Imagine being a supposed journalist who sees freedom of speech as a threat to mainstream media thinking. You don’t have to imagine that because we now have the example of Steve Coll of New York Magazine, who brazenly proclaims that freedom of speech is a threat to what he perceives as journalism, which is the liberal narrative he maintains as upholding one Monopoly wants to see public information.
Coll isn’t just a magazine writer – he’s the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism and former editor-in-chief of the Washington Post. Yet he presented freedom of speech as a “gun-protected” threat to the liberal media elite on Monday’s Morning Joe Show during an interview with Kasie Hunt.
The New Yorker’s @SteveCollNY suggests that Mark Zuckerberg’s “deep” support for free speech is problematic: “Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle we hold sacred, is armed against the principles of armed becomes journalism. ” pic.twitter.com/JK3c5tnLou
– Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 7, 2020
KASIE HUNT: You write about it, we had three big networks, we had a handful of prominent weeklies, newspapers that covered the country, and a lot of local journalism. The media quote / quote as people like to think of it was indeed a relatively focused close group that, if they make decisions together, could actually have an impact on things. Given this fragmented landscape of these large companies, their decision-making is obviously part of it, and we know they can’t shut everything down on their own because other websites pop up. The fact that these are mass platforms is true. Everyone is on Facebook or a lot of adults are on Facebook so they have a bigger responsibility than some of the others you know Reddit, 4chan, 8chan. What’s the answer? What do you think companies have to do to actually help solve some of these problems?
It is interesting that Kasie Hunt sees the increased sources of information as something that needs to be “resolved”. Of course, Coll is of the same mindset as you can see in this answer.
STEVE COLL: Yeah. No, that’s another good question. Just to get to the heart of the media homogeneity in the ’60s and’ 70s, obviously it wasn’t all good and it was ripe for disruption and it has been disrupted, and Facebook is one of the big disruptors. I read a pretty good book called Facebook, The Inside Story this year, which was a very well-reported inside story from Facebook, and was looking for the answer to the question you asked and I came to the conclusion that the problems we face – I mean, this is a private company that, like all companies, is motivated to make money. This is kind of a public place and to expect that it will adjust its motives to keep democracy or do the right thing all the time is just naive. It’s not what it was built for.
That’s weird because that goes for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and so on.
COLL: And the story of Facebook described in this narrative is about constantly breaking things and then trying to partially fix them and getting better and better at apologizing. But I got away from it and thought it was a structure. It is not something that can be changed except by changing the structure. Yes, Facebook has moved a bit. They had a better choice in 2020 than in 2016. They have learned to slow things down here and there, but you can’t get away from the fact that their mission is to connect everyone in the world.
Good news for Steve. Facebook “slowed” the flow of information by suppressing information about Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal during the election. Now back to Coll, who continues his connection on freedom of speech.
COLL: That’s what motivates and has Mark Zuckerberg – it’s his passion and he believes deeply in free speech. Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle we hold sacred, is going against the principles of journalism, and what are we doing about it? As reporters, we are marching into this war with our facts nobly shouldered as if they are winning the day, and what we see is the extent of this alternate reality that you were talking about, our facts, our principles, our scientific method is it not enough? So what do we do
It sounds like Coll is trying to stifle the freedom of speech he claims is “armed” against liberal media narrative. What is being suggested here is that any message from Hunter Biden that disturbs liberals violates “noble shouldered facts” or “the principles of journalism” or the “scientific method”. Your arrogance knows no bounds.
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