By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Why an 18th-century slave and a witch-hunting minister knew more about vaccinations than RFK Jr. Plus photography, a roundup of the week’s posts and a tribute to the late, great Steve Cropper. It’s all in my supporters newsletter. Please sign up today for $6 a month!
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects website owners from liability over third-party content. The classic example would be an anonymous commenter who libels someone. The offended party would be able to sue the commenter but not the publishing platform, although the platform might be required to turn over information that would help identify the commenter.
But where is the line between passively hosting third-party content and activity promoting certain types of material in order to boost engagement and, thus, profitability? That question will go before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Friday, reports Jennifer Smith of CommonWealth Beacon.
At issue is a lawsuit brought against Meta by 42 state attorneys general, including Andrea Campbell of Massachusetts. Meta operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads and other social media platforms, and it has long been criticized for using algorithms and other tactics that keep users hooked on content that, in some cases, provokes anger and depression, even suicide. Smith writes:
The Massachusetts complaint alleges that Meta violated state consumer protection law and created a public nuisance by deliberately designing Instagram with features like infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and “like” buttons to addict young users, then falsely represented the platform’s safety to the public. The company has also been reckless with age verification, the AG argues, and allowed children under 13 years old to access its content.
Meta and its allies counter that Section 230 protects not just the third-party content they host but also how Facebook et al. display that content to its users.
In an accompanying opinion piece, attorney Megan Iorio of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, computer scientist Laura Edelson of Northeastern University and policy analyst Yaël Eisenstat of Cybersecurity for Democracy argue that Section 230 was not designed to protect website operators from putting their thumbs on the scales to favor one type of third-party content over another. As they put it in describing the amicus brief they have filed:
Our brief explains how the platform features at the heart of the Commonwealth’s case — things like infinite scroll, autoplay, the timing and batching of push notifications, and other tactics borrowed from the gambling industry — have nothing to do with content moderation; they are designed to elicit a behavior on the part of the user that furthers the company’s own business goals.
As Smith makes clear, this is a long and complex legal action, and the SJC is being asked to rule only on the narrow question of whether Campbell can move ahead with the lawsuit to which she has lent the state’s support. (Double disclosure: I am a member of CommonWealth Beacon’s editorial advisory aboard as well as a fellow Northeastern professor.)
I’ve long argued (as I did in this GBH News commentary from 2020) that, just as a matter of logic, favoring some types of content over others is a publishing activity that goes beyond the mere passive hosting of third-party content, and thus website operators should be liable for whatever harm those decisions create. That argument has not found much support in the courts, however. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Beware the narrative shift. Two stories that have become media obsessions are slowly being recast. One is deadly serious; the other is ridiculous, although it nevertheless says a lot about journalism ethics.
First, the deadly serious story. We are beginning to see the emergence of a narrative that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is in the clear, more or less, as long as he can show that he didn’t order a second attack on that boat in the Caribbean in order to kill two wounded crew members.
For most of his first term and now his second, Donald Trump has been deeply unpopular. Both The New York Times and polling analyst Nate Silver track his approval/disapproval ratings based on an average of polls.
As of Monday, Trump was at 55% disapprove/41% approve using the Times’ methodology. Silver has him at a nearly identical 55.4% disapproval/41% approval. There are others who do the same thing, but the Times and Silver may be the best known.
Yet despite everything, Trump’s numbers don’t move as much as you might think they would given the corrupt and chaotic nature of his presidency. Indeed, on Monday, Trump’s disapproval rating actually nudged down by a statistically insignificant amount, from 56% to 55%. And no matter what, a rock-solid minority of just over 40% sticks with him. How could this be?
This morning I’d like to suggest one possible explanation. I’m not a polling expert, but this is obvious and starting us right in the face. The Times’ average is based on a number of polls, some of which it regards as highly reliable, some of which it doesn’t. And, for the most part, Trump is doing considerably worse when measured solely by highly reliable polls.
For instance, the most recent Gallup poll shows Trump at minus 24, with 60% disapproving of his job performance and just 36% approving. The American Research Group has him at minus 27, with 62% approval/35% disapproval. Beacon Research/Shaw and Co. reports that Trump is at minus 17, Ipsos at minus 22.
Now, as I said, the Times showed Trump’s disapproval rating ticked down slightly on Monday. And when you look at the chart, you see that it’s because a poll from TIPP Insights was added to the mix. TIPP, which does not meet the Times’ criteria for reliability, had Trump at just minus 4, based on 43% approval/47% disapproval.
Some of the less reliable polls, especially YouGov, do show Trump with a disapproval gap as wide as the reliable polls. But when you scan down the list, you see a number of less reliable polls showing that Trump’s disapproval rating is on the narrow side — Morning Consult (minus 7), InsiderAdvantage (minus 5), Big Data Poll (minus 5) and RMG Research (minus 7).
