Et Tu, C-SPAN? Steve Scully Suspended For Claiming Tweet Was Hack
Before it was cancelled for a variety of reasons, there was a hubbub about erstwhile moderator for the second presidential debate Steve Scully apparently messaging Anthony Scaramucci. Well, about that…
The C-SPAN network on Thursday suspended Steve Scully, a producer and politics editor who had been set to moderate the second presidential debate before it was scrapped, after he said he had lied about his Twitter account being hacked.
In a statement, Mr. Scully said that he had “falsely claimed” he was not responsible for a tweet he sent Oct. 8 that was addressed to the former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
Mr. Scully said that, before the tweet, President Trump had publicly accused him of partisan leanings, and that he had been “subjected to relentless criticism on social media and in conservative news outlets regarding my role as moderator for the second presidential debate, including attacks aimed directly at my family.”
Mr. Scully said that he was acting “out of frustration” when he posted to Twitter: “@Scaramucci should I respond to trump.” The next day, when he saw “that this tweet had created a new controversy,” he claimed that his Twitter account had been hacked.
“These were both errors in judgment for which I am totally responsible,” Mr. Scully said. “These actions have let down a lot of people, including my colleagues at C-SPAN, where I have worked for the past 30 years, professional colleagues in the media, and the team at the Commission on Presidential Debates.”
Soon after C-SPAN suspended Mr. Scully, Mr. Trump took to Twitter to commend himself for showing “good instincts in being the first to know” and declaring that “the debate was rigged.”
Mr. Scaramucci wrote on Twitter that the suspension was a “brutal outcome for a silly non political tweet,” calling the action “cancel culture going too far.”
C-SPAN said in a statement that Mr. Scully, a former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, admitted to lying about the tweet to the network and the debate commission late Wednesday. The network said that it had placed him on administrative leave and was “very saddened by this news.”
Seems unsurprisingly appropriate.
Also proves that news media types are still human afterall.Report
The headline here is a curious one. CSPAN as an institution has done nothing wrong. If anything, they handled this properly: taking action as soon as they were made aware of the problem. Scully is the problem. And, yes, he is employed by CSPAN. But employers can’t take responsibility for every thing every employee ever says.
While this feels like a nitpicky comment to make, I think it is an important one. Because, if it hasn’t happened already, we’re soon going to hear how this is evidence that CSPAN is out to get Trump. When, in fact, it is just the opposite. It may be evidence that a CSPAN employee had it out for Trump or was otherwise unable to treat/cover him fairly. But this incident shows that CSPAN as a company will take action when one of its employees does something wrong, seemingly regardless of the target of the act.Report
I’ve been trying to come up with an X-files joke for ages but I have nothing.Report
I used to really respect Scully, and that’s not something I’d say about many people associated with the Dodgers.Report
It’s hard to hate the Dodgers. They are, after all, the second best California team.
Right after the Athletics.Report
In other news about Tweets, the FCC says it will regulate social media under Trump’s executive order. Maybe blocking all those Hunter Biden stories wasn’t such a good idea.
CNN – FCC section 230Report
So the party that rails against cancel culture and the like wants the government to regulate how private businesses enforce speech policies? Cool.Report
Yep. They’re interfering in the 2020 election a thousand times more than the Russians were even accused of doing. At this point they’ve likely rendered the entire election invalid, acting like Tass, Pravda, or the Stasi to make sure nobody knows about a massive political corruption scandal, silencing anyone who dares to even bring it up.Report
They’re a website. Start a different website if you don’t like them.Report
Could I get a hundred million or so people to switch websites in the couple weeks before the election, or just write 2020 off as rigged?Report
Private actors having opinions isn’t rigging anything. It’s Democracy. If 100M like Twitter enough to use it and no one likes your website, that is the market in action.Report
There’s a reasonable argument that these companies are effectively monopolies…just like Ma Bell was. Frankly, I support full uncensored opinion on all internets. It’s the virtual soapbox in the town square. But if one company owns the only soap box, which he obtained through buying up a lot of smaller companies, AND the corporation and many of it’s employees have stated / taken action in clearly biased ways, I’m ok with some level of regulation.Report
You’d think that the party that sees Citizens United as a travesty would invite this!Report
Lets pin these comments and revisit them around January 21, 2021.
For posterity, I think having the government regulate social media is probably a terrible idea regardless of who is doing it.Report
Chip I concur and commend you. Just remember we have to hold firm on that. Even when George is talking up the virtues of stormfront sing-alongs on youtube kids.Report
Hey, I tried checking StormFront for hurricane updates. I didn’t get any useful information on projected winds, but now at least I know who’s responsible for sending it!Report
Touché.Report
So, you are in favor of the government regulating what private companies do with regards to speech on their platforms?Report
I was more pulling the “I thought you were a fan of this tangentially related thing that happened a decade ago!” argumentation tactic.
