Conservative Blogger
Friday, May 20, 2016
Perino: Facebook recognizes its 'trust problem' with conservatives
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| Perino: Facebook is taking conservatives' concerns seriously |
Perino, former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, was among a group of leading conservatives invited to the meeting at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., following a Gizmodo report that stories about conservative topics were prevented from appearing in Facebook’s trending module. “FOX & Friends Weekend” co-host and Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson also attended the meeting.
“They acknowledged that they have a trust problem with a significant portion of their customer base and that they were trying to figure out a way, at least a first step, to open a dialogue so that they can try to fix it in the long run,” said Perino, speaking on “The Kelly File” following the meeting.
Among others who attended the special meeting, according to Facebook, were 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.
Related: Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg meets with conservatives on reported bias
Perino told Megyn Kelly that there were lots of concerns raised during the meeting that had nothing to do with the particular issue of Trending Topics, noting that the module is a relatively new part of Facebook’s business. “There were lots of concerns raised about their policy on community standards – who gets blocked and for what,” she told Megyn Kelly. “We were kind of pushing on an open door because they recognize that they have a problem and it’s based on trust.”
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.
In his post, Zuckerberg also noted that Fox News drives more interactions on its Facebook page than any other news outlet in the world. "It's not even close," he added.
Related: Facebook says there is 'no evidence' of anti-conservative bias on Trending Topics
In the meeting, Facebook maintained that it does not have any “direct specific evidence” that conservative news was suppressed on Trending Topics, according to Perino.
The Fox News host said that she found the Facebook executives at the meeting to be “pretty genuine and sincere.”
S.E. Cupp, a columnist with the New York Daily News who attended the meeting, said Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President Joel Kaplan and board member Peter Thiel mostly listened to the 17 conservatives who attended.
Speaking on the “The Kelly File,” Carlson said that conservative comments at the meeting “ran the gamut.”
Related: Government requests for Facebook data on the rise, report says
“The problem is that conservatives don’t believe in the type of action that would force a business to comply,” he added.
Not every conservative figure invited to the Facebook meeting attended. American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp declined the invitation. In a statement, Schlapp said that the "deck is stacked" against conservative opinion at Facebook, adding that CPAC content "egregiously underperforms" on Facebook compared to Twitter and other platforms by factors of 10.
The trending section, which appears to the right of the Facebook news feed, was introduced in January 2014. Facebook describes the module as a product “designed to surface interesting and relevant conversations in order to help you discover the best content from all across Facebook.”
Judge orders ethics classes for 'deceptive' DOJ attorneys
"Such conduct is certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word 'Justice,'" U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen wrote in a withering order released Thursday.
Justice Department attorneys misled the court about when the Department of Homeland Security would begin implementing President Obama's executive order granting "deferred action" to illegal immigrants whose children are citizens. In doing so, they tricked the 26 states who filed a lawsuit into "foregoing a request for a temporary restraining order," according to the judge.
The facts of the deception are not in doubt, Hanen emphasized. "[DOJ] has now admitted making statements that clearly did not match the facts," he said in the May 19 opinion, first noted by the National Law Journal. "It has admitted that the lawyers who made these statements had knowledge of the truth when they made these misstatements ... This court would be remiss if it left such unseemly and unprofessional conduct unaddressed."
As punishment, Justice Department attorneys who wish to appear in any state or federal court within the 26 states that brought the lawsuit have to undergo annual ethics training. "At a minimum, this course (or courses) shall total at least three hours of ethics training per year," he wrote.
House GOP defeats LGBT measure, Dems shout 'shame'
As Democrats shouted "shame," seven House Republicans switched their votes and defeated a measure on Thursday meant to protect gay rights.
The vote was 213-212. President Barack Obama has issued an executive order that bars discrimination against LGBT employees by federal contractors, and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., had offered an amendment to a spending bill that would have prohibited using taxpayer dollars to violate the order.
The vote for Maloney's amendment peaked at 217, one short of the majority needed for passage, before it began a slow, sporadic decline. Members of the Republican whip team, whose job is to round up needed votes, were stalking the House chamber's aisles where GOP lawmakers seat, openly pleading for support.
"Need two more votes," Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., one of the GOP whips, said loudly as he prowled among Republicans.
Democrats were outraged, loudly chanting, "shame, shame" in the House chamber. In the end, 29 Republicans joined 183 Democrats backing the measure, but it was not enough.
"This reveals them for who they are. They are bigots. They are haters," said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y.
The No. 2 House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, rejected the suggestion the vote was held open for an inordinate time so Republicans could switch their vote.
