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New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose was roasted on social media Tuesday for claiming that “Facebook is absolutely teeming with right-wing misinformation” when four stories he used as examples turned out to be accurate and widely reported.
“Facebook is absolutely teeming with right-wing misinformation right now. These are all among the 10 most-engaged URLs on the platform over the last 24 hours (per @NewsWhip data),” Roose tweeted with images of four different accurate headlines.
Roose falsely claimed a Daily Wire story “Republican In Michigan Goes From Loser to Winner After ‘Technical Glitch’ Fixed. Officials Urge ‘Confidence’ In System”; Breitbart’s “AG William Barr Authorizes DOJ to look into Voting Irregularities”; Bongino.com’s “Michigan Legislature Holds Rare Emergency Sessions to Investigate Election Regularities”; and Breitbart’s “Perdue, Loeffler Call on Georgia Sec. of State to Resign over Election” were “right-wing misinformation.”
The Times columnist's claim could be easily debunked with a few simple Google searches.
The Detroit Free Press reported that “computer error led election officials in Oakland County to hand an upset victory Wednesday to a Democrat, only to switch the win back to an incumbent Republican a day later,” which backed up the Daily Wire story.
Attorney General William Barr on Monday gave federal prosecutors the green light to pursue "substantial allegations" of voting irregularities before the 2020 presidential election is certified next month, even though little evidence of fraud has been put forth – which shoots down Roose’s second claim of misinformation.
Bongino cited the Detroit Free Press, which reported “Michigan Legislature on Saturday issued a subpoena to state election officials as Republican lawmakers launched an investigation of what they say are possible election irregularities in Michigan,” and even the liberal CNN reported that Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue called on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign.
“These stories are not false, of course. But Kevin Roose's actual job – like so many of our tech activists – is not to spot misinformation. It is to badger social media giants into censoring conservative outlets,” conservative pundit Ben Shapiro responded.
“From NYT tech columnist. Problem is, stories are accurate. Later in thread, concedes that articles 'aren't strictly false,' but encourage a 'stolen election narrative that is going to be hard to dial back.' Rationale for broad censorship,” Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York wrote.
Roose later caught wind of the criticism and doubled down.
“For the conservatives who are mad about this: yes, it is possible for a story to be factually accurate *and* for it to be part of a misinformation campaign aimed at undermining confidence in an election,” he wrote.
Many others blasted the Times columnist:
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