Judd Legum / Popular Information
Although not specifically a tech reporter, progressive writer Judd Legum often tweets and writes about Big Tech and issues like fact-checking as part of his Popular Information newsletter about “politics and power.” With more than 450,000 Twitter followers and many years running ThinkProgress (he was founder and editor-in-chief), Legum has both audience and influence.
Legum has often attacked former President Donald Trump, conservatives, right-wing or libertarian donors and bashes tech companies for decisions that displease him — such as allowing conservative entities fact-checking partnerships.
He criticized tech companies, especially Facebook for what he considered appeasement of conservatives. In 2018, he described Facebook’s fact-checking initiative as a “farce” designed to “to appease the right wing.” The proof, in his view, was that it made The Weekly Standard (a so-called conservative magazine) a fact-checking partner.
Legum wasn’t any happier when Check Your Fact (affiliated with The Daily Caller) became a fact-checker. In March 2020, Legum tweeted its role “gives The Daily Caller the ability to label anything posted on Facebook as ‘false information’ and dramatically reduce its distribution.” He added, “It’s now using that power to boost Trump.”
He accused Check Your Fact of helping Trump by flagging Politico’s story: “Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax’” and another coronavirus “hoax” story from NBC “false information.” Mathew Ingram of Columbia Journalism Review disagreed and called Check Your Fact’s interpretation of the remarks “accurate.”
Legum left ThinkProgress to start his subscription newsletter, Popular Information, because he wanted to write and communicate directly with his audience. His mistrust of social media algorithms was one reason. “Don’t trust an algorithm with our Democracy,” says his sign-up website.
Despite his own skepticism about Big Tech’s priorities and ability to use algorithms against content creators, Legum has dismissed conservative claims of algorithmic bias, shadowbanning and other censorship as “fictional narratives of bias.” He told Vox’s Recode Media podcast such claims of bias are meant to crowd out allegations of other topics like voter suppression.
- After he attacked two law firms representing the Trump campaign in election disputes as an “attack” on democracy, Legum bragged on Twitter that one of them dumped Trump.
- He has contacted Facebook multiple times over Trump campaign ads to point out they violate site policies. He accused the company of a “pattern of abuse” for failing to remove ads, and even when ads were removed he complained the company failed to catch it before he did.
- Legum founded ThinkProgress and was editor-in-chief from 2005 to 2018, when he left to start Popular Information. ThinkProgress was shut down and folded into the Center for American Progress (CAP) in 2019 after it failed to find a new publisher.
- While still running ThinkProgress, Legum often targeted University of Colorado Boulder professor Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. for his inconvenient debunking of alarmist climate statistics. Legum even bragged that ClimateProgress was responsible for getting Pielke fired from writing for Nate Silver’s 538 blog.
- Legum was research director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
- He joined the CAP at its founding in 2003 and left in 2005 to run its “sister” project ThinkProgress in 2005. As a left-wing think tank, the CAP has received many years of financial support from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and other liberal foundations. Legum also worked as a research director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
Contact Judd Legum: judd@popular.info, Twitter
Vox Recode
Left-wing pioneer of explanatory journalism Vox acquired tech outlet Re/code in 2015 for $15 million. Re/code had been founded just 18 months earlier by influential liberal tech journalists Kara Swisher and Walter Mossberg.
"I think we did a great job with the journalism and the brand, but you have to realize your capabilities, and what it is you actually want to do," Swisher said of the sale. For her part, she wanted to get back to doing journalism. Swisher is an outspoken, openly gay progressive expert on Silicon Valley. She hosted the Recode Decode podcast for Vox from 2015-2020.
A full integration with the progressive media group followed and, in May 2019, Vox Media announced the launch of Recode by Vox. Joining the already left-wing staff, Samantha Oltman, formerly of Buzzfeed News, became Recode’s editor in 2019. Oltman previously reported on tech for Wired and was a fellow at far-left magazine Mother Jones.
While the platform does examine the tech industry with skepticism, that criticism comes from the left, such as encouraging companies to limit speech, turning to pro-regulation experts and complaining that Facebook’s ban on new political ads the week before the 2020 election was “not nearly enough.”
Its progressive writers are also openly anti-Trump. In the same article complaining Facebook’s election ad ban was inadequate, Vox Recode warned: “And now that bad actors — everyone from spammers to Russian hackers to Trump and his enablers — have figured out how to use that system, they are doing so.”
Recode also has a partnership with Pierre Omidayr’s Omidyar Network for its Open Sourced section. The left-wing eBay founder spent $250 million to build his own massive media powerhouse: First Look Media. He also gave more than $200 million to liberal groups including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and funded the anti-Trump media outlet: The Bulwark.
- Recode revealed its willingness to control online speech when it praised Facebook’s efforts to combat COVID misinformation in 2020. A caption in its story declared, “Facebook is finally taking an assertive step toward combating misinformation, one that’s been on the wishlist of policy experts for years.” The story emphasized “experts” who want Facebook to moderate content more heavily. Of course, the outlet failed to admit those opinions almost invariably come from the left.
- In the Omidyar-funded Open Sourced section, Recode promoted regulation of artificial intelligence after complaining algorithms can be racist and sexist. The article ignored the possibility of built-in political biases.
- Open Sourced dismissed GOP claims of social media bias against conservatives, claiming: “there’s no strong, empirical evidence that Facebook is systematically biased against conservatives.”
- Recode senior correspondent Peter Kafka said Twitter is “Trump’s favorite place to lie directly to the public.” And when Twitter fact-checked former President Donald Trump, Recode called his social media executive order a “tantrum” and a “a way to distract from more serious issues and is well aware this is a way to gin up his base and generate anger to help propel his campaign forward.”
- Recode admitted it flagged militia groups on Facebook to have them removed.
- “Give everybody the internet,” Recode argued in September 2020. The article complained about private sector control of internet infrastructure and quoted a Georgetown fellow who said leaving broadband services up to market demands was “a colossal failure.”
- The site blasted Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley’s legislation to alter Section 230 with an article headlined: “The Trump administration’s flawed plan to destroy the internet as we know it.”