding for PBS (and its ‘News Hour’ and ‘Frontline’ reporting) plus ‘news outlets’ such as Fox and the Sinclair Broadcast Group that owns 294 TV stations covering 40% of U.S. households, acting more as propaganda arms of the MAGA movement than traditional sources of broadcast journalism, the likelihood of much critical mainstream coverage during a second Trump administration is doubtful even before the expected lawsuits, indictments, and jailing of journalists.
To paraphrase a quote from a darker time, “First they came for the journalists and then we don’t know what happened.”
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Elon Musk Craves Return of Fascism Across Europe
The world's richest person seeks a descent into deep political crisis so reactionary forces can prevail again—just as they did in the 1930s.
Jan 13, 2025
Elon Musk spent more than a quarter billion dollars to back Trump and other MAGA Republican candidates in last year's U.S. elections. He did so not simply because he has a lot to gain from Trump’s presidency, which he does, but also because of his own ideological proclivities.
Musk is a right-wing extremist and not content to limit his meddling to U.S. politics. In fact, he is clearly on a personal mission to advance the cause of the far right across the western world. Hence his foray into European politics.
Ahead of next month’s federal election in Germany, Musk took to his social platform X on December 20 to proclaim that “only the AfD can save Germany” while describing chancellor Olaf Scholz as an “incompetent fool,” urging him in turn to resign, and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier as an “anti-democratic tyrant.” He doubled down a few days later on his full-throated support for the far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), in an op-ed for the prominent German newspaper Die Welt, calling it “the last spark of hope” for the country. He went on to say that AfD “can lead the country into a future where economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovations are not just wishes, but reality.” Incidentally, Musk—like all good imperialist investors—feels that his business investment in Germany gives him the right to make incursions into the country’s political condition.
The surge of the far right and extreme nationalism on the continent have echoes of the 1930s. But Elon Musk is on the wrong side of history.
Not content to limit his meddling to German politics, Musk has tried to stir up division and hatred in British politics by targeting Prime Minister Keir Starmer and top officials. He has accused the government of “releasing convicted pedophiles” and sided with jailed far-right activist Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party though he has called for Farage to be replaced as leader because “he doesn’t have what it takes” to lead the party. Apparently, even Nigel Farage isn’t sufficiently far right enough for Musk.
Europe’s leaders have denounced Musk’s meddling and support for far-right movements, but can they stop him? Musk is using the social media platform to communicate directly with hundreds of millions, bypassing traditional media channels. The billionaire owner of X has more than 200 million followers. Spreading lies and misinformation is easy and fast. MIT researchers have found that fake news spread 10 times faster than real news on social media. And it will become even easier and faster to do so after Mark Zukerberg’s decision to cancel fact-checking on his social media platforms, a move that Elon Musk lost no time in applauding.
On Thursday, Jan. 9, Musk held a livestream chat on X with AfD leader Alice Weidel that lasted more than an hour. Musk’s purpose for holding this discussion was to show people that Weidel is a very reasonable leader even though her party has been put under observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency for suspected extremism. Indeed, a German court found in May 2024 that there is sufficient evidence to designate AfD as a potentially extremist party that poses a threat to democracy and the dignity of certain groups and should therefore be kept under surveillance.
Musk has rejected the claim that AfD is a right-wing extremist party, with the ridiculous argument that it can’t be so since its leader has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka. The fact that AfD is engulfed in racist anti-immigrant hysteria and has vowed to restrict LGBTQ+ rights are no reasons for him to think that it is an extremist right-wing party. Weidel, in turn, used the opportunity afforded to her by Musk to argue that AfD shouldn’t be seen as a neo-Nazi party because it holds libertarian views on the economy (which is music to Musk’s ears as he is all for deregulation and lower taxes for corporations and the rich) and Hitler was a communist. Naturally, Musk agreed with Weidel in the outright lie that Hitler was indeed a communist. And also, with her equally ludicrous and utterly disgusting comment that left groups that support the Palestinian cause are Nazis and antisemites.
