12-22-2022
The latest batch from the "Twitter Files" (Part 7)
continued in the tradition of the previous six.
This episode's author, Michael Shellenberger, promised that he would "present evidence" that the FBI sought to "discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden."
Not only did he present no such evidence, he actually presented evidence of the opposite. Such as one email wherein "Twitter debunked false claims" of foreign influence. And another wherein "Twitter's [Yoel] Roth has pushed back against the FBI."
Despite that demonstration of fairness and good judgement,
Fox News ran with a particularly deviated narrative.
The headline for their "reporting" said that the
"FBI Paid $3.5M To Suppress Hunter Laptop Story."
That headline - and the accompanying story -
was just plain untrue.
What Fox News used to craft their false framing was
one of Shellenberger's points where he claimed that
"The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time."
He elaborated with a quote from an unnamed Twitter staffer who reported that
"we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019."
Fox News is deliberately misinterpreting that as the FBI paying Twitter to get them to suppress a story about Hunter Biden.
In reality, the FBI is reimbursing Twitter for the time they spent working on requests for information by the FBI.
____That is a legally mandated payment that requires that
"a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information ...
shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary."____
As if that weren't enough, there isn't even any connection in the emails that were released between
the FBI reimbursements and any story about Hunter Biden. Musk and Fox News just totally manufactured that.
Furthermore, the reports that the FBI "demanded" certain actions be taken by Twitter, and that Twitter obediently complied, are also untrue.
And, once again, the facts were tucked away in
Musk's own document dump that disclosed that the FBI's requests could not be remotely characterized as demands.
They were merely notices about "accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms and Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy."
This is the sort of manipulation that Fox News engages in on a daily (hourly) basis.
They have no regard for the truth.
They are only interested in disseminating distortions
that advance their ultra-conservative agenda.
It's how they can take mundane irrelevancies and magnify them into explosive pseudo-scandals.
UPDATE: The FBI responds:
"The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter
show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements.
As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.
It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency."
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