President TrumpDonald John TrumpCalifornia governor praises Trump's efforts to help state amid coronavirus crisis Trump threatens to withhold visas for countries that don't quickly repatriate citizens Trump admin looks to cut farmworker pay to help industry during pandemic: report MOREs reelection campaign is aggressively pressuring Twitter and broadcast outlets to sanction or pull misleading political attacks from Democrats, accusing the social media giant and the news media of using a double standard when it comes to policing political speech.
The Trump campaign has long been the subject of intense scrutiny from fact-checkers and reporters, who have called out its false or misleading claims and sought to have the content removed from the airwaves or social media platforms.
Trump's team is now looking to turn the tables, making the case that the social media giants and TV networks are turning a blind eye to similar misleading claims from Democrats.
In recent weeks, the Trump campaign has threatened legal action against TV stations for airing an ad cut by a Democratic super PAC that makes it seem as if Trump called the coronavirus a hoax.
Ithas also been sending scores of emails to Twitter to flag videos being produced and shared by Democrats to make the case that the content runs afoul of the companys policy on manipulated media.
And this week, the Trump campaign took the unusual step of producing a deliberately misleading clip of former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenOvernight Energy: Trump says US will cut oil production to secure global deal | Green groups press Biden on climate plans after Sanders exit | EPA looks to suspend hazardous waste cleanups during outbreak Trump campaign, RNC reach 17 million voters with digital efforts Kyle Kulinski: What went wrong for the Sanders campaign MORE calling the coronavirus a hoax with the sole purpose of testing Twitter to see if it would enforce its rules equally on the Trump and Biden campaigns.
Everything indicates that the Democrat donors who run Silicon Valley are intent on stacking the deck against President Trumps reelection, said Matt Wolking, a Trump campaign spokesman.
Their lack of transparency is further evidence that this is politically motivated interference in the 2020 election. Political speech and debate should not be policed and silenced by faceless, unknown actors and social justice warriors manipulating algorithms behind closed doors, he added.
Since Trump was elected president, there has been an explosion of media fact-checking, leading to enormous pressure on platforms to sanction or pull content that is determined to be misleading.
The president and his campaign have been accused of spreading misinformation through campaign ads countless times.
Broadcast and cable news outlets have refused to run some Trump campaign ads. Twitter has used its new manipulated media policy to warn viewers that a Trump campaign video about Biden was taken out of context. There is pressure on the cable news outlets to stop running Trumps daily White House press briefings about the coronavirus because of concerns about instances of misinformation.
These competing efforts underscore the degree to which the campaigns will be battling over misinformation and what's factualahead of the 2020 general election.
Democrats in particular are on high alert following the 2016 election, when Russian agents flooded social media with fake and divisive content aimed at damaging Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonKyle Kulinski: What went wrong for the Sanders campaign Sanders's fate sealed by the over 40 crowd The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - Small businesses, unemployed await Congress's next moves MOREs campaign.
However, media observers warn that theres a difference between snuffing out a foreign adversarys disinformation campaign and cracking down on domestic political speech.
Its one thing to define a standard you want to keep, but once you get into the business of applying it, things can get pretty squishy, said Tobe Berkovitz, a former political ad buyer and media consultant who now teaches at Boston University.
The inciting incident for the Trump campaign was a mocking video it released of Biden that showed the former vice president saying, We can only reelect Donald Trump.
In the speech, Biden quickly doubled back to make it clear that he was warning that Democrats would get Trump reelected if they were divided and attacking one another.
The Trump campaign maintains that no one thinks that Biden was endorsing Trump. They say the video was merely ribbing a political rival.
Twitter, however, determined that the remarks were deliberately taken out of context.
The company cracked down, making it the first and so far only content it has sanctioned under its new manipulated media policy.
Since then, the Trump campaign has been flooding Twitter with emails flagging Democratic content it says has been similarly taken out of context.
Most notably, several Democratic groups have released ads featuring audio of Trump calling the coronavirus a hoax. Together, the ads have been shared and viewed on Twitter millions of times.
However, fact-checkers at The Washington Post, PolitiFact, Snopes and FactCheck.org have determined that its wrong to claim that Trump called the coronavirus a hoax.
Rather, Trump was describing Democratic efforts to politicize his response to the coronavirus as a hoax.
The Trump campaign has threatened legal action against TV stations broadcasting an ad from Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC, in which Trump can be heard calling the coronavirus a hoax.
But Twitter has declined to sanction the ad, and TV stations are continuing to run it.
Josh Schwerin, strategist for Priorities USA, said the ad is making the point that Trump was using the hoax language to downplay the virus and shift blame away from himself.
Our ad uses a series of Trump's own words to show that he downplayed the threat of the pandemic even as the infection spread, Schwerin said.
That's entirely our point, he added. We stand by the facts in the ad, and every TV station has agreed that the Trump campaign's complaints fall flat. Holding our elected officials accountable is critical when they are falling down on the job, and we will continueto do that."
The Trump campaign argues that presidents words were taken out of order in an effort to warp the context of his remarks.
To draw attention to this, the Trump campaign this week released deliberately manipulated audio to make it sound like Biden called the coronavirus a hoax.
Biden never called the coronavirus a hoax, and in fact the audio is taken from two separate days.
The Trump campaign says its aim was to force Twitter to take a stand on the issue and to see if the company would apply its standards evenly.
Twitter declined to sanction the Trump campaigns deliberately misleading ad.
The Tweet you referenced will not be labeled under oursynthetic and manipulated media policy, a Twitter spokesman told The Hill.
The Biden campaign blasted Twitter for refusing to take action.
Twitter was dared to act on a piece of disinformation that clearly violates their rules, and they blinked, said campaign spokesman Bill Russo.Twitter has taken admirable steps in recent days to take action on tweets from the President of Brazil, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and Rudy GiulianiRudy GiulianiThe Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - Trump: Tough times but progress being made Giuliani touts experimental coronavirus treatment in private conversations with Trump Trump team picks fight with Twitter, TV networks over political speech MORE that have spread disinformation that endangers public health in the midst of this crisis which makes it all the more inexplicable and inexcusable that they are failing to act on this.
The Trump campaign is proudly boasting that their video is deceptive and fraudulent, which is shameful, Russo added. But the real damage here will come from their supporters, who will no doubt share the media as if it was true. We have seen this play before. Twitter has a responsibility to explain they will prevent the spread of this intentionally seeded disinformation on their platform.
Media experts are bracing for a 2020 campaign that is dominated by these types of struggles over information and context.
Its really complicated, said Berkovitz. Should there be a particular standard? Is it applied to everyone in the same way? Sometimes there are such egregious uses of content that pretty much everyone agrees on it, but its pretty clear that in this partisan era, most of the time views are going to be split.
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Trump team picks fight with Twitter, TV networks over political speech | TheHill - The Hill
