October surprise! Social media restricts Biden story
Welcome to today’s US election briefing for Australia.
Invoking memories of 2016, an email-based “scandal” hit the presidential campaign on Wednesday, but the real October surprise was how differently this one played out.
Facebook and Twitter took steps to limit the spread of a story in The New York Post linking Joe Biden to his son Hunter’s Ukraine business back when the candidate was vice president. The story was based on emails – that have not been independently verified – supposedly found on a laptop left at a computer repair store that made their way to both the FBI and, conveniently, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has long pushed dirt (unsuccessfully) on Biden and Ukraine.
Trump jumped on the story and made unsubstantiated claims of corruption against his opponent. Biden’s swiftly team rejected the central claim of the story. There’s very good background in this Washington Post explainer of the whole saga, including why there are concerns the emails may be part of a broader disinformation campaign with links to – yep – Russia.
Amid those concerns, the social media giants took steps to limit the reach of the story, at least until factcheckers reviewed its claims, Facebook said. That extraordinary step prompted claims of political bias and censorship on the right.
Whatever you think of the response from social media companies, it shows how sensitive they have become to charges of recklessly helping spread political misinformation since the last campaign. An October surprise indeed. The big stories
Amy Coney Barrett again played
down the conservative positions she expressed in legal writings as an academic and in personal commitments, during day three of her confirmation hearings, saying she would approach every case with “an open mind”. One Republican senator though praised her for being “unashamedly pro-life”.
Trump has scheduled a televised town hall event to be broadcast Thursday night, US time, at the same time as a separate Biden town hall, creating a ratings duel and a split-screen spectacle.
Barron Trump, the president’s 14year-old son, recently tested positive for Covid, Melania Trump has revealed. The teenager has since tested negative.
Meanwhile, with the US entering a “perilous” cold and flu season amid high levels of Covid-19 transmission, experts warn the death toll could reach 400,000 people before the year is out.
A record 14 million Americans have already voted in the general election despite long queues in many states, according to new analysis.
National opinion polls show Trump is chasing a substantial deficit among older voters, despite trouncing Hilary Clinton with this group in 2016. Biden is pressing this weakness as he campaigns in Florida.
Armed militia groups are forging alliances with conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers who claim the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax, intensifying concerns that trouble could be brewing ahead of election day.
Quote of the day
How Barrett described climate change during her confirmation hearing. She had previously said she believed smoking caused cancer and Covid was infectious, but declined to answer whether she thought climate change was happening.
Election views
The erosion of democracy in the US should act as a “poignant reminder to consider the health of our own system” here in Australia,writes Philip Citowicki, “where mistrust in politicians and the political system features glaringly in public sentiment”.
“Barrett’s rulings on the seventh circuit court of appeals show her to be someone who cares little about justice, and who doesn’t particularly value the interests of workers, immigrants and the poor,” argues Nathan Robinson, in this piece detailing the nominee’s past decisions.
Video of the day
Thousands of members of Georgia’s black community have come out to vote early, enduring long lines and hours of waiting, a phenomenon that is both heartening (democracy!) and maddening (that it should be so hard). In this short video, voters explain why it’s so important to them.
Around the web
In February, when Covid case numbers were very low, Trump reassured the public it was “under control”, but his team painted a different picture in private to some conservative supporters, fuelling a market sell-off, the NYT reports.
A federal prosecutor tasked with reviewing whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing, according to the Washington Post, in news likely to rankle Trump.
#BoycottNBC was trending in the US after the network decided to host a Trump town hall on the same night as a Biden one on a rival network, and the same night Trump had refused to participate in a virtual debate. This Poynter story explains the controversy.
What the numbers say: 5.2 million
The number of Americans who cannot vote in this election because of felony convictions, according to a new report. The report found African Americans were disenfranchised at four times the rate of others.
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