Right-Wing Media Seeks to Discredit Facebook Whistleblower
Screenshot via CBS.
A number of right-wing publications in recent days have published articles about Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who testified in front of a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday about what she has deemed negative effects from the social network.
Her testimony came just days after she sounded the alarm during a 60 Minutes segment on Sunday.
On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon, citing “a source with direct knowledge of the relationship” and “another half-dozen sources with indirect knowledge of the partnership,” reported that Haugen “is getting strategic communications guidance from” former Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton, who served under former President Barack Obama.
“Burton’s involvement helping to manage Haugen’s public debut suggests that her argument is part of a broader Democratic initiative,” wrote Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson.
Johnson continued:
A Facebook employee in the company’s now-defunct ‘civic integrity’ division until May, Haugen is calling for the federal government to intervene against the company. Though she did not specify in the Sunday interview what sorts of regulations she might support, she is likely to be pressed on that when she appears on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
Burton himself has also been an outspoken Facebook critic, likening them to tobacco companies that knowingly poisoned people and concealed the health risks of using their products — an analogy Haugen is expected to use in her congressional testimony.
Also on Monday, The National Pulse published a piece by Natalie Winters and Raheem Kassam about Haugen’s donations to Democrats, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and to left-wing political groups – all totaling $2,000 since December 2016 with the most recent contribution being in August.
The Daily Wire published an article by Luke Rosiak on Tuesday about Haugen’s political donations, “a history of raising issues about purported bias while at previous employers,” and “working with Democrat operatives to roll out her complaint and has the same lawyers as the anonymous Ukraine ‘whistleblower’ whose allegations led to Donald Trump’s impeachment, but who reportedly turned out to be then-Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisor on the country.”
Finally, National Review published on Wednesday a piece by senior writer Michael Brendan Dougherty, titled “The Wrong Case Against Facebook,” that mentioned The Daily Wire article and questioned the purpose behind what he called a “grand reveal.” He also criticized Facebook for being responsible for misinformation at the detriment of American and Irish politics.
Dougherty wrote:
Left-leaning critics of Facebook — Haugen very much included — have a very difficult time distinguishing the behavior of conservatives on Facebook from the effect of Facebook’s design on conservative belief. That is, for the Left, Facebook and other social-media platforms are a portal through which they can observe all the unapproved things right-leaning voters say to each other. Their vain wish is that reliable progressive liars like Dan Rather can be put back in charge of the information space. That is why there is a rolling campaign — from Cambridge Analytica to ‘the Facebook whistleblower’ — to get social-media companies more on board with progressive messaging.
In my view, Facebook and other giants do pose real threats to democratic self-government, to national sovereignty, and to the mental health and privacy of their users. These need to be sorted out very quickly. But don’t fall for this ongoing whistleblower operation. The failure of Facebook to stop conservatives and populists from talking with one another, and the failure to sufficiently propagandize and intervene in national debates, is not the problem with Facebook.
