It's quite a bit more subtle than that. News organization have their sources that are in the intelligence community. They use each other. Sometimes the journalist wants to use their sources for information. Other times their sources feed them disinformation disguised as information. Other times they want a back channel to leak some real information but can't be seem as coming from a government source. Being a good journalist is hard and often doesn't pay very well.
The twitter files showed government agencies were coercing Twitter into suppressing information. I would find it hard to believe they don't also coerce at newspapers, particularly with the cozy relationship they already have with "anonymous sources" from said agencies.
> The twitter files showed government agencies were coercing Twitter into suppressing information.
They very much did not. Twitter's own lawyers when pressed in court (the place where there are consequences for lying) admitted that nothing in the "Twitter Files" cited by Donald Trump actually show that the social media platform was a tool of government censorship.
The 5th circuit court of appeals found that there was coercion. Read the first 5 or so pages and the last 5 or so pages, specifically that it upheld the unconstitutionality of provision 6 and at the end it lists the offending agencies.
> So, the district court reasoned, the Plaintiffs were “likely to succeed” on their claim because when the platforms moderated content, they were acting under the coercion (or significant encouragement) of government officials, in violation of the First Amendment, at the expense of both private and governmental actors.
You are moving the goalposts. First it was "gov policing speech" which there was no proof of. Now it's "gov coercion/encouragement" which is entirely up to how you subjectively interrupt what interactions occured.
Which fine, lets go over the facts. Any exchanges of information were voluntary, at times set up under the initiative of social media companies themselves, and the vast majority of instances of mis/disinfo flagged by the gov were not acted upon by platforms. Social media companies could have stopped talking to the gov at any time (a few did), and they didn't have to act on anything.
Not exactly the picture of an authoritarian government policing speech. The Twitter Files were set up as an exercise in confirmation bias for people that believe gov was censoring speech (and targeting them), which is why they disappeared so quickly when a lack of proof was highlighted in court. It served its purpose.
Reading this document, it's in extremely bad faith:
> We start with coercion. On multiple occasions, the officials coerced
the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to
moderate content. Privately, the officials were not shy in their requests—
they asked the platforms to remove posts “ASAP”
The ASAP was in reference to a case of revenge porn, something not only against the Twitter TOS, but illegal.
> When the platforms did not comply, officials followed up by asking why posts
were “still up,” stating (1) “how does something like [this] happen,” (2)
“what good is” flagging if it did not result in content moderation, (3) “I don’t
know why you guys can’t figure this out,” and (4) “you are hiding the ball,”
Again, this was in reference to illegal content (iirc an OFAC sanctioned entity not only posting content but making money off it). Using such language when a private company isn't following the law isn't "coercion for censorship".
This reads like a political document by partisan lawyers. This document makes no attempt to distinguish between actually illegal content and suggested violations of TOS (such as when spreading COVID disinfo was against Twitter's rules, which it no longer is). It provides no context for how this "coercion" was mostly civil servants either pointing out violations of Twitter's own rules, or federal crimes. Either way, inaction was baffling, as communicated.
But, again, the mere fact that Twitter ignored so much of this, so often, proves they clearly didn't feel the need to respond to gov requests as if they had to.
We live in a world where people believe things with no proof (therefore with no reason), but a little humility and less certainty might benefit the conversation.
Wait until you realize their footprints on Wallstreet, many of which openly admit their former employment.. Once a company man always a company man.. or something.
