Fake check. Plus he’s trying to set up his little 666 system.
it’s time for a movement called #LockdownFakeNews:
6 May: Guardian: Journalists, politicians and judges to sit on Facebook’s free speech panel
New independent board, which includes ex-Guardian editor, will rule on freedom of expression issues
by Alex Hern
Among the 20 board members who have agreed to help set policy for the social network are Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former prime minister of Denmark; the Nobel peace laureate Tawakkol Karman; and Alan Rusbridger, the former Guardian editor-in-chief.
The first four members of the board, who all hold the title of co-chair, were selected by Facebook directly. Thorning-Schmidt is one, and is joined by two US law professors, Jamal Greene and Michael McConnell, and Catalina Botero Marino, a former special rapporteur for freedom of expression at the Organization of American States.
Those four, in combination with Facebook, selected the next 16 members and will continue to appoint board members until the board hits its full complement of 40. At that point, Facebook says it will drop out of the process, leaving the board fully in charge of its own composition.
“Our roster includes three former judges, six former or current journalists, and other leaders with backgrounds from civil society, academia and public service,” said Thomas Hughes, the director of the oversight board. “They represent a diverse collection of backgrounds and beliefs, but all have a deep commitment to advancing human rights and freedom of expression.”...
Thorning-Schmidt, who served as CEO of Save the Children after leaving office and is married to the Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, said she “looked forward to the challenge” that the board’s work would bring.
“In this health crisis we are seeing that social media helps us stay connected. But there’s a downside: it can spread speech that is hateful, deceitful and harmful,” she said...
Rusbridger, who was editor-in-chief of the Guardian from 1995 until 2015, said. “The oversight board seems to be the first imaginative and bold step by one of the biggest players to find a way of reconciling the need to start imposing some kind of judgment and standards on what is published, while still maintaining the things that are wonderful about social media, and necessary for free speech. I’m impressed by the group of people that has been chosen and the processes that have been put in place.”
Hughes, when asked if the independence of the board could stretch to it taking on oversight for other social networks if they requested it, confirmed that it could. “But I think all the co-chairs would agree with me that in the short term there is an enormous challenge in just dealing with the requests from Facebook and Instagram alone,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/06/facebook-oversight-board-freedom-expression-helle-thorning-schmidt-alan-rusbridger
3 May: Guardian: This is a key moment in the public’s view of mainstream news
The pandemic has inspired some great journalism and never have we needed it more
by Alan Rusbridger
Today, we have social media and Fox News, the latter much more culpable than star-gazers since it presents itself as a reliable news channel. While the 89-year-old Rupert Murdoch reportedly cocooned himself in the safety of his eight-acre California vineyard, his Fox News toilers faithfully trumpeted the alarmingly erratic views of the man described by the writer Fintan O’Toole as “America’s vector in chief”: the president of the United States.
It was only a couple of months ago that Boris Johnson’s key advisers were pushing to replace the BBC with “Fox News equivalents”, together with “talk-radio shows and bloggers”. That hasn’t aged well. Most surveys of who people rely on during the current crisis show the BBC to be overwhelmingly the most trusted news organisation in the UK, with 60% thinking it has done a good job, according to a recent ***Reuters Institute of Journalism study...
(Alan Rusbridger is principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and chair of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/03/this-is-a-key-moment-in-the-publics-view-of-mainstream-news