A point on which journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ben Smith agreed, in a debate in The Spectator magazine (below), is that Donald Trump’s veto on Facebook and other platforms constitutes “censorship”.
Struggling to find space even on Fox News, the former president sent a letter to the Wall Street Journal in response to an editorial contrary to his questions about the outcome of last year’s presidential vote in Pennsylvania.
He listed alleged evidence that “the election was rigged.”
The acceptance of the letter then came to be criticized, especially by CNN, pointing to Trump’s “desperate” action and hearing journalists from other vehicles, including the WSJ, reacting to the publication of “disinformation” by the financial newspaper.
The WSJ released a second editorial, even more critical of the “monomania” of the former president, who does not accept electoral defeat. He dismantled some of the supposed evidence, but warned that it was useless, because Trump would come up with others.
And he replied to those who criticized the publication:
“As for the media clerics, their attempts to censor Trump did nothing to diminish his popularity. Our advice would be to examine their own standards after they so easily fell into false allegations of collusion with Russia.”
GREENWALD VS. SMITH
Greenwald, now on Substack, and Smith of the New York Times, disagreed on SpectatorTV (above) about the instrumentalization, by Democratic intermediaries, of leaked Facebook archives.
For Greenwald, they are trying to control the content of the platform, which Smith refuses, saying he has found no evidence of this.
TRUMP & BOLSONARO
The Thursday (28) online headline in Atlantic, a magazine linked to the Democratic establishment, was critical of Trump’s recent note of support for Jair Bolsonaro, which was “actually just an endorsement of his own tactics.”
In short, “it is logical that in the race for his re-election, which polls predict he may lose to Lula, Bolsonaro would want to lay the groundwork for his own claim of electoral fraud.” For Atlantic, this is “Trump’s global legacy.”
COP, WHAT COP?
On the eve of COP26, the UN climate summit in the United Kingdom, Thursday’s headlines (28) in major British newspapers, from Telegraph to Times and Guardian, went to the “fishing clash” with France — which it was aggravated by the seizure of a boat by Paris and the summoning of the French ambassador to London.
It was also the headline in French Le Monde, “France has decided to ‘speak the language of force’ with the UK”.
DISAPPOINTING BUT CRUCIAL
But the summit made the cover of Britain’s The Economist, acknowledging that it is likely to be “disappointing”, albeit “crucial”. From the editorial:
“Despite their failures, COPs play a decisive role in a process that is historic and vital: the removal of the limit to human flourishing imposed by dependence on fossil fuels.”
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