Former NYT Reporter WARNS on Fox Business: Big Tech Deciding Truth Is ‘Really Bad Idea’
March 25th, 2021 12:21 PM
Author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson joined Fox Business to sound the alarm on the amount of power that Big Tech wields over the flow of information.
Berenson slammed Big Tech companies like Facebook for wanting it “both ways.”
Specifically, if Big Tech companies were utilities, they would not be held liable for “every bit of speech” across their platforms, but at the same time that would mean they “can’t censor anything,” Berenson said. Regarding opinions and factually inaccurate information, Berenson asked on the March 25 edition of Mornings with Maria: “Do we want these companies in the business of deciding what’s factually accurate, what isn’t? Do we want them fact-checking, which Facebook increasingly does?” He continued: “Do we want [Big Tech] — you know — destroying large groups that come together for causes that some people may not like, or many people may not like? I think that’s a really bad idea.”
Berenson said that the Big Tech behemoths needed to decide: “Are they publishers, where they’re responsible for everything, or are they utilities where essentially they’re not responsible for anything, unless it’s clearly illegal?”
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo agreed with Berenson and pointed to two issues that underscored Berenson’s arguments:
On the one hand it’s, ‘Are you a publisher? Are you a quote-unquote bulletin board where everybody can throw their different ideas and diverse viewpoints on that bulletin board?’ Then you should get the liability protection. They’re not. We know that. They’ve already taken a side. They took a side before a presidential election and made the decision to censor the Hunter Biden story. That’s one.
The other issue, Bartiromo said, spoke to “antitrust, and that is the dominance of these companies.” She continued: “The fact that they can tell us that they are the arbiter of truth, and they are the ones that will decide who’s going to publish a book, who’s going to get the marketing for that book and who won’t.”
Bartiromo asked Berenson if he believed that Congress would deal with these issues, given the fact that it’s underneath Democratic control.
In Berenson’s estimation, “The Democrats — you know — they’re historically more anti-corporate, anti-monopoly. But they clearly view [Big] Tech as an ally on this.” Berenson also pointed out how “yesterday, twelve attorneys general, led by the state of Connecticut — obviously, you know, that’s a Democratic state — pushed Facebook and Twitter to do more censoring, again around vaccines.”
Berenson concluded that “the solution to bad speech is more speech. Not censorship.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
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https://newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-vazquez/2021/03/25/former-nyt-reporter-warns-fox-business-big-tech-deciding
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