Conservative Blogger
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg meets with conservatives on reported bias
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| Matt Schlapp: I refused to be Facebook's PR pawn |
The meeting at Facebook's Menlo Park, California, headquarters came about after a report accused the company of harboring a bias against conservative views.
S.E. Cupp, a columnist with the New York Daily News who attended the meeting, said Facebook executives "were very clear to acknowledge that there is a problem and the problem is a serious one."
Cupp said Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President Joel Kaplan and board member Peter Thiel mostly listened to the 17 conservatives who attended.
While the Facebook executives did not comment further on an internal investigation into allegations of political manipulation, they explained how difficult it would be for Facebook employees to inject bias into what stories make it into the "trending topics" section of the site or on individual users' news feeds, Cupp said.
The Facebook team also said any such tampering would be "philosophically against both the mission of the company and Mark's personal mission," Cupp said. "I believed them."
Rob Bluey, editor in chief of the website The Daily Signal, made similar comments to Fox News' Greta Van Susteren shortly after the meeting ended.
"They certainly acknowledged that there was a problem with getting the message out to conservatives," he said.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone confirmed that was the tenor of the meeting.
In a Facebook post afterward, Zuckerberg did not directly respond to allegations that Facebook employees suppressed conservative stories on its "trending topics" feature. But he said, "I know many conservatives don't trust that our platform surfaces content without a political bias."
"I wanted to hear their concerns personally and have an open conversation about how we can build trust. I want to do everything I can to make sure our teams uphold the integrity of our products," he wrote.
Among others in attendance, according to Facebook, was radio host Glenn Beck, American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, Tea Party Patriots CEO Jenny Beth Martin and Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.
Bozell said in a statement afterward that the meeting was "very productive."
"There has been a serious issue of trust within the conservative movement about this issue, but everyone in that room, on both sides, wants to see it restored," he said.
Zuckerberg invited the group after the tech blog Gizmodo claimed that Facebook downplays conservative news subjects on its trending feature. Facebook denied the report, which relied upon a single anonymous individual with self-described conservative leanings. The company said it is investigating the matter.
Cupp said the viewpoints of the conservatives and the Facebook executives were aligned on issues such as data security, privacy, deregulation and free markets.
"We have a lot more in common than public perception would have you believe," she said.
Facebook's trending topics are most visible on the desktop version of the social network, although it is possible to access them on mobile too.
On browsers, the topics appear on the top right corner, separate from the news feed containing updates from your friends and family. On mobile devices, users can tap on the search bar to see the top trends, but they can't see separate categories.
Topics that appear as trending can have a self-fulfilling effect, as more Facebook readers see and share the items, and other news organizations decide to write their own stories.
Fox News Poll: Trump tops Clinton
Donald Trump tops Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, according to a new Fox News Poll that also finds majorities of voters feel both frontrunners lack strong moral values and will say anything to get elected.
Trump has a 45-42 percent edge over Clinton, if the presidential election were held today. That’s within the poll’s margin of sampling error. Last month, Clinton was up by 48-41 percent (April 2016).
Clinton is ahead by 14 points among women (50-36 percent). Yet Trump leads by a larger 22 points among men (55-33 percent).
He also tops Clinton by 37 points (61-24 percent) among whites without a college degree (working-class whites).
CLICK HERE TO READ THE POLL RESULTS
Overall, Trump is preferred by 24 points among whites (55-31 percent). He’s even ahead by nine among white women (47-38 percent).
The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics. See Latest Coverage →
The poll includes an oversample of additional interviews among Hispanics/Latinos nationally. Watch for more on those results Friday on FoxNewsLatino.com.
In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won by 20 points among whites, while President Barack Obama won blacks by 87 points and Hispanics by 44, according to the Fox News exit poll.
One reason for Trump’s showing is there is parity on party unity, as 83 percent of Democrats back Clinton and 82 percent of Republicans support Trump.
Independents go for Trump by 46-30 percent, although one in five would vote for someone else or stay home (20 percent).