In an age of lies and misinformation, the notion that Hitler was a communist stands out as the high point of ideological perversion. Hitler hated communism and socialism and worked toward the annihilation of the communist movement not only in Germany but across Europe. Upon banning all existing political parties and making the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) the only political party in Germany, Hitler had thousands of communists and social democrats arrested and imprisoned. The Dachau concentration camp was constructed initially to hold the Nazis’ chief political enemies—the communists.
With Musk having become the first individual on X to have over 200 million followers, it is not difficult to imagine younger generations start believing that Hitler was a communist. Or in any other lies that Musk spreads, such as that the European Union (EU) tried to stop him from having a conversation with Alice Weidel.
In an age of lies and misinformation, the notion that Hitler was a communist stands out as the high point of ideological perversion.
Yet, it is Musk himself who is an enemy of free speech. He casts himself as a champion of free speech but has used his platform to target perceived enemies and to ban free speech. He has even sought to silence his critics with bogus lawsuits. Indeed, as the Guardian aptly put it, “Elon Musk has become the world’s biggest hypocrite on free speech.”
Thanks to Musk’s interference in German politics, there has been an enormous increase on Weidel’s average X posts in the last two weeks, which seems to suggest that Musk’s contributions could translate into more votes for AfD. Far-right parties are making significant strides across Europe. In 2024, the political pendulum in Europe swung even further right as far right parties made huge strides in France, Portugal, Belgium, and Austria while seven EU member states—Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia—already have hard-right parties in government.
As far as AfD is concerned, it won a German state election in 2024, making it the first far-right party to do so since 1945. However, Musk would like to see Germany’s far-right party victorious in the snap election set for Feb. 23 after the collapse of chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government.
There can be no denying that Musk “is throwing grenades into Europe’s political mainstream.” The continent needs radical change. The EU has failed on many fronts because of the rule-by-bureaucrats in Brussels. It lacks a unifying vision and the promises of a “social Europe” has given way to neoliberal policies that have been at the core of the creeping ascent of far-right movements and parties in the European political landscape. The surge of the far right and extreme nationalism on the continent have echoes of the 1930s. But Elon Musk is on the wrong side of history. His plan is to see Europe’s descent into a deep political crisis so the reactionary forces can eventually take over—just like they did in the 1930s. The question is: Can he be stopped before it’s too late?
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Zuckerberg Extols 'Masculine Energy' in Corporate America as Meta Kills DEI Programs
"Remember, Zuckerberg built Facebook not for social connection but to rate the hotness of his female college mates," noted one critic.
Jan 11, 2025
As numerous U.S. corporations bend to the right with the political winds swirling around Republican President-elect Donald Trump's imminent return to power, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is following up on his company's termination of its fact-checking program by ending its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and praising "masculine energy" in corporate America.
"I think a lot of the corporate world is, like, pretty culturally neutered," Zuckerberg said during an interview with the eponymous host of "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast on Friday. Meta is the parent company of social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Explaining that he has "three sisters, no brothers" and "three daughters, no sons," Zuckerberg continued: "So I'm, like, surrounded by girls and women, like, my whole life. And it's like...I don't know, there's something, the kind of masculine energy, I think, is good."
"And obviously, you know, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really like trying to get away from it," he said. "And I do think that... all these forms of energy are good. And I think having a culture that, like, celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive."
The tech industry is built on 'masculine energy', a bro--no girls allowed--culture. Remember Zuckerberg built Facebook not for social connection but to rate the hotness of his female college mates. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
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— Amy Diehl, Ph.D. (@amydiehl.bsky.social) January 11, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Zuckerberg elaborated:
I do think that if you're a a woman going into a company, it probably feels like it's too masculine. Right? And it's like there isn't enough of the kind of the energy that you may naturally have. And it probably feels like there are all these things that are set up that are biased against you. And that's not good either, 'cause you want women to be able to succeed.
But I think these things can... go a little far. And I think it's one thing to say we want to be kind of, like, welcoming and make a good environment for everyone. And I think it's another to basically say that masculinity is bad. And I, I just think we kind of swung culturally to that part of the... spectrum where, you know, it's all like, okay, masculinity is toxic. We have to, like, get rid of it completely.
No... Both of these things are good, right? It's like, you want, like, feminine energy, you want masculine energy... I think that that's all good. But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung towards being this somewhat more neutered thing. And I didn't really feel that until I got involved in martial arts, which I think is still a more, much more masculine culture.
While some social media observers attributed Zuckerberg's shift to factors like "the power of gym bro masculinity," others noted the rightward shift in corporate America accompanying Trump's White House return and Republicans' control of both houses of Congress.
"Zuck is a Cuck": Meta's Billionaire Bends The Knee to MAGA Mark Zuckerberg joins a rogue's gallery of billionaires capitulating to Donald Trump's threats and promoting MAGA's agenda against truth, democracy, and diversity for the sake of self-preservation. thelefthook.substack.com/p/zuck-is-a-...
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— Wajahat Ali (@wajali.bsky.social) January 10, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the wave of companies ending or dialing back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The growing list includes McDonald's, Walmart, Boeing, Molson Coors, Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Amazon, and—as of Friday—Meta.
According to an internal memo from Meta vice president of human resources Janelle Gale viewed by several media outlets, Meta is immediately ending DEI programs in hiring, training, and supplier selection because the "legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing."
"The term 'DEI' has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others," Gale explained.
Meta's move follows Tuesday's announcement that the company is ending its third-party fact-checking program because it is "too politically biased" and replacing it with community notes à la X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter and owned by Elon Musk, who will co-chair the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency.
The announcement also said Meta "will be moving the trust and safety teams that write our content policies and review content out of California to Texas and other U.S. locations."
As part of its broad new "free expression" policy, Meta will also permit certain speech widely considered hateful by human rights defenders.
According to training materials
viewed byThe Intercept and other media outlets, Meta users will be able to say things like "immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit," "Black people are more violent than whites," "Italians are dickheads," women are "household objects" or "property," and transgender people are mentally ill. Calling trans people "trannies" or "it" is now also acceptable on Meta sites.
I got a warning for posting "you are an evil man" to Zuck but not for posting "you are a degenerate tranny." Real nice system they have at Meta.
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— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) January 10, 2025 at 7:50 PM
The New York Timesreported Friday that Meta has ordered its offices in Silicon Valley, New York, and Texas to remove the tampons which had been offered to transgender and nonbinary employees who use men's restrooms. The report also said that Meta has removed trans and nonbinary themes from its Messenger chat app.
Zuckerberg has also appointed UFC CEO Dana White, a friend and supporter of Trump, to Meta's board of directors,
explaining, "I've admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand."
These moves followed a November meeting between Trump and Zuckerberg at the former's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, after which Meta reportedly also gave $1 million to the president-elect's inauguration fund.
Zuckerberg's alignment with key elements of Trumpism represents a stark departure from just a few months ago, when, in a new book, Trump accused him of inimical "plotting" during the 2020 election and said he threatened to imprison the tech billionaire for life if he did so again in 2024.
Now, Zuckerberg's blasting outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden. He told Rogan Friday that during the coronavirus pandemic, Biden administration officials would "call up and, like, scream... and curse" at Meta leaders over Covid-19 misinformation.
Some internet users poked fun at Meta's new policies, with one popular meme satirically claiming that Zuckerberg "died of coronavirus and complications from syphilis."
Who needs dumb old facts anyways?
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— JonZoidberg ( @jonzoidberg.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 8:42 PM
But others took a more serious view of Zuckerberg's about-face, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asserting this week that "these changes reveal that Meta seems less interested in freedom of expression as a principle and more focused on appeasing the incoming U.S. administration."
"Meta has long been criticized by the global digital rights community, as well as by artists, sex worker advocacy groups, LGBTQ+ advocates, Palestine advocates, and political groups, among others," EFF added. "A corporation with a history of biased and harmful moderation like Meta [needs] a careful, well-thought-out, and sincere fix that will not undermine broader freedom of expression goals."
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