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Top media headlines on June 9th
The New York Times has been criticized for its defense of Mara Gay, a misidentification issue at Vice President Harris’ press conference, and a flight delay for the White House Press Service due to cicadas making headlines today.
Some critics point to another example of Big Tech applying double standards after Twitter allowed ProPublica to share its story about a classified collection of Internal Revenue Service data for some of the world’s richest people.
While Twitter banned users from sharing a New York Post story on emails allegedly posted from Hunter Biden’s laptop, ProPublica did not face similar consequences despite sharing what could be illegally leaked private information. IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig told lawmakers Tuesday that an investigation is underway to see if it was obtained illegally, such as from an IRS employee or someone who hacked the tax agency.
ProPublica’s report revealed what it called the low “real tax rate” in the United States being paid by the world’s wealthiest, such as Warren Buffett (0.1 percent), Jeff Bezos (0.98 percent) and Elon Musk (3.27 percent). She cited “an anonymous source who provided us with vast amounts of information on the wealthy, everything from the taxes they paid to the income they reported to profits from their stock trades.” The outlet did not reveal its source, only stating that it had received the information “in raw form” without a request.
Misidentification case during Harris press conference set the internet on fire
“Many will ask about the ethics of publishing such private data. We do this – quite selectively and cautiously – because we believe it serves the public interest in essential ways, allowing readers to see patterns that have been hidden hitherto,” the nonprofit Lean reported.
While the story was shared without Twitter action this week, Twitter took the unprecedented step in October of preventing or restricting users from sharing a New York Post story about the alleged contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Twitter said it violated the company’s policy against sharing hacked material. In another statement, she said the articles published by The Washington Post “include personal and private information – such as email addresses and phone numbers – that violate our rules.” Twitter also closed Post’s account and only lifted the ban after a weeks-long standoff.
Facebook also limited the sharing of Post’s laptop articles at the time, citing realistic concerns. Big Tech’s gambit came just weeks before Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
A Twitter spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Andy Grewal, a law professor at the University of Iowa, questioned Tuesday about “what basis should BigTech monitor the NYPost story on Hunter Biden’s emails, while allowing free participation of the ProPublica tax report.” He assured his followers that he did not believe that either should be suppressed.
ProPublica promoted the story as coming at a “decisive moment” in political terms, citing President Biden’s desire to raise taxes on the wealthy.
She stated, “Wealth inequality has become one of the defining issues of our time. The President and Congress are considering the most ambitious tax increases in decades for high-income earners.”
Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal told the Faulkner Focus that the leak of tax data for the wealthy may be linked to the Democrats’ policy initiative.
“This is really unnatural,” he said. “Also, leaking or hacking classified information is a crime, and doing it for political purposes is really ridiculous.”
Journalist Jeryl Pierre said the ProPublica article “uses illegally leaked private information about citizens to make ideological and political points”.
Conservative writer Ed Morrissey wrote on HotAir that ProPublica apparently enabled an illegal leak to “expose legal behavior” by wealthy entrepreneurs.
The revelation of the story left some readers unmoved.
“I’m not sure it’s worth everyone who leaked this to go to jail to basically reveal that you don’t pay capital gains taxes on the shares until you sell them,” journalist James Surovicki wrote on Twitter.
Megan McCardle, a columnist for the Washington Post, also thought the story would be more straightforward. Instead, I also wondered how ProPublica received the data.
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“It turns out that billionaires are pretty adept at lowering their taxable income. Who knew?” asked the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board sarcastically.
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