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In Senate, Social Media Execs Testify About Election Security

In Senate, Social Media Execs Testify About Election Security

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

This morning, the Senate intelligence committee questioned Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The hearing was the culmination of a two-year investigation into Russian election interference by the committee and Congress’ best opportunity to publicly hold Facebook and Twitter accountable for their role in allowing Russian operatives to game their platforms to target Americans with propaganda. As Angelo Carusone said earlier: “The tech industry’s failure to grapple with its roles in allowing — and sometimes even enabling — the fake news crisis and foreign interference in American elections is a national security crisis.” Today Americans had the opportunity to hear from Sandberg and Dorsey directly what Facebook and Twitter have done to protect them since 2016.

The first time tech executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google testified before the Senate intelligence committee last year, committee members took a hostile posture. Committee chair Richard Burr (R-NC) and vice chair Mark Warner (D-VA) both scolded Facebook, Twitter, and Google for not taking election interference or the fact that their platforms were weaponized by foreign propagandists, seriously. At one point, Warner, frustrated by how little the tech companies claimed to know about what was happening on their own platforms said, “Candidly, your companies know more about Americans, in many ways, than the United States government does. The idea that you had no idea any of this was happening strains my credibility.”

Ten months later, as I watched Dorsey and Sandberg testify before the committee, it felt like relations had thawed — perhaps not with Google, who refused to send its CEO and instead was represented by an empty chair, but certainly with Facebook and Twitter. Members of the committee continued to ask tough questions and press Dorsey and Sandberg when they weren’t forthcoming, but the atmosphere had changed. I get the sense that after nearly a year of conversations and hearings, the working relationship is perhaps in a better place.

Of course the tech companies have taken a beating in the press since that first hearing. We’ve since learned that Russian trolls got tens of thousands of Americans to RSVP for actual local events via Facebook. Americans have now seen the thousands of ads and organic content that Russian propagandists deployed on Facebook. Conspiracy theories about the Parkland shooting survivors, most of whom were still minors, spread like wildfire on social media. News broke that Cambridge Analytica had breached data of at least 50 million Facebook users. Russia is still interfering in our political conversation, and, Iran is now gaming the platforms as well.

This morning’s hearing was probably the last time we’ll hear from the tech companies or the committee before the midterm election. Here’s what we’ve learned (and what we still don’t know):

Promises made, promises kept?

Facebook and Twitter made a lot of promises to the committee in the 2017 hearing. Facebook and Twitter both promised to change their ad policies, enhance user safety, build better teams and tools to curb malicious activity, better collaborate with law enforcement and one another, and communicate more transparently with the public.

How’d they do?

  • Updated ads policy.Both Facebook and Twitter have announced new political and issue ad policies. Both companies have also announced their support for the Honest Ads Act. During the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked Facebook specifically about voter suppression ads which both Russia and the Trump campaign used in 2016. Sandberg said that in the future, this kind of targeting would not be allowed, though she didn’t specify if she was talking about just foreign actors or American political campaigns as well.
  • User safety. Perhaps the most telling moment of the hearing was Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) asked Sandberg about the real harm done when real people (not just fake accounts) intentionally spread conspiracy theories. Sandberg’s solution, rather than removing the incendiary content, was to have third-party fact-checkers look at potentially incorrect content because, according to her, Facebook isn’t the arbiter of truth, mark the content as false, warn users before they share the content and  present users with “alternative facts.”
  • Build better teams and tools to curb malicious activity. In her opening statement, Sandberg said: “We’re investing heavily in people and technology to keep our community safe and keep our service secure. This includes using artificial intelligence to help find bad content and locate bad actors. We’re shutting down fake accounts and reducing the spread of false news. We’ve put in place new ad transparency policies, ad content restrictions, and documentation requirements for political ad buyers. We’re getting better at anticipating risks and taking a broader view of our responsibilities. And we’re working closely with law enforcement and our industry peers to share information and make progress together.” Dorsey also highlighted Twitter’s progress in his opening statement, saying: “We‘ve made significant progress recently on tactical solutions like identification of many forms of manipulation intending to artificially amplify information, more transparency around who buys ads and how they are targeted, and challenging suspicious logins and account creation.”
  • Better collaboration with law enforcement and with one another. Committee members asked Dorsey and Sandberg about this multiple times during the hearing. Both agreed that when it came to American security, Twitter and Facebook weren’t in competition and collaborated frequently. They also expressed a good relationship with law enforcement agencies, though