Why Does The NY Times Seem Literally Incapable Of Reporting Accurately On Section 230?

from the what-the-fuck-is-going-on-over-there? dept

I should preface this piece by noting that there are good reporters at the NY Times who frequently do great work. But there are also a surprising number of dreadful reporters and editors who consistently seem to get key issues wrong. And one example of this is what appears to be a near institutional-level confusion over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act -- and I say this even while noting that last summer, the Times had an excellent piece written by Sarah Jeong calling out politicians for misrepresenting Section 230. But she should write another piece about her own damn colleagues.

Just last fall, we covered multiple stories in which the NY Times got Section 230 so badly wrong that it often had to issue embarrassing corrections, including the time it put forth a full page massive headline blaming 230 for allowing hate speech online, only to have to later run an (online only) correction saying it was actually the 1st Amendment. That was bad. What was worse was that they kept getting it wrong all through the fall. Just a day after that first mistake, they mixed up the DMCA 512 and CDA 230, blaming CDA 230 for copyright infringement, despite the law explicitly saying it doesn't apply to intellectual property. Then there was a big piece that laughably blamed Section 230 for people dying which, astoundingly, made the identical mistake in swapping out DMCA 512 for CDA 230, and where the Times had to run the word-for-word identical correction from the previous time they had made that mistake.

So I guess it should be no surprise at all that with the latest attack on Section 230, the dangerous EARN IT Act -- which is a badly re-heated FOSTA with a lump of "break encryption" tossed on top -- the NY Times would get nearly every important detail wrong again. The original title, which has since been changed, claimed "U.S. to Hold Tech Firms Accountable for Spread of Child Sexual Imagery." But that's wrong on nearly every point. First, it's just a bill, it's not the law -- yet the title implies otherwise. This is Journalism 101 stuff that the NY Times absolutely should be better at.

Second, the bill is not about "holding firms accountable," but putting more liability on an intermediary to try to ramp up censorship -- and the whole point of the bill is to use that as a wedge by Bill Barr and the DOJ to undermine encryption. But ridiculously the NY Times, acting as stenographers for those introducing the bill, repeated the false claim that internet companies don't currently fight "child sexual exploitation material." Take, for example, this ridiculous tweet from Associate Managing Editor Dean Murphy, claiming that it's a response to "tech companies that do too little to block images of child sexual abuse."

But the whole reason the bill is coming about in the first place is that we have so much data about how widespread the issue of CSAM content is because platforms have worked closely with NCMEC to identify and delete such material, sharing hashes to block it from being reuploaded. The major platforms have gone above and beyond, including Microsoft creating PhotoDNA, which helps a bunch of platforms find, detect, and remove child exploitation photos. Facebook, Google, Twitter and more have whole teams that work on making sure such content is identified and removed rapidly. Cloudflare recently built and released similar technology for free for anyone who uses its platform (even at the free level) to find and remove exploitation images.

In other words, tech platforms have taken this issue seriously for years, and have worked hard to combat things. That's in contrast to the DOJ and Bill Barr, who have literally failed to abide by Congress' mandate to fight such material. The tech companies are handing over all the information necessary, and Barr's spending his time protecting his boss's buddies from prosecution, rather than actually going after the purveyors of child porn.

But, to the NY Times, this is all about tech companies "doing too little" and the US government finally "holding them responsible." It's utter nonsense, and the NY Times, of all papers, ought to do much better.

Filed Under: csam, earn it, encryption, intermediary liability, journalism, reporting, section 230, stenography
Companies: ny times

The NYTimes Plays Its Role In 'Keeping Fear Alive' With Pure Fearmongering Over PATRIOT Act Renewal

from the all-the-propaganda-that's-fit-to-print dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about the psychological games that surveillance state defenders play -- both on themselves and the public -- to continually ratchet up programs that show no evidence of working. In it, we pointed to a great post by the ACLU's Kade Crockford, highlighting a rare case where an FBI official was forthright about what's really going on:

If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that ‘We won the war on terror and everything’s great,’ cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half. You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s ‘Keep Hope Alive’—it’s ‘Keep Fear Alive.’ Keep it alive.

Keep fear alive. Keep it alive. And, apparently, one great way to do that is to basically get the NY Times to run pure government propaganda in the form of simply repeating anonymous fearmongering from administration officials who set up a call for this exact purpose:

“What you’re doing, essentially, is you’re playing national security Russian roulette,” one senior administration official said of allowing the powers to lapse. That prospect appears increasingly likely with the measure, the USA Freedom Act, stalled and lawmakers in their home states and districts during a congressional recess.

“We’re in uncharted waters,” another senior member of the administration said at a briefing organized by the White House, where three officials spoke with reporters about the consequences of inaction by Congress. “We have not had to confront addressing the terrorist threat without these authorities, and it’s going to be fraught with unnecessary risk.”

First, note the anonymity, even though this isn't a leak or a reporter sniffing out a story and needing to protect sources. This is a "briefing organized by the White House" where they play stupid games in demanding anonymity for the sole purpose of avoiding accountability. Second, note the blatant fearmongering without any specifics. It's pure "keep fear alive" in action -- aided along by a stenographer at the NY Times.

All the propaganda that's fit to print.

As the Intercept rightly notes, this piece was published without even the slightest critical look into the statements by those officials:

Worst of all, it’s all published uncritically. There’s not a syllable challenging or questioning any of these dire warnings. No Patriot Act opponent is heard from. None of the multiple facts exposing these scare tactics as manipulative and false are referenced.

It’s just government propaganda masquerading as a news article, where anonymous officials warn the country that they will die if the Patriot Act isn’t renewed immediately, while decreeing that Congressional critics of the law will have blood on their hands due to their refusal to obey. In other words, it’s a perfect museum exhibit for how government officials in both parties and American media outlets have collaborated for 15 years to enact one radical measure after the next and destroy any chance for rational discourse about it.

Once again, two separate government review boards, as well as judges who have looked over the program and Senators who have been briefed on the full extent of the program in question, have all said that the bulk metadata collection program has not proven useful in stopping terrorist attacks. At all.

And, of course, blatant fearmongering without comparing the costs and (lack of) benefits is completely useless. Again, it could be taken to any extreme. Would putting real-time cameras hovering over every living human being 24/7 allow the government to find out who was plotting a terrorist attack? In theory, yes. But everyone would consider it a gross violation of privacy. Just because a tool might be useful doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do. So, here we have a case of a "tool" that is both a clear violation of our civil liberties and one that hasn't even been found to be useful.

Yet why is the NY Times -- the so-called "paper of record" -- repeating blindly government propaganda about how important it is to keep the program alive? Keep fear alive, NY Times. Keep it alive.

Filed Under: journalism, keep fear alive, patriot act, reporting, section 215, stenography