(OPINION) ETH – On Friday night a social media purge took place that left many conservative social media outlets banished from platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and left Parler a conservative social media alternative to Twitter left with an ultimatum and removed from the Google Playstore.
Even the President of the United States wasn’t exempt as not only did his personal Twitter page get permanently banned but even Team Trump’s Twitter account banned as well. Now it appears that some major news outlets could be next on the chopping block.
In a recent article published by CNN, it reads: “TV providers should not escape scrutiny for distributing disinformation”. In this piece, it discusses how Fox News, One America News, and NewsMax are now under the radar for propagating misleading information and promoting conspiracy theories. New Jersey State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty texted a Comcast executive on Thursday asking him “What are you going to do???”
“You feed this garbage, lies and all,” According to CNN, Moriarty was referring to the fact that Comcast’s cable brand, Xfinity, provides a platform to right-wing cable networks that have for weeks been disseminating disinformation about the November election results to audiences of millions.
The writer states how Somehow, these companies have escaped scrutiny and entirely dodged this conversation and this should not be the case anymore. He goes on further to say that it is time for TV carriers to face questions for lending their platforms to dishonest companies that profit off of “disinformation and conspiracy theories”.
He then targets Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Mark Levin as well as others that he states are responsible for the lies they peddle to their audiences. But the TV companies that beam them into millions of homes around the country also bear some responsibility. And yet we rarely, if ever, talk about them. CNN Stated:
“Tech companies have community guidelines governing the content posted on their platforms. Do cable carriers? If so, what are they? Surely, these companies — many of which boast about their social and civic responsibilities — have limits to the content they disseminate. It’s hard, for instance, to imagine they’d carry a fringe and conspiratorial network like InfoWars.
So why do AT&T (which I should note is CNN’s parent company), CenturyLink, and Verizon carry OAN? Why do AT&T, CenturyLink, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, and Dish carry Newsmax? And why do they all carry Fox — which is, frankly, at times just as irresponsible and dangerous with its platform as its smaller competitor networks”?
