Soros Board Member: Create Government Version Of Facebook To Combat Breitbart
by AARON KLEIN
BreitBart.com
15 May 2017
A media researcher who serves on the global board of billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has called for the creation of a “public social media platform” to counter an alleged “right-wing media network,” which he claims is “anchored” around Breitbart News.
Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT and serves as the principal research scientist at MIT’s Media Lab. He is also a member of the global board of Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Zuckerman penned a piece in the Atlantic last week titled, “The Case for a Taxpayer-Supported Version of Facebook.”
“A public social media platform would have the civic mission of providing us a diverse and global view of the world,” was the subtitle of his missive.
Zuckerman referred to a study he conducted last March that analyized 1.25 million stories published during the 2016 election cycle and purportedly found “a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world.”
Without citing a single example in his Atlantic article, Zuckerman claimed that Breitbart served as the anchor of a “media ecosystem of new, online-only outlets that mixed propaganda and conspiracy theory with partisan news.”
Referring to media outlets within this self-described right-wing “media ecosystem,” Zuckerman claimed those outfits are “not fake news in the usual sense of wholly fabricated articles written to earn online ad dollars, but hyperpartisan, partly factual news.”
Once again without citing any evidence, Zuckerman blamed this alleged “echo chamber” for taking a “fringe position on ending legal immigration, making it central to the 2016 presidential campaign and, ultimately, for helping the candidate willing to support this position rise to the presidency.”
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