LyrArc Article Gist
This WSJ editorial is critical of president Trump's Twitter comments on Joe Scarborough, MSNBC television host. The WSJ podcast with this editorial gives a discussion about the Twitter role of fact checking the president's comments. It says First Amendment does not ban nasty comments to preserve free speech because it does not see the role of a referee as appropriate. Historically there have been periods in U.S. history where political debate has become nasty as it has become today. One of the issues with a fact checker the WSJ points out is that the fact checker has bias and this makes Twitter intervention a point of political debate. Republicans view the Twitter and other social media platforms as biased creating even more not less controversy. The result WSJ says would be to dilute the social media platforms from their present role of arbiters of debate- a role that is new because such platforms never existed except for the last few years. Twitter was founded in 2006 and came into prominence by 2012 making it part of the U.S. and global scene for only 8 years in the nation's long history. Do they perform a useful role, or do they simply act as echo chambers as their very design intended to do just that, and benefit from an appalling decline in cultural and other forms of literacy.