As I said, I’m not a polling expert, and it’s likely that the Times has weighted the reliable polls more heavily than the more dubious surveys. But Gallup, in particular, has been the gold standard for generations, and maybe we ought to take them more seriously than an index that includes both the good and the bad.
Why does it matter? Because if Trump is losing support, then the likelihood increases that House and Senate Republicans will be willing to stand up to him at least occasionally. Until recently, the Republicans have been utterly craven, cheering enthusiastically for Trump’s every incoherent pronouncement.
But now we’re starting to see a little movement. Marjorie Taylor Greene is one sign. Another is that Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker the other day actually referred to Pete Hegseth as the “secretary of defense” rather than his cosplay role as the “secretary of war.”
In case you haven’t seen it yet, Pete Hegseth, our seriously deranged secretary of defense, posted this on Twitter Sunday night. As of this moment, it’s still up.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that, back in September, Hegseth ordered that two injured men clinging to a boat in the Caribbean that U.S. forces had just blown apart be killed in a second attack. Experts have already said that Hegseth could be charged with murder, war crimes or both.
As you might expect, Hegseth’s shockingly demented tweet is inspiring a host of memes. Here’s one:
Donald Trump has denied that Hegseth ordered the killings, but we’re starting to see the first stirrings of Republicans Congress demanding accountability. We’ll see how far that goes.
Here we go again. It’s the last day of the month, and I haven’t shared all of my gift links to The New York Times. Use ’em or lose ’em. These should continue to work for some time to come; what matters is when I post them, not when you access them. So here we go.
Despite everything that’s going on in our country and in the world, we have much to be thankful for, and I hope you do, too. Best wishes to all of you, and thank you for reading.
The coffee shop chain that refused service to retired GBH News reporter Phillip Martin at one of its stores recently will bolster its “anti-discrimination and harassment training,” according to its chief operating officer.
Caffè Nero COO Paul Morgan was quoted in an update published Wednesday afternoon by Boston.com. Reporter Abby Patkin writes that Martin met with company officials earlier this week for what he described as a “very cordial, pleasant conversation.” He added that he accepted their apologies, saying, “I told them I had no interest whatsoever in anyone being fired over this.”
Although Martin, a former colleague of mine at GBH, handled the situation with his customary class, what happened to him raises some troublesome issues. The facts as originally laid out in The Boston Globe were that a barista thought Martin resembled someone (sub. req.) who had recently caused trouble at the Central Square store recently, even relieving himself inside.
Yet Martin now says he’s seen a photo of that person, and he was “befuddled,” adding, “I looked at the photo, and I told them, ‘He looks nothing like me.’” Patkin reports that Martin says the person in the photo was a much younger, light-skinned Black man.
Neither the original Globe story nor the Boston.com follow-up reports whether the barista is white, although it’s clearly implied that she is given that Martin filed complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and the Cambridge Human Rights Commission, and that Caffè Nero is going to double down on training.
Those of us who are white have an obligation not to fall into the trap of confusing one person of color with another. If the barista had paused for a moment and thought about whether Martin truly resembled the person who’d gone off in her store earlier, she almost certainly would have realized that he didn’t.
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Todd Landfried, co-founder and CEO of N2 Media Holdings. As consumers cut the cord on cable TV, he hopes to develop a sustainable model for local news production.
We know from our research that local television news is still highly trusted. His mission: to reinvent local news for the streaming era. Landfried’s idea, called The Local, is to develop statewide newscasts in Colorado, and eventually in all 50 states, that would be carried on the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube.
Ellen is back and fully bionic after a short hiatus for knee replacement surgery.
I’ve got a Quick Take about a finding in a recent report by LION Publishers that gets into how to think about raising money. LION, as most of our listeners know, stands for Local Independent Online News. Anyway, its latest sustainability report found that startup news organizations can’t just hope that revenues are something that are going to materialize. Fundraising takes dedicated employees, as I explain.
Ellen’s Quick Take is on an alt-weekly in Seattle called The Stranger that has become an influential political force, as The New York Times recently reported (sub. req.). This summer, 47 candidates for local office paid a call on the newsroom in order to seek an editorial endorsement. And they brought snacks!
You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
The following is a press release from Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.
Researchers and local journalism experts at Northeastern University, in partnership with industry-leading audience research firm SmithGeiger Group, have published a survival guide for local TV newsrooms that are struggling to reach a new generation of news consumers.
The Reinventing Local TV News Project recommends that news organizations hire a Digital Content Creator, a role researchers tested in three major market newsrooms for a year of experimentation on digital platforms. Reinvent: A Survival Guide for Local TV News offers guidance for news organizations and journalists on how to integrate that new role into the newsroom, the most effective ways for Digital Content Creators to tell stories, and ways to measure the reach of that work.