Enthusiasm is on the GOP’s side, as more Republicans (74 percent) than Democrats (66 percent) say they are extremely or very interested in the presidential election.
The poll shows Bernie Sanders has a 46-42 percent advantage over Trump in a hypothetical matchup. Sanders was up by 53-39 percent in April. However, the Vermont senator trails Clinton in the Democratic nomination race by what is considered an insurmountable number of delegates.
The drawn-out nomination battle may hurt Clinton among the base, as 1 in 10 Sanders voters say they would pick Trump over her in November (11 percent).
Candidate Characteristics
Clinton and Trump have made quite an impression so far. Overall, voters feel the candidates lack honesty, empathy, and strong moral values, and that they’ll say anything to win.
Clinton has a net negative honesty rating of -35 points. That’s because a new low 31 percent say she’s honest, while a record 66 percent say she isn’t.
Trump does better on this measure, although he is still underwater by 17 points: 40 percent think he’s honest and 57 percent say he’s not.
In addition, over half say the phrase “has strong moral values” does not describe Clinton (57 percent) or Trump (58 percent).
Many think “cares about people like me” doesn’t fit Trump (55 percent).
More voters than not think the “cares” attribute doesn’t work for Clinton either (46 percent yes vs. 51 percent no).
Clinton performs best on “is a strong leader,” although the reviews are mixed: 49 percent say it applies to her, while 50 percent say it doesn’t.
“Strong leader” is also Trump’s best trait, as 59 percent feel it describes him (38 percent disagree).
Even so, half or better say “is a reliable leader” doesn’t describe Clinton (55 percent) or Trump (50 percent).
Most think Clinton (71 percent) and Trump (65 percent) will “say anything to get elected.” And majorities think the main reason the former secretary of state (57 percent) and businessman (56 percent) are running is for themselves -- rather than for the country.
Who is more corrupt? By a 49-37 percent margin, voters give that dubious distinction to Clinton.
Pollpourri
What about former Republican governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, who is favored to top the Libertarian Party ticket? He ran in 2012 and received almost one percent of the vote nationally.
The poll finds Johnson garners 10 percent in this hypothetical three-way matchup. But that wouldn’t change the race, as Trump still holds the edge over Clinton: 42-39 percent.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,021 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from May 14-17, 2016. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.
Trump refers to alleged Bill Clinton sexual indiscretions as 'rape'
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used the word "rape" Wednesday evening to describe alleged sexual misconduct by former President Bill Clinton.
Trump made the comment during an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity. The real estate mogul was answering questions about an unflattering story published this past weekend by The New York Times involving his relationships with women when he turned his attention to Bill Clinton.
"By the way, you know, it's not like the worst things, OK," Trump said. "You look at what Clinton's gone through with all of the problems and all of the things that he's done."
Hannity went on to question whether the newspaper would interview women including Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey. All three have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct.
"In one case, it's about exposure. In another case, it's about groping and fondling and touching against a woman's will," Hannity said.
"And rape," Trump responded.
The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics. See Latest Coverage →
In response, Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Trump was "doing what he does best, attacking when he feels wounded and dragging the American people through the mud for his own gain. If that’s the kind of campaign he wants to run that’s his choice."
Allegations of womanizing, extramarital affairs and abuse have trickled out over the course of Bill Clinton's political life, including what his campaign referred to as "bimbo eruptions" when he first ran for president in 1992.
More allegations of misbehavior emerged after investigators in 1997 started looking into Clinton's sexual encounters with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was impeached over the Lewinsky affair.
In 1998, he agreed to an $850,000 settlement with Jones, an Arkansas state worker, who had accused Clinton of exposing himself and making indecent propositions when Clinton was the state's governor. The settlement included no apology or admission of guilt.
Broaddrick, a nurse, in 1999 claimed she was raped by then-state Attorney General Clinton at a Little Rock hotel in 1978. Kathleen Willey, a White House volunteer, claimed Clinton fondled her when she met privately with him at the White House in 1993 to seek a job.
Clinton denied the allegations by Broaddrick and Willey.
