'Somehow, the man’s leg got tangled and the horse [dragged] him quite a distance in an open field'

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CENTER SQUARE—U.S. House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer launched an investigation Wednesday into allegations that Google and Meta, parent company of Facebook, censored or misrepresented content about President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Comer, R-Ky., sent letters to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai Wednesday over the alleged censorship, which grabbed national attention after the near-fatal assassination attempt against Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania, on July 13. How Google and Facebook handled questions and searches about the assassination attempt against Trump sparked criticism. “Specifically, Meta’s AI assistant claimed, ‘the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a ‘fictional’ event,’ even as the chatbot ‘had plenty to say about Democratic rival Kamala Harris’ run for the White House,” Comer wrote, citing a New York Post article. “When asked if the assassination on President Trump was fictional, Meta’s bot responded that there ‘was no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I strive to provide accurate and reliable information, but sometimes mistakes can occur.’ The bot further added, ‘[t]o confirm, there has been no credible report or evidence of a successful or attempted assassination of Donald Trump.’” Facebook’s team also admitted that it censored the photo of a bloody Trump holding his fist in the air just after the shooting, a photo that went viral online and became a rallying point for his campaign. “This was an error,” Facebook communications director Dani Levi wrote on X about the photo. “This fact-check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the Secret Service agents smiling, and in some cases, our systems incorrectly applied that fact-check to the real photo. This has been fixed, and we apologize for the mistake.” “Google users report that autocompleted search prompts related to the assassination attempt of President Trump produced results for failed assassination attempts of former presidents, including Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan—or even assassinations of historical figures such as Archduke Franz Ferdinand—but omitted from the list of automatically generated search suggestions the recent attempt on President Trump’s life,” Comer wrote. Google told CBS MoneyWatch that the search issues were technical “anomalies” that were unintentional and could affect anyone. Comer’s investigation is calling for documents and answers on how Google’s search and autocomplete works. Google staff briefed the committee earlier this month. “In response to preliminary staff inquiries, Google contends that the autocomplete results omitted the Trump assassination attempt due to a safety protocol concerning predicted assassination attempts of current political leaders, and Google had not yet updated the autocomplete feature to reflect that an assassination attempt of President Trump had occurred,” Comer wrote. In his letter to Meta’s Zuckerberg, Comer pointed out that the executive branch regulates the tech companies that can have bias in determining who runs the executive branch. “The Committee has long been concerned with how large technology companies leverage their businesses to influence public opinion—especially the design and use of content-moderation policies within private sector social media companies—and how company policies are shaped and influenced by Executive Branch officials,” Comer wrote in his letter to Zuckerberg. After the issues last month, Trump blasted both companies online, saying “here we go again” and calling it “rigging the election,” an apparent reference to how social media companies at the urging of the FBI censored news stories about the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, but the laptop later was found to be real. Originally published by The Center Square. The post Oversight Panel Probes Claims of Google, Facebook Censorship of Trump Shooting appeared first on The Daily Signal.

NY Times Opinion: Hunter Biden Should Be Charged with FARA Violations

Pat Boone Wonders: Where Did America Go?

The star of a new movie about the late President Ronald Reagan is accusing Facebook of targeting the movie.  Actor Dennis Quaid and the marketers for a soon-to-be-released film Reagan accused Meta-owned Facebook of suppressing advertising and promotion of the movie. Newsweek claimedFacebook told them that it “may have been” censorship by mistake, not on purpose. Quaid, who plays Reagan in the movie, wrote in an email to Newsweek, “Facebook is once again censoring the free flow of ideas, deciding what's best for us to see and hear; only this time it's throttling advertising and promotion for my movie about Ronald Reagan.”  MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider responded to Facebook’s censorship, “Have you noticed that these ‘mistakes’ and ‘glitches’ by the Big Tech platforms always favor the left? But these glitches aren’t always about limiting conservatives’ actions. Just the other day, Google claimed that there was a glitch that allowed Kamala Harris to attach fake headlines to the logos of media outlets, to her great benefit. The one consistent thing is that Big Tech always favors the left.”  MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris agreed. Morris said, “Here they go again. Notice how Big Tech's censorship mistakes invariably seem to always be in one direction: in support of the left and against the right.” The Reagan film’s digital marketing director Eric McClellan also wrote a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg citing “numerous problems” when trying to advertise Reagan on Facebook.  For instance, Newsweek explained Facebook prevented a post from being a paid ad; the post showed Quaid from the movie and a Reagan quote that read: “Don't let anyone tell you that America's best days are behind her—that the American spirit has been vanquished. We've seen it triumph too often in our lives not to believe it now.”  Facebook also reportedly issued temporary suspensions to the movie’s Facebook page for clips of Quaid talking about the film. The platform claimed the content “mentions politicians or is about sensitive issues that could influence public opinion, how people vote and may impact the outcome of an election or pending legislation.” Quaid suggested the censorship is part of a larger Facebook strategy of election interference, and asked, “Like the old Soviet Union—are we turning into a country of tech oligarchs who control the platform of groupthink to silence the individual or 'other' groups?” He added, “My challenge to Facebook is to ask if any of these tactics were used against other recent presidential biopics like Lincoln, LBJ, or Southside with You, a film about President Barack Obama, which was also released during an election year?”  Facebook reportedly gave Newsweek a vague assertion that the censorship could possibly have been a mistake. Newsmax reported that Facebook said, “This happened because our automated systems mistakenly determined that content about President Reagan required prior authorization in accordance with our policies for ads about Social Issues, Elections or Politics.” Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment and provide an equal platform for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.