Reality Check for Trump & Republicans Crying “Bias!”
Last week, Trump posted tweeted this:
Some Congressional Republicans and leading conservatives have made such claims in the past, but Trump’s tweets have really opened the floodgates for other such claims. Here’s a reality check on the top claims:
Claim #1: Google searches for “Trump News” only produce liberal media links
Reality Check: Google uses many factors (about 200) in its algorithm to rank search results in the most efficient, relevant and useful way for each user. Mainstream, well-established media outlets are considered the most “authoritative” ones. That’s why they show up at the top of the rankings, but they’re not the only sources listed. There’s no proof of political bias whatsoever. On the contrary, the most thorough research on this issue concluded that users with different political views across a variety of states were recommended very similar news sources.
Claim #2: We only want “fairness”
Reality Check: Trump’s talk of “Fairness” invokes the “Fairness Doctrine”: from 1949 to 1987, the FCC required broadcasters to present controversial issues in a balanced way, giving equal time to both sides. Violations of this vague, inherently arbitrary requirement could result in the death penalty for broadcasters: loss of their FCC license. Republicans opposed the Fairness Doctrine for generations, arguing that it stifled conservative voices on radio and television. In 1985, after an exhaustive study, President Reagan’s FCC concluded that the Fairness Doctrine “inexorably favors orthodox viewpoints” — and so ended the doctrine in 1987. President Reagan vetoed an attempt by Congressional Democrats to restore the Fairness Doctrine, declaring:
we must not ignore the obvious intent of the First Amendment, which is to promote vigorous public debate and a diversity of viewpoints in the public forum as a whole, not in any particular medium, let alone in any particular journalistic outlet. History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee.
Claim #3: Google promoted President Obama’s State of the Union Address but not Trump’s
Reality Check: Google’s statement says it all:
On January 30 2018, we highlighted the livestream of President Trump’s State of the Union on the google.com homepage. We have historically not promoted the first address to Congress by a new President, which is technically not a State of the Union address. As a result, we didn’t include a promotion on google.com for this address in either 2009 or 2017.
An Internet Archive capture of the Google homepage confirms the company’s statement, showing promotion of Trump’s State of the Union address.
House Majority Leader McCarthy’s Claim
In his op-ed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy states:
The companies cannot sit back and say nothing is happening. Algorithms are written by people. Everybody has some bias in them. Anyone claims they don’t have bias, they’re not human.
Reality Check: OK, so what? There’s nothing the government can do about this, even if it were true.
Private entities aren’t bound by law to be unbiased, or to be neutral. In fact, they can’t be — because the First Amendment bars the government from meddling with how social media companies exercise their editorial discretion. The only reason the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t struck down by courts (before the Obama FCC finally took it off the books in 2011) was that broadcasters are the only media that don’t get full First Amendment protection, as we’ve explained. The Supreme Court has already ruled that Internet media get the full protection of the First Amendment.
Senator Cruz’s Claim
In January, Sen Ted Cruz pioneered a creative, indirect line of attack: claiming that social media sites should be held liable for potentially illegal user content unless they’re politically neutral. In April op-ed for Fox News, he argued:
…if you run a blogging platform and someone posts a terrorist threat in the comments section, you’re not treated as the person making the threat. Without Section 230, many social media networks could be functionally unable to operate. In order to be protected by Section 230, companies like Facebook should be “neutral public forums”.
Reality Check: Well, Cruz is right about one thing: Section 230 immunity has been absolutely critical to the development of the Internet. But he totally misunderstands — or misrepresents — what Congress intended.
Platforms aren’t supposed to be neutral — and no one would want them to be. They exercise editorial discretion all the time. Indeed, that’s the point of Section 230. In a nutshell, website operators can’t be held liable for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”
What Senator Cruz is talking about is effectively a “Fairness Doctrine” for the Internet. The Fairness Doctrine, ironically, suppressed heterodox viewpoints and enforced a bland orthodoxy in media — thus hurting conservatives. It would do the same for the Internet. President Reagan FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine and he vetoed Democratic legislation to bring it back, declaring:
we must not ignore the obvious intent of the First Amendment, which is to promote vigorous public debate and a diversity of viewpoints in the public forum as a whole, not in any particular medium, let alone in any particular journalistic outlet. History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee.
That’s… basically the complete opposite of what Republicans are saying now. We break down Senator Cruz’s in detail in TechFreedom’s President’s testimony in front of House Judiciary.
In the last few days, Don Trump, Jr. has called for a “Facebook for conservatives.” So… would Senator Cruz demand that a conservative leaning platform be neutral, too?
No, we didn’t think so.