College boots ex-Delta Force hero after complaint from LGBT activists
Jerry Boykin is the kind of man you’d want teaching your sons – a good and decent man, an honorable man – a Christian man.
For the past nine years the retired lieutenant general has taught leadership and ethics at Hampden-Sydney College, a highly regarded, all-male school based in Virginia. By many accounts – he is beloved and deeply respected by students.
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But Gen. Boykin will not be returning to the classroom this fall. That’s because he tells me he's been fired.
The man who was one of the original members of Delta Force and once commanded all of the U.S. Army’s Green Berets – the man who served his nation with honor and distinction for more than 36 years – was ousted because of political correctness.
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In March, Gen. Boykin delivered a speech to conservatives and he referenced the national uproar over transgendered people using the ladies room.
He cracked a joke: “The first man who goes into the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery.”
Laughter ensued.
But militant LGBT activists were not laughing.
“I never said homosexuals. I never said transgenders,” he told me. “I was really talking about these perverts who would use this as a way to get into the bathrooms with our wives and daughters.”
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Boykin, who also serves as an executive vice president of the Family Research Council, tells me as many as 150 activists signed a letter written to the college demanding that he be fired.
“They claimed I was calling for violence against transgenders,” he told me. “Obviously it is not true. It was a figure of speech. It was meant to be humorous and it was humorous to the audience.”
You’d think that militant LGBT activists would enjoy a good rib-tickler. Apparently, they do not.
“Political correctness is absolutely out of control,” he said.
Boykin learned just recently that he would not be returning to the college – without warning.
“I was not given a chance to defend myself,” he said. “I was not given an opportunity to explain myself. That’s the sad part of it. The school is better than that.”
Apparently, they are not.
Unlike the cowardly actions of the school’s leadership, I decided to allow the school’s administration a chance to do what they denied to Gen. Boykin – a chance to explain what happened.
“His contract was simply not renewed,” said Thomas Shomo, the college’s director of communications. “We felt it was time academically for a change.”
Shomo said Boykin worked part time – teaching two classes a semester -- serving in a position that had been set up years ago for short-term residencies for professionals in the Wilson Center for Leadership.
So did the college have concerns about Gen. Boykin’s speech?
“Yes. They were of concern,” Shomo told me. “They appeared to advocate or approve of violence.”
But he denied the speech had anything to do with giving the boot to an American hero.
“The concerns about Jerry Boykin’s comments were not the determining factor in this decision,” Shomo said – noting that the timing of their decision was entirely coincidental.
I don’t know about you folks, but I feel like we’re knee-deep in Grade-A fertilizer.
“You know he [Boykin] is an outspoken person who has many controversial views,” Shomo said. “He has expressed those controversial views in various forms over the last nine years and the college has not reacted to those.”
Does the administration of Hampden-Sydney College truly believe that protecting women from would-be predators is a controversial view?
The general has many defenders – including former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.
“At a time where young people are desperately seeking hope and inspiration, you would think General Boykin would be one of their most valued faculty,” Sen. Cruz wrote on Facebook. “But instead, he fell victim to the PC police.”
FRC President Tony Perkins blasted the college’s leadership.
“What a contrast between the easily intimidated leadership of Hampden-Sydney College and men, like Gen. Boykin, who have spent their lives facing real danger so that LGBT agitators could enjoy the freedoms and rights they want to deny others,” Perkins told me.
Fred Larmore, a 1974 graduate of the college and a former board member, told me that students and alumni are furious over the decision to oust Boykin.
“General Boykin got an extremely raw deal,” he told me.
Hampden-Sydney was founded in 1776. They take great pride in their motto: “Come here as boys so you may leave as men.”
“General Boykin is the perfect example of how that happens,” Larmore told me. “He is a role model for the students. There’s no question that he’s the real deal.”
What happened to Gen. Boykin should serve as a wake-up call to every freedom-loving patriot across the fruited plain.
There is a concerted effort afoot to silence any American who cherishes traditional American values.
“They [LGBT activists] are shrewd, they are very well organized and they are unified – which is something the Church is not,” Boykin told me. “The Church is not unified. Therefore, the church fights piecemeal battles rather than doing what the LGBT community did in my case. They came together and launched a major attack and they succeeded.”
So the question at hand – my fellow Americans – is what are we going to do about it?
General Boykin plans on fighting back.
“It makes me even more determined that I’m going to do everything I can to stop men from going into bathrooms with my daughters, my wife and my granddaughters,” he said. “I am going to be a very outspoken antagonist on this issue.”
Spoken like a true American patriot.
As for Hampden-Sydney College – it seems as if their leadership places a higher value on political correctness than duty and honor.
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.
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