Stelter: Fox News and Facebook are part of the fantastic pro-Trump territory that allowed the siege of the Capitol

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“The more research I did this week, the more I realized that Fox News programs and Facebook groups are only part of the pro-Trump Fantasyland,” CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter said Sunday. “Reliable Sources”. “There’s a lot of guilt to go through.”

Stelter said Big Tech and the conservative media welcomed and repeated the lies of President Donald Trump that led to the siege. Trump claimed the riot police with a message of electoral fraud that spread to the right-wing media and social media platforms. These messages soon spread to the deepest and ugliest layers of the Internet, from InfoWars to 8chan message boards.

“People say Donald Trump and the Internet are taking out extremists,” CNN correspondent Elle Reeve told Stelter on Saturday. “But I think the reality is an inversion of that: that Donald Trump plus the Internet bring extremism to the masses,” Reeve said.
Ahead of Wednesday’s events, Trump supporters rallied on virtually several social media platforms, including Twitter, TikTok, and Parler, the now-banned social media platform popular with conservatives. Many called for violence.
In recent weeks, Amazon Web Services has reported 98 examples of Parler publications that encouraged and incited violence, according to a letter obtained by CNN Business. Amazon, Apple, and Google banned Parler for his inability (or desire) to moderate the platform’s violent and hateful discourse. But this kind of insidious discourse remains on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and many other major social media networks.

Despite some efforts to curb the most inciting parts to the hatred and violence of its networks, including Trump’s ban on Facebook and Twitter last week, Big Tech has largely failed or failed to achieve the worst aspects of the social networks. The siege of the Capitol was planned on these platforms.

“Facebook’s own research showed that two-thirds of the time a user joined an extremist group on Facebook is because Facebook’s own algorithm recommended it,” said Adam Sharp, former head of news, government and Twitter elections.

Sharp changed his mind when he fired the president from Twitter.

“I didn’t think Twitter or any private company should whitewash this president’s record,” he said. “[But] the president’s violations of the law and Twitter policies when it comes to threatening Congress are so blatant because he’s the president and because he crossed that very specific constitutional line. “

The role of right-wing media in violence

The Capitol riots were caused by politicians and the media who allowed Trump, who for years have ignored warnings that something like this would inevitably happen, that of CNN Jake Tapper tweeted Thursday.
“The disturbing scenes that aired Wednesday on Natiopnal television were a natural consequence of the lies and conspiracy theories about the presidential election that have been feeding Trump supporters for weeks,” Oliver Darcy wrote. , senior journalist for CNN Business.

Some right-wing personalities distance themselves from Trump after the attack on the Capitol. This is a step in the right direction and other conservative media hosts must take to prevent future incidents such as the Capitol riots, said Julie Roginsky, a Democratic strategist and former Fox News contributor, on “Sources reliable “.

“Fox News can stop it,” Roginsky said. “They can stop it by putting the truth in power.” He added: “I suspect the Murdochs know this [Trump is] disassembled “.

But if there is any self-reflection in Fox, Newsmax, OAN and other right-wing media, it is not universal.

Some conservative media outlets still release misinformation about the election. Some personalities have falsely claimed on the air and on social media that left-wing Antifa groups were responsible for the violence on Wednesday, claims denied by videos of the attack and the arrests of insurgents who supported Trump.

“There are always bad actors who will infiltrate big crowds,” Hannity said on his show Wednesday night after the siege of the Capitol.

And Fox’s Tucker Carlson was quick to point out that the violent acts had nothing to do with racism, even though police resisted few people to most whites. Police have been comparatively much more forceful against black protesters in recent months.

“Anything you thought about what happened yesterday, what was racist? Nothing, of course. There was nothing racist,” he said on his show.

Over the weekend, talks about Fox led to Twitter’s decision to ban Trump.

“Trump’s animation section in the right-wing media is desperately trying to minimize Wednesday’s crimes,” Stelter said. “They try to move on and fill it through the memory hole. They prefer to complain about Twitter.”

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