Facebook brands Seymour Hersh reporting false RT World News
April 19, 2023
While Hershs claims are disputed, Facebook has decided to take a side and is censoring the veteran journalist, Shellenberger argued.
The fact-checker in this case was Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. On March 14, the organization reprinted an article by Faktisk.no, a media watchdog which counts NRK as among its partners. The watchdog claimed that, based on open source data, Hersh was mistaken about the alleged involvement of Norwegian Navy ships in the Nord Stream sabotage.
Whether Hersh is wrong or right, his reporting should be debated publicly, not censored, insisted Shellenberger, who recently helped expose social media censorship as part of the Twitter Files.
Facebooks actions are antithetical to Americas tradition of free and open debate and its rejection of secretive, authoritarian censorship, he added.
Zelensky and team stole at least $400 million of US aid Seymour Hersh
Hersh published another bombshell report last week in which he claimed that US intelligence was aware of large-scale embezzlement of American aid money by the Ukrainian leadership. Facebook likewise labeled the report as false, citing the opinion of StopFake.org a Ukraine-based, Western-funded media watchdog created to combat Russian disinformation.
StopFake disputed Hershs allegation because Substack is a self-publishing platform, rather than a so-called legacy outlet. It also referred to statements by US officials, who claimed they had seen no evidence of American aid being diverted in Ukraine. If Hershs allegations were true, the corruption would be known to American auditors, and it would have negatively impacted assistance to Ukraine, the outlet stated.
Hersh compared the situation in Ukraine to what happened in Afghanistan during the two decades of US military presence there. Reports by American inspectors exposed rampant corruption year after year, but that did not appear to affect US spending on reconstruction efforts in any significant way.
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Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 11:32 am