NPR: Why I Don't Give at Pledge Time

Today in Mendacity

Miles Parks at NPR just did a bit on Ben Shapiro and the Daily Caller, about how the media site "Built an Empire."

I highly recommend that if you check out the story, you do some from a private window (Firefox) or an Incognito Window (Chrome and its cousins) so as not to give them useful information to monetize through advertisements or date, because it is one of the more egregious cases of journalistic malpractice I have seen in quite some time. 

Specifically, in the accompanying web page, he mentions talking with Judd Legum, and Legum has been covering allegations that The Daily Wire violated Facebook rules on authenticity and that Facebook's head of global public policy Joel Kaplan specifically intervened to prevent action from being taken.

In order for this not to be in the story, Mr. Parks either had to make a conscious decision to ignore an important, I would argue the most important, aspect of the story, or he was willfully blind.

Instead, we get a rueful and jocular exchange like this:

[Deen] Freelon, the UNC [communications] professor, said Shapiro has done a brilliant job threading the needle of engaging much of the Republican base with polarizing content while not running afoul of the social media platforms.

"Regardless of whatever you think of Ben Shapiro's ideological leanings," Freelon said, "it's hard to deny that he's doing what he's doing well."

That's what is in his written article, but in the actual broadcast (embedded, 3:25, Parks notes that, "Every single expert that I talked to had a similar response, 'It's unfortunate that this content is the most engaged with on Facebook, but you have to hand it to Shapiro, he's doing something right.'"

As to Judd Legum, allegations, all we get from Legum is this:

Judd Legum, a former Democratic campaign operative who founded ThinkProgress.com, now writes a newsletter called Popular Information, which focused a recent edition on The Daily Wire's Facebook success.

He said Shapiro takes many "red meat culture war issues" that might seem offensive at first glance but gives them "an intellectual sheen."

"He's able to make these concepts seem as enticing as possible and make them not seem crazy," Legum told NPR.

This is rather anodyne stuff, but even a brief review of articles in Legum's publication Popular.info are far more critical than what Parks quotes.

They show that The Daily Wire has been generating counterfeit engagement, and is allowed to do so because of right wing senior officials at Facebook have intervened to bend the rules for them: (From 2019)

The Daily Wire, the right-wing website founded by pundit Ben Shapiro, is a cesspool of misogyny, bigotry, and misinformation. Its toxic content is also fantastically successful on Facebook, with each story reaching more people than any other major media outlet. A Popular Information investigation reveals some of this success is attributable to a clandestine network of 14 large Facebook pages that purport to be independent but exclusively promote content from The Daily Wire in a coordinated fashion.

This kind of "inauthentic coordinated behavior" violates Facebook's rules. Facebook has taken down smaller and less coordinated networks that promoted liberal content. But Facebook told Popular Information that it will continue to allow this network to operate and amplify The Daily Wire's content.

………

According to NewsWhip, a social media analytics company, The Daily Wire was the #11 publisher on Facebook in September, garnering 18,125,590 engagements, which include likes, comments, and shares. The Daily Wire narrowly trailed publications like the New York Times (24.4 million engagements) and the Washington Post (22.4 million engagements).

Engagements are a critical metric on Facebook because it correlates to distribution. The more engagements a piece of content receives, the more people will see it.

But looking at total monthly engagements understates the scale of The Daily Wire's Facebook success. The Washington Post and the New York Times are large news organizations with hundreds of journalists. The Washington Post produced 10,591 pieces that were posted to Facebook in September, and the New York Times produced 13,442. The Daily Wire has a much smaller staff and produced just 1,181 pieces in September.

………

Popular Information has uncovered a network of 14 large Facebook pages that exclusively promote content from The Daily Wire. None of the pages reveal their connection to The Daily Wire, and many purport to be independent media outlets.

The "Conservative News" Facebook page, for example, lists conservativenews.com as its affiliated website. But conservativenews.com does not contain any content -- only a link back to the Facebook page, which only publishes links to The Daily Wire.

Conservative News and nearly all of the other sites in the network publish the same content from The Daily Wire, at the same time, with the same text. In other words, they are centrally controlled.

………

Facebook's community standards prohibit "inauthentic behavior." That is defined by Facebook "as the use of Facebook or Instagram assets (accounts, pages, groups, or events), to mislead people or Facebook… about the identity, purpose, or origin of the entity that they represent."

………

The Daily Wire network is not "upfront about who they are" and exists only to drive traffic to The Daily Wire website. But unlike the pages operated by Metcalf, these pages will continue to be able to operate.

Why? Facebook did not answer follow up questions. But earlier this month, a former employee of Facebook's DC office told Popular Information that Joel Kaplan, Facebook's head of global public policy, acts to protect the interest of right-wing websites. Kaplan is a Republican operative who worked in the George W. Bush administration.

Actually, Kaplan (remember the name, he figures prominently in all of this) is more than a Bush administration hack, he was also a part of the Brooks Brothers Riot, which used the threat of violence to stop the vote count in Miami-Dade County in 2000.

"Any time there was an issue with Breitbart or Daily Caller, Joel made the decision, and he always acted to protect them," the former Facebook employee said.

Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria go into some more detail here in 2020.

The only way that NPR could not have known about credible allegations of misdeeds by The Daily Wire is to have been willfully blind.

But it's not just Legum and Popular.info though, Mother Jones reported that Kaplan and his lobbying group in Washington, DC successfully lobbied against authenticity standards that would take a, "Huge chunk out of Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, the Daily Wire, and the Daily Caller."

Additionally, both The Guardian and BuzzFeed reported on the whistleblower revealing that Facebook systematically underfunded investigations of inauthentic behavior, while Vox reported on Joel Kaplan's aggressive efforts to support The Daily Caller, with his lobbying for partnerships with Facebook culminating in The Daily Caller becoming one of Facebook's independent "Fact Checkers". (See also Slate's article, which further details the degree to which Kaplan aggressviely sabotaged any effort to cut back on spam or inauthentic behavior where it might negatively impact right wing media sites)

Even this humble blogger wrote about this multiple times in the past few years, see here, here, here, here, and here.

Miles Parks has done the equivalent of scoring a jail house interview with Jeffrey Dahmer, and asking him for favorite recipes.