Sen. Mazie Hirono cites Media Matters in Senate hearing to debunk alleged social media censorship of conservatives
Sen. Hirono: “Everyone who has systematically looked at the content of social media, from Media Matters to the Cato Institute to former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, has found absolutely no evidence of anti-conservative bias”
Published
Citation From the November 17, 2020, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election”
SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI): Mr. Zuckerberg, for the second time in three weeks you've been called before the Senate committee so my Republican colleagues can beat you up over claims that your platforms are supposedly biased against conservatives. The fact of the matter is that these allegations are completely baseless. Everyone who has systematically looked at the content of social media, from Media Matters to the Cato Institute to former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, has found absolutely no evidence of anti-conservative bias. And data from CrowdTangle show that far-right content from the likes of Fox News, Ben Shapiro, [and Dan] Bongino dominates the daily top 10 most engaged pages on Facebook. So all of these allegations about the fact that you hire -- or all of your employees are left of center is relevant of nothing. Certainly not relevant of some sort of anti-conservative bias in terms of your content moderation. So the way I see it, this hearing is a transparent effort by my Republican colleagues to work the refs. And unfortunately, in my view it is working.
...
HIRONO: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter into the record a number of studies, particularly a November 1, 2020, article in The Washington Post titled “Trump allies, largely unconstrained by Facebook’s rules against repeated falsehoods, cement pre-election dominance”; a May 26, 2020, article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive”; three studies from Media Matters finding no anti-conservative bias on Facebook; and an article by Dr. Francesca Tripodi titled “No, Big Tech Isn't Silencing Conservatism.” I would like to enter these items into the record.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Without objection.