How Would Senator James Lankford React If A Democratic Senator Demanded Fox News Explain Its Editorial Policies?
A month ago, we wrote about a bizarre, nonsensical, Twitter rant from Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma that followed a bizarre, nonsensical appearance at the CPAC conference in which he lashed out at big tech" for supposedly censoring conservatives." This fact-free grievance has been an item of blind faith among the Trumpist set, that big tech is somehow out to get them. The smart ones know it's not true, but it plays well to the base, so they play it up. The dumb ones truly believe it, even as the evidence shows that Twitter and Facebook both have actually bent over backwards to give Republican politicians more leeway to violate the rules and not face any enforcement actions.
Still, a few weeks back, YouTube removed some videos from CPAC, not because of any anti-conservative bias, but for violating YouTube's election integrity policy. You know what that means. YouTube has a policy that says you can't mislead people about the election, and a bunch of Trumpists at CPAC whipped up the base into a frenzy with baseless conspiracy theories about the election.
Personally, I think YouTube should leave that content up. At some point, in the future, it's going to be important to study the collective madness that has taken over much of the Republican party, causing it to completely throw out any semblance of principles, and start coasting on purely fictitious grievance culture wars, in which they must always be portrayed as the aggrieved victim. It would be nice to have a clear record of that.
However, YouTube has chosen to go in another direction and to actually enforce its policies, meaning a few such videos were removed. And, of course, this played right into the nonsense, fictitious grievance politics of the principle-less Republican Party, which sent out its derpiest politicians to whine about being censored.
Lankford, apparently, not humiliated enough by the nonsense he said on stage, has decided to double down, sending Google CEO Sundar Pichai a hilariously stupid letter, demanding to know why CPAC videos have been removed. The letter is like a greatest hits of wrongness and that's not how any of this works." It accuses Google of censorship of conservative voices, it confuses Section 230, and asks all sorts of detailed questions about YouTube's process that resulted in the videos being removed.
I could go through it bit by bit explaining how ridiculous each part of the letter is, but you can just read it yourself below and see.
But, just to demonstrate how ridiculous this letter is, all you have to do is replace YouTube" with Fox News" and replace any concept of censorship of conservatives" with failure to present liberal perspectives" and you might see how unhinged this letter is. I think if a Democratic Senator, say Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar, for example, sent a letter to Fox News saying:
It has come to my attention that Fox News recently refused to allow any liberal or Democratic commentators comment on Joe Biden's performance, and did not provide any details why it is only presenting one side of the story concerning the federal government
And then demanding details on how Fox News goes about choosing what viewpoints are allowed to air, Senator Lankford, and tons of Republicans would absolutely freak out. And rightly so. No politician should be demanding to know the editorial decision making process of private media companies. To demand such information is a clear intimidation technique and should be seen as a violation of the 1st Amendment.
Senator Lankford has every right to spread nonsense, whether he believes it or not. But he doesn't have the right, as a government official, to demand to know the editorial process of a private media company. Just as Senator Warren or Klobuchar should not and would not have the right to do the same for Fox News.