Trump has made clear in recent weeks that he intends to make Bill Clinton's sexual history a key campaign issue, describing him at rallies and on social media as "the worst abuser of women in the history of politics" and labeling his wife an "enabler."
EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo crashes with 66 on board, officials say
An EgyptAir flight traveling to Cairo from Paris crashed early Thursday with 66 passengers and crew members on board, Egyptian aviation officials said.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said it was too early to say whether a technical issue or a terror attack had cause the plane to crash. He told reporters at Cairo airport, “We cannot rule anything out.”
Flight 804, an Airbus A320, was lost from radar at 2:45 a.m. Cairo time (8:45 p.m. EDT) when it was flying at 37,000 feet 175 miles north of the Egyptian coast, the airline said.
Officials from Egypt's Civil Aviation ministry said the "possibility that the plane crashed has been confirmed," as the plane failed to land in any nearby airports.
Airbus confirmed in a statement the “loss of an EgyptAir A320.”
“Airbus regrets to confirm that an A320 operated by EgyptAir was lost at around 02:30 am (Egypt local time) today over the Mediterranean Sea,” the company said. “The aircraft was operating a scheduled service, Flight MS 804 from Paris, France to Cairo, Egypt … Our concerns go to all those affected.”
EgyptAir later confirmed that a signal had been picked up from the plane two hours after it disappeared from radar, thought to have been an emergency beacon.
Hours later, Egyptian military said in a statement they didn’t receive any distress calls from the plane. However, they didn’t specify whether they were confirming the initial report that no stress call was received when the plane vanished or when an emergency signal was supposedly received two hours later.
Egyptian military aircraft and navy ships were searching for debris from the plane, which was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two babies, and 10 crew members. EgyptAir later confirmed the nationalities of those on board as including 15 French passengers, 30 Egyptians, one Briton, two Iraqis, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi, one Sudanese, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Algerian and one Canadian.
Greece sent two aircraft to join the search and rescue operation: one C-130 and one early warning aircraft, officials at the Hellenic National Defense General Staff said. They said one frigate was also heading to the area, and helicopters are on standby on the southern island of Karpathos for potential rescue or recovery operations.
"We are not ruling out any hypothesis," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told reporters Thursday. "We are trying to gather all the information available." Valls later told RTL radio France was "ready" to join the search operation if Egyptian authorities requested his country's assistance.
French president Francois Hollande spoke with Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on the phone and agreed to "closely cooperate to establish as soon as possible the circumstances" in which the EgyptAir flight disappeared, according to a statement issued in Paris.
Airbus is aware of the disappearance, but "we have no official information at this stage of the certitude of an accident," the company's spokesman Jacques Rocca said.
The Airbus A320 is a widely used twin-engine, single-aisle plane that operates on short and medium-haul routes. Nearly 4,000 A320s are currently in use around the world. The versions EgyptAir operates are equipped to carry 145 passengers.
Britain's Daily Telegraph quoted a French security source as saying "We cannot rule out the possibility of a terrorist attack." Another French official told the paper, "We would be extremely surprised and concerned if there had been a security breach at [Paris'] Charles de Gaulle [airport] ... We believe that is highly unlikely."
France remains under a state of emergency after terror attacks by ISIS killed 130 people in November.
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. government about the crash.
The Associated Press reported that around 15 family members of passengers on board the missing flight had arrived at Cairo airport Thursday morning. Airport authorities brought doctors to the scene after several distressed family members collapsed.
The incident renewed security concerns months after a Russian passenger plane was blown out of the sky over the Sinai Peninsula. The Russian plane crashed in Sinai on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and a local branch of the extremist Islamic State group (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for planting it.
In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 1990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, killing all 217 people aboard, U.S. investigators filed a final report that concluded its co-pilot switched off the autopilot and pointed the Boeing 767 downward. But Egyptian officials rejected the notion of suicide altogether, insisting some mechanical reason caused the crash.
In March, an EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus. A man who admitted to the hijacking and was described by Cypriot authorities as "psychologically unstable" is in custody.
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