Facebook announced Tuesday it has made a commitment to contribute $300 million to “news programs, partnerships, and content.”
This payoff will roll out over three years. While Facebook has not yet said where all the money will go, the Pulitzer Center and local news outlets are the prime beneficiaries of what has been allocated.
“The money will go toward reporting grants for local newsrooms, expanding Facebook’s program to help local newsrooms with subscription business models and investing in nonprofits aimed at supporting local news,” reports the Associated Press.
What the AP is not reporting, though, is how this came about, which I will boil down into a way everyone can understand:
Media: Hey, Mark Zuckerberg, that’s a nice business you got there. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.
Mark Zuckerberg: Would $300 million buy me some protection?
Media: Sure … for starters.
CNN’s Brian Stelter, a far-left conspiracy theorist who supports terrorism and blacklists against the political right, has, in so many words, already told Facebook this $300 is nowhere near enough, that this had better be just a taste; and of course Facebook is already paying CNN to –wink, wink– “produce special video programming”:
Facebook posted a profit of $5.13 billion in its most recent quarter. When asked about the perception that the company is giving away crumbs to make up for damage done to the news business, [a Facebook spokesperson] made the point that “we’re not going to un-invent the internet.”
…
Facebook also pays a number of major news outlets, including CNN, to produce special video programming for the Facebook Watch section of its platform.
Brown said the seed funding for Watch will continue. Last month, The Information reported that the programming strategy was being “refined,” so some news outlets would see declines in funding while other outlets received subsidies for the first time.
The media were never very happy with Facebook sucking up the ad revenue, but the jihad against the social media giant did not launch until after the 2016 presidential election.
All of this began with the election of President Trump.
All of it.
While Facebook certainly deserves criticism and scrutiny over privacy issues, the media are only using those issues as a cudgel, as an addition weapon to bully Zuckerberg with. What the media really want is for Facebook to ensure things like the 2016 election never happen again.
This is why fake news outlets like CNN are putting so much pressure on social media companies to blacklist conservative voices and ideas. The media are desperate to put a stop to anything that allows the American public to talk amongst ourselves, to share ideas and information outside the media’s left-wing filter and spin machine.
That is what this terror campaign against Facebook is really about, and over the last two years we have seen the result: Facebook caving to the threats with the systematic snuffing out of right-of-center voices.
Additionally, conservatives and traditional Christians have had their speech chilled by Facebook. We all know that if we dare oppose gay marriage or respect science in our analysis of gender, we could be digitally snuffed out, blacklisted, removed from the public square, which is exactly what CNN, the Washington Post, New York Times et al. want more than anything else — for no one have a platform to challenge their failed ideas and shoddy reporting.
The media no longer have any influence over the public. We see through their biases and lies, we no longer consider the media to be unbiased, accurate, or reliable. So we have turned to the public square of social media to talk amongst ourselves. In response to this, media outlets like CNN have become gangsters, institutions abusing their corporate muscle to terrorize the public square (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) into operating in the way the gangsters demand.
Let me again boil this down:
Media: How many cases of our beer would like to order?
Facebook: I don’t buy your beer. I get my product elsewhere.
Media: How many cases!?
Facebook: My customers are very happy with the product I currently offer them. They like Breitbart.
Media: Our beer is much better for your health and your customers’ health. We’d hate for anyone to get hurt.
And so, this $300 million..? It is pure shakedown money, protection money, a plea from Facebook to not have another one of the media’s figurative bricks come through store window. You don’t see Facebook offering money to the individuals its business practices have truly harmed — those who have had their privacy violated or been blacklisted. Facebook is paying off only one group — the gangsters threatening their very existence … unless their are payoffs and Facebook agrees to sell only their product.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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