Is the clock ticking for TikTok?
BONUS: No longer "Our (NY) Times"?
Should the China-based short video platform TikTok be banned in the U.S.? That seems to be the question on everyone’s lips. But I’m convinced a ban on the U.S. portion of the business is a very unlikely outcome.
Driving the debate is to what extent, if any, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls what we see in the United States. More on that later. The bipartisan bill passed the House by 352-65 (when’s the last time anything of substance passed in the House by a margin like that?) But the legislation required TikTok to sell its U.S. operations. Only if it refused to sell would the platform effectively be banned in the U.S.
TikTok, a short video platform, is very popular in this country, especially among people under 30. My daughter is 25 and gets most of her news from it. If you’re not terribly up to speed on the subject and would like to learn more without spending a lot of time searching, I would recommend David Leonhardt’s explainer in The Morning, an email newsletter of the New York Times (free link).
The concern most people seem to have is whether the Chinese government can gain access to the data of American users. I’m not terribly concerned about the data. If China really wants access to user data, the CCP can likely purchase it from illegal data brokers regardless of who owns TikTok.
Does the government of China actually have working control of TikTok? Parent company Bytedance says no. Though its headquarters are in Beijing, Bytedance is owned by investors in China and elsewhere. But as Leonhardt points out:
China’s government has a well-documented history of treating companies as extensions of its ruling party, especially under Xi Jinping, the current leader. And Xi has made clear that he views the U.S. as a threat to China’s interests. The most likely scenario, experts say, is that officials aligned with the Chinese government shape TikTok’s algorithm to influence what content Americans see.
Exactly. My concern is to what extent the CCP has control over the algorithm that determines what users see in their feeds. Most TikTok users who view news content are fed a steady diet of confrontational material that could serve the CCP’s goal of dividing Americans even more than they are currently. If the CCP is looking to influence U.S. elections and/or execute some sort of national security threat in the U.S., TikTok would be an ideal vehicle.
In addition, subjects that do not reflect well on China (e.g. Tibet and the Uyghurs) can be difficult to find on TikTok. “Information that is consistent with Beijing’s narratives — such as its pro-Hamas tilt and its criticism of the U.S. economy — circulates more widely than the opposite,” Leonhardt writes.
In short, I don’t think you will see TikTok banned in the U.S. If Bytedance refuses to sell its U.S. operations, it will lose access to 170 million eyeballs and forfeit a valuable asset worth as much as $100 billion. President Biden has said he will sign the legislation. The only question is whether the bill will pass in the Senate, where observers say it will face a much closer vote.
Finally, Leonhardt posits: “As an analogy, imagine if a U.S. company with close ties to Washington were a leading source of news in China today. Or imagine if a Soviet organization owned a U.S. television network in the 1960s — and it was a leading news source for Americans under 30.”
Great point. China and Russia would never allow a U.S. company such far-reaching access to the people in those repressive countries.
A curious phenomenon has been brewing in the legacy media world for some time, but it has accelerated recently as the 2024 presidential campaign enters a critical stage.
For a long time — at least since its publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 — the New York Times has been a favorite target of the right. Allegations against “The Gray Lady” of left-wing bias are still regular occurrences. Not surprisingly, those claims came from conservatives, and they still do, though the far left holds the paper in equal disdain.
[I wrote about the NYT in the “Gray Lady’ afflicted by intellectual rot” on Dec. 22, 2023, not long after the publication of a controversial article by the Times’ former editorial page editor, James Bennet, in The Economist: When The New York Times Lost Its Way.]
But in the last few months, increasing numbers of progressives in the news media and in politics have been scolding The Times, mostly for its coverage of the presidential campaign. Meanwhile, conservatives are having a field day. To wit, New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin wrote last month, referring to Times staffers, “After abandoning standards of fairness to push a crazy woke agenda, they are suddenly discovering that appeasing the far left is impossible.”
CNN’s media critic Oliver Darcy penned a thorough piece on this spectacle a couple of weeks ago, describing the progressive criticism as “a sustained wave of backlash.” I think it’s fair to say that Darcy was not exaggerating.
The criticism largely centers around (what else?) the Times’ coverage of Donald Trump, the paper’s concurrent willingness to publish stories highlighting worries in Democratic circles about President Biden’s age and commissioning polls such as last month’s collaboration with Siena College showing Biden trailing Trump 48-43% among likely voters. Here’s another good example from the Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones.
Moreover, these critics are concerned that The Times is not providing comprehensive coverage of Trump’s most controversial statements (such as that he wants to be dictator for a day) and his relentless misstatements, fabrications and lies. If the truth were out, or so the logic goes, common sense would defeat the Orange Monster.
In frustration, Ryan Cooper, the managing editor of the liberal American Prospect, noted that the Times and other formerly reliable media outlets aren’t doing their jobs, while Republicans have “a giant right-wing propaganda apparatus blasting Republican messaging into tens of millions of homes every day, which Democrats do not have.”
What to do about it? “I have an old-fashioned suggestion: Democrats need a party publication — a partisan journalism operation intended to put the party’s messages directly before the American people.”
To which I responded on Blue Sky:
Journalists are human beings, not robots. What readers should expect is for journalists to be fair. Do Democrats want a left-leaning version of Fox News? Is this a tacit acknowledgment that the NYT and the WaPo are not functioning sufficiently as propaganda arms for the Democratic Party? That, my friends, is good thing.
I do find this to be a fascinating situation. In Trump’s first campaign for president in 2016, we heard from progressive media critics about how wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s every utterance (often broadcast live) helped normalize him and, in effect gave Trump boatloads of free/earned media — nearly $2 billion worth, by one estimate — thereby propelling him into the White House.
Now it appears that those same people are complaining that Trump isn’t generating enough coverage, or as Darcy reports, with “Biden campaign aides even privately encouraging newsrooms to place more of a spotlight on his unhinged behavior, various gaffes, and chilling vows to seek political retribution should he win in 2024.”
At this point, isn’t it fair to ask Democrats: “Which is it?” You want more or less? Or perhaps more is less. Seems to me they want less when they think it helps them and more when they think it will hurt Trump.
The truth is that when Trump arrived on the scene and rode down that escalator in 2015, no political reporters had ever covered a candidate like him. They struggled to come up with a strategy to deal with the bombast, the racism, the venality, the naked mendacity … and still do nine years later.
Unfortunately, journalism is more art than science. It is an immutable law of physics that no journalist, no matter how painstakingly fair, will garner universal praise. Nor should any of us be exempt from criticism. But one thing I can say for sure: It is a thankless job in this day and age. And except for TV and the legacy publications, a low-paying occupation.
P.S. The one journalist who does receive near-unanimous praise for his Olympian detachment is the legendary Walter Cronkite. But that approbation is largely myth: who could forget the end of his broadcast in February 1968 when the vaunted newsman broke the fourth wall and told a stunned nation that the Vietnam War was a lost cause and we should get the hell out of there: