MSNBC Host Triggered By Twitter's Community Notes Correcting His Lie About White-On-White Crime
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan declared Twitter's Community Notes feature a "weapon of the Right" after fact-checking his lie about white-on-white violence in America.
Recently, Hasan responded to a clip from Bill Maher during which the latter criticized uncontrolled crime in Chicago. Hasan found Maher's comments to be racist. He then tweeted a clip of his "Offensive Tropes" segment where he claimed white-on-white crime stats are almost identical to that of black-on-black.
Under previous ownership, the almighty algorithm may have awarded Hasan for his deceit. The tweets certainly would've gone unchecked.
But under Elon Musk's leadership, such lies are subject to Community Notes context. In fact, all tweets are, no matter the political affiliation of the user.
Thereby Community Notes added the following context to Hasan's tweet:
Via Twitter.
The correction reads, as per FBI statistics:
"The rate of black-on-black killings (53.38/million) was ~5.3x higher than that of white-on-white (10.03/million) in the U.S. in 2019, according to data from the FBI and the Census Bureau. Black killers killed 89% of black victims. White killers killed 79% of white victims."
Specifically, Hasan tangled two different data points to draw the conclusion he preferred. As Viva Frei notes, "Rate and frequency are two very different things ... which is why nearly 50% of homicide victims or black despite representing only 14% of the population."
Frei concluded Hasan to be a "professional liar."
That he is. And MSNBC pays him to be that.
But on MSNBC, a host is free to spread lies about race in America. The network does not subject its host to fact-checks.
Facts are optional at MSNBC.
So it's no wonder Mehdi Hasan doesn't take kindly to Twitter's devotion to factual information and thus tweeted the following:
https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1652148858770661376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1652148858770661376%7Ctwgr%5E8057bc99d86fcd26ae1bf3271a2e51d648208108%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fbobhoge%2F2023%2F05%2F02%2Fmsnbc-meltdown-mehdi-hasan-has-a-hissy-fit-over-being-fact-checked-on-racial-crime-stats-n739777
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Ironically, his false depiction of Community Notes drew another correction:
"Community Notes doesn’t work by majority rules. To identify notes that are helpful to a wide range of people, notes require agreement between contributors who have sometimes disagreed in their past ratings. This helps prevent one-sided ratings."
Notice how goofs mark Twitter a "weapon of the Right." That too is a lie.
Twitter is far from the right-wing utopia critics claim. What Twitter is, is no longer a tool the Left can unilaterally wield.
See, Musk did not shift Twitter toward the Right. He shifted it away from the far-Left. That hardly makes Elon Musk the "far-right activist" The Atlantic called him on Tuesday.
Unless anything right of far-Left is now "far-Right."
Twitter is perhaps the only tech platform without a political bias. The rest of Big Tech -- Facebook, Google, Snap, and TikTok -- lean firmly to the Left. Likewise, alt-tech such as Parler and Gab are to the Right.
Twitter, meanwhile, lets the users decide its direction. And that entails correcting television hosts who spread politically-motivated misinformation about crime in America.