Judge, Jury and Executioner

Joe Biden  Reuters

"I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars. I said, you're not getting the billion, I'm going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours."

"I looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money."

"Well, son of a bitch [laughing], he got fired."

Former U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden 

Social media platforms have become powerful influences well beyond their importance as a site where people can exchange opinions and post notices. They have taken the place of the office water cooler, the small-press regional newsletter, the daily gossip column, and hard news disseminator. And have become as influential as any big-city newspaper of reputation and renown or network television empire. They rate high in the public social gossip anchorage of casual society but they have also over the years challenged reputable news media as a venue for active, not passive participation in popularizing news content and populist political opinion.

They flex their media muscles as purveyors of news and influencers appealing to their large followings and channeling their own political sympathies for greatest effect, while punishing in subtle ways those using their platforms as a loudspeaker for their own, media-unapproved ideologies and preferences and political-right-spectrum allegiances. They convey 'fake' news without a blush. Plump for candidates for high political office whose politics they approve, and try to 'silence' views that run counter to their own. They don't take criticism with equanimity as deserved for veering off neutrality as a social media platform.

The Trump campaign posted a screenshot as evidence that Kayleigh McEnany's account was locked  Getty Images

 

The evidence is not hard to find; the detested President Donald Trump's off-hand and off-kilter remarks on Twitter come with reality-check warnings. The White House communications officer representing the president of the United States has been banned on Twitter. In the upcoming presidential election set for early November, the Democratic candidate is given preference, the Republican short shrift. Both Twitter and Facebook which take the giant's share of social media popularity and usage have taken it upon themselves to act as political mentors to their following, pointing them in the 'right' direction.

Even people within the international community-users of the platforms who detest Mr. Trump are -- or should be -- dumbfounded at the activist role embraced by the social media rulers of note. When the New York Post reported that "a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer" left at a repair shop and then forgotten, revealed that the son of the former vice-president of the United States and current Democratic candidate for president on November 3 had or was in pursuit of lucrative associations with Ukrainian and Chinese companies it immediately became news to be suppressed by Facebook and Twitter.

The use and abuse of political influence at the elite executive level for personal gain? Who cares? There's an election to be won. And not by the detestable Trump. That's the new news, evidence of corruption in the Biden family. Yes, it's old news, actually, but news never given the attention it deserved, as when Joe Biden gave his own proud public account when he used his status as vice-president to force the government of Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor on the threat of withholding a U.S. aid grant to Ukraine.

 

Joe Biden and son Hunter. According to the New York Post, emails from a recovered laptop indicate the younger Biden had or wash pursuing multiple lucrative arrangements with companies in Ukraine and China. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

 

The Ukraine's chief prosecutor was engaged in an anti-corruption campaign, a campaign that the current president of Ukraine promised during his own pre-election speeches. The recovered laptop held emails that validated what was already suspected; Hunter Biden introducing a top Burisma executive to his father. Burisma, Ukrainian energy company, was facing a criminal investigation, the very company that Hunter Biden was involved with, and was lucratively on contract with for his 'services'. In a talk to the Council on Foreign Relations, seen on YouTube, Joe Biden boasted of his successful threat to have the chief prosecutor fired and the investigation and his son's implication buried.

Any attempts by Facebook and Twitter users to post those findings courtesy of the New York Post were censored. But it wasn't only the social media giants who censored that new information on gross interference in other governments, on insider trading on family influence, on acquiring lucrative contracts in exchange for the inside-ear on U.S. policy and connections, but the greater U.S. news media for whom the revelations were an instant no-story yawn. Censorship, suppression of a kind normally associated with corrupt, totalitarian governments which 'own' national news media.

The accuracy of the New York Post's revelations has been validated. The story details, however, were acquired through the active intervention of Rudolph Guiliano who when he was mayor of New York during the 9/11 atrocity was a hugely respected public figure, but now that he represents Donald J. Trump, a caricature in many respects who has managed to lead the U.S. in unexpected ways but has never succeeded in rehabilitating himself other than as a crude egotist, cannot be viewed as a purveyor of truth and thus the story was fated to be entombed.

Perhaps the real issue is that it doesn't really matter beyond the arrogant impudence of the news media ignoring an important story to shield a favoured political candidate running for high office, because the public which should be alerted so they are fully apprised before casting their vote, really has a feeble choice in any event. Either the bombastic, clumsy current president returns for a second term in office, or a feeble-minded, lying, corrupt ex-vice-president is returned as president of the great United States of America.

"Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey — the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter — are being ordered to Capitol Hill to answer for their companies’ censorship of The Post’s expose on the Biden family’s foreign business dealings in Ukraine and China."

"'Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans on Thursday authorized subpoenas for the execs after accusing them of engaging in “suppression and/or censorship; of The Post’s reporting."

The New York Post

Twitter blocked users from posting links to the New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, an unprecedented step against a major publication. Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images