Twitter Reveals Which Outlets Are Allowed To Call Election Results
Michael Cantrell
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Twitter continues its mission to battle against misinformation — insert an eye roll here — on Election by announcing the various outlets it says can call election results.
There are seven networks the social media company will rely on to make proclamations on the night of the election. Those seven include ABC News, Associated Press, CNN, CBS News, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, and NBC News.
In all honesty, I’m pretty darn surprised to see Fox News made the cut. They obviously are doing that to “throw a bone to conservatives.”
Might nice of them, right?
On Monday, the social media giant announced seven news outlets it’ll lean on to make proclamations of election outcomes. The list includes ABC News, Associated Press, CNN, CBS News, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, and NBC News. Twitter will wait for two of those seven outlets to call a race before it allows posts definitively declaring a winner. Twitter said it will label tweets prematurely declaring a winner.
If users attempt to share a tweet that prematurely calls a race, they will receive a notification that reads, “Official sources may not have called the race when this was Tweeted,” with a link to “find out more.” They also may see a warning that says, “Official sources called this election differently.” Additionally, the tweets can be labeled if “1. The account has a US 2020 candidate label (including presidential candidates & campaigns) 2. The account is US-based with more than 100k followers, or 3. They have significant engagement (25k likes or 25k Quote Tweets + Retweets).”
The platform will be focused on the presidential race between President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden and hotly contested congressional races. There has been a lot of attention on social media platforms leading up to the election on how they plan on handling misinformation, even if it’s from a politician running for office.
Over the weekend, President Trump denied Axios reports that he was going to declare victory on election night, even if all the votes haven’t been counted yet. He did say he thought it was terrible that ballots can be collected after the election is over.
“I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election. … We’re going to go in the night of, as soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers,” Trump said.
This just proves that social media outlets aren’t just private companies, but publishers of news who play a critical role in the dissemination of information for all people. Therefore, they should not be allowed to censor conservatives. It’s that simple.
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