The New York Times, not content with pathetically apologizing for its own opinion pieces, is trying to nudge Twitter into further censoring of President Trump. Linda Qiu’s “Fact Check” on Thursday appeared under the headline: "Trump’s Tweets, the Murky to the Misleading – A look at seven days of his posts found that over a third contained dubious claims.” But the online headline took a turn for the censorious, begging Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to squelch Trump’s tweets: “Hey @jack, Here Are More Questionable Tweets From @realdonaldtrump.”
Twitter and its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, placed warnings on three of President Trump’s tweets last week, taking a measured but hotly debated step to place some limit on the president’s use of social media to spread falsehoods and incite his followers.
Twitter attached labels refuting two of Mr. Trump’s tweets on voter fraud and restricted one that implied protesters in Minneapolis could be shot. But it left countless others unchallenged, including those baselessly insinuating that the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough killed a former staff member.
A New York Times review of the president’s 139 Twitter posts from Sunday, May 24, to Saturday, May 30, found at least 26 contained clearly false claims, including five about mail-in voting that were not flagged, five promoting the false conspiracy theory about Mr. Scarborough and three about Twitter itself....
To put it another way, more than a third of the president’s tweets over the course of a week contained dubious information. That presents a challenge both to Twitter and to the millions of people who are exposed to Mr. Trump on social media, especially now, with the nation facing the triple challenge of a pandemic, economic dislocation and nationwide protests over systemic racism.
And the front of Wednesday’s Business Day had Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on the defensive. The story by reporters Mike Isaac, Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel, “Facing Furor, Zuckerberg Defends Call On Trump,” was embellished with an illustration that covered much of the page.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, on Tuesday stood firmly behind his decision not to do anything about President Trump’s inflammatory posts on the social network, saying that he had made a “tough decision” but that it “was pretty thorough.”
In a question-and-answer session with employees conducted over video chat software, Mr. Zuckerberg sought to justify his position, which has led to fierce internal dissent....
The Times threw around flattering labels for the would-be censors and made an unsubstantiated assumptions about Trump's tweets.
The Facebook chief held firm even as the pressure on him to rein in Mr. Trump’s messages intensified. Civil rights groups said late Monday after meeting with Mr. Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, that it was “totally confounding” that the company was not taking a tougher stand on Mr. Trump’s posts, which are often aggressive and have heightened tensions over protests on police violence in recent days.
