Sseemingly in the wake of his break with President Trump — which it groused was even considered news given his high-profile job in Trump’s administration — the Media Research Center hasn’t done much coverage or defense of Elon Musk. Nicholas Fondacaro groused in his July 7 hate-watch of “The View”:
Following their vacation for the week of America’s birthday, ABC’s The View was coming in hot on Monday during their “Hot Topics” segment; ABC News co-host Ana Navarro suggested that Elon Musk stole the 2024 presidential election for President Trump. She received no push back from anyone for the accusation, instead, she received support from co-host Sunny Hostin. She even tried to ghoulishly politicize the tragic floods in Texas over the weekend.
[…]Without evidence of what she was eluding to, Navarro demanded that Musk “look at what he did in this past election” with “his 300-plus-million dollars” spent. Again, without evidence, she suggested that he did more than just spend money, all while getting vocal support from Hostin:
Fondacaro dismissed all this as “ugly election denialism” — but didn’t mention the ugly election denialism his employer engaged in after the 2020 election, when it hyped the conspiracy theory that the non-right-wing media stole the presidential election from Trump by not being as obsessed with Hunter Biden as its fellow right-wingers were.
An Aug. 11 post by Tom Olohan demanded that Musk censor a prime source from X’s “community notes”:
In response to a recent post from a well-known Wikipedia bias critic, X owner Elon Musk hinted at forbidding the use of the online encyclopedia as a go-to source for censoring users’ posts on X.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger requested that Musk consider banning citations of Wikipedia from Community Notes, Aug. 7, calling the influence it has over the Community Notes on X “disturbing.” Musk criticized the woke online encyclopedia for its bias in response the following day: “I agree that Wikipedia cannot be used as a definitive source for Community Notes, as the editorial control there is extremely left-biased (and nihilistic imo). Actual source material, not derivative, matters much more.”
Sanger has harshly criticized Wikipedia for its leftist bias before. He has even called the online encyclopedia “one of the most effective organs of Establishment propaganda in history.”
Olohan did not criticize Musk for the decline in Community Notes being permitted on X, nor did he cite an example of Wikipedia-sourced claim in a Community Note being incorrect.
It took Dan Schneider, Michael Morris and Jonah Messinger to crank out an Aug. 21 “study” whining that X isn’t biased against Democrats:
X owner Elon Musk can no longer hide behind predecessor Jack Dorsey and the radical programmers who have remained with the company since its change of ownership. Nearly three years after Musk bought Twitter (now X), the platform still favors liberals over conservatives, boosting voices on the left at the expense of account holders on the right. And this includes the accounts of members of Congress.
Democrats are the clear winners in the X sweepstakes, especially the most extreme members of Congress, like Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA); and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Maxine Waters (D-CA).
X assigns “visibility scores” to each of its account holders. These scores determine the degree to which posts are either amplified or suppressed. In the U.S. House, the highest visibility scores heavily favor Democrats, with 20 of 25 of the best scores belonging to the most radical members of Congress. Conversely, 20 of 25 of the lowest scores are assigned to Republicans, effectively resulting in the deboosting of their posts.
Similarly biased results (though slightly less drastic) played out in the Senate. X assigned 16 of 25 of the highest visibility scores to Democrats and 18 of 25 of the lowest visibility scores to Republicans.
The trio are effectively demanding that Democrats be censored on X or otherwise be punished for being better on the platform than Republicans are, though they won’t come righto ut and say it:
As the current study demonstrates, the X algorithm still needs a lot of work. Much like the observed differences in account visibility, X also attempted to carry on a Jack Dorsey censorship creation, BirdWatch. Attempting what Musk claimed was a more democratic form of fact-checking, he rebranded BirdWatch as “Community Notes” and proceeded to utilize the mechanism in place of heavier-handed approaches on other platforms. Despite his best efforts, the mechanism has proven to be “censorship by a different name.” And while Musk claimed a “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach” policy on X would only affect individual posts and not accounts generally, the MRC has explained why the continuation of yet another Dorsey approach to censorship is a danger to free societies.
Analysis has shown that free speech can continue to improve on X, possibly becoming the “global town square” Musk envisioned. Musk has even posted to X about his desire to remove the “tweepcred” score, highlighting a hope for positive change.
Yes, they really think that opinions that aren’t right-wing are “a danger to free societies.”
But the MRC is never going to be too hard on Musk, though. It has refused to criticize how his Grok AI engine on X spewed pro-Hitler rants, or mention that Grok itself has bashed Musk for meddling with its programming.