Do you see how “I thought you’d like this sort of thing!” does more to communicate misunderstanding the other’s position than to communicate understanding it?
In any case, I do see a distinction between publisher and platform and think that if we have a system where protections are extended to the latter and not the former, when the entity that had been acting as the latter starts acting like the former, I am not surprised for a second that those protections are revoked.
Even if I think that the government should be hands off.
(That said, this is not a First Amendment Government thing, as I see it. It’s a Freedom Of Speech as Cultural Value thing and when the corporation doesn’t have it, appealing to the government that they should have it is disingenuous at best, even if there is a First Amendment. The important thing is the value, not the Constitution. And everybody is going to learn that good and hard.)Report
There’s an interesting line of case law applying the 1st amendment to private actors where they perform a state function (goes back to when there were company towns). I believe the tree has been barked up a few times in more modern situations where there is private ownership of something of a public square. So far it hasn’t gone anywhere but I wonder if a time won’t come where that changes.
Another angle will be when the government starts requiring these companies to take certain actions on its behalf. The Chinese are giving them plenty of examples of what can be done that I’m sure has law enforcement and other assorted government riff raff drooling.Report
I support the CU decision.
More importantly, you’re comparing potentially hypocritical stances separated by a decade to [checks notes] issues that could appear in the same daily paper.
So, again, are you cool with the Feds regulating Twitter based on speech content?Report
I guess if I had an opinion, it would be that I see a distinction between publisher and platform and think that if we have a system where protections are extended to the latter and not the former, when the entity that had been acting as the latter starts acting like the former, I am not surprised for a second that those protections are revoked.
Even if I think that the government should be hands off.
My own personal focus would be that this is not a First Amendment Government thing but a Freedom Of Speech as Cultural Value thing and when the corporation doesn’t have it, appealing to the government that they should have it is disingenuous at best, even if there is a First Amendment. The important thing is the value, not the Constitution. And everybody is going to learn that good and hard.Report
So you’re okay with the government regulating platforms based on what they choose to allow based on the content of the speech?Report
The only people who are opposed to government regulation of speech in its entirety are White Supremacists.
The questions remaining for those who agree that they’re not White Supremacists are “what kind?” and “how much?”
For the record, I am not opposed to protections being granted to platforms that are not extended to publishers. “Hey, we’re just here. If someone else posts something in our public square, that’s on them. It’s not on us. We have 4 million posts being posted a minute. We can’t keep up. We’re not going to pretend to try.” is an attitude that makes sense to me.
“We’re going to moderate very heavily but only intermittently!” is one that I have a lot less sympathy for and it leads to the question “How come you moderated *THIS* but you didn’t moderate *THAT*?” as night follows day.Report
So you don’t want to answer the question. Moving on…Report
It’s not a question of government regulation because the government “regulation” is whether to treat them as a publisher, a utility (common carrier), or a private club, or what.
The question is what legal protections the companies will have when you sue them in court for cutting your access. Note that the phone companies cannot deny you phone service because they don’t like what you say to your friends.Report
I did answer the question?
I acknowledged the distinction between being a platform and being a publisher?
And I said that I was not surprised that when a platform started acting like a publisher that the protections extended to platforms ceased to be extended to them?
And if it came to how I felt personally, I said a couple of times that I didn’t cease to be surprised by this even if I think that the government should be hands off?
And the distinction between Publisher and Platform is so much more interesting than how I feel personally about any given thing, let alone whether I mouth “Yay! Enlightenment Values!” platitudes in response to a backlash to post-post-Enlightenment Values?Report
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml
Your understanding of the law is deeply flawed.Report
Indeed!
Report
Was that the case where Citizens United was sanctioned for not making a film about McCain’s kid with the black hooker?Report
I have no idea why any remotely public person is on that medium. Whatever negligible capacity for good it may theoretically have is negated a thousand times over by the ability to instantaneously make an ass of oneself to the entire world.Report
I think their pitch should be “Say anything you want! …Then get fired for saying it, five years later. ” ^_^Report
Not that I know anything about Steve Scully, but this looks like:
Trump and his claque bullied the guy mercilessly.
He panicked and did something dumb.
He denied the dumb thing, which was even dumber.
As a result, he got suspended.
Trump declared victory.
Nobody looks good, do they?Report
Does Trump ever look good? The Mooch on the other hand is still a smooth operator.Report
To me, Mooch is still Steve Mariucci, who got fired by the 49ers because he couldn’t get along with Terrell Owens. (Mister Rogers couldn’t get along with Terrell Owens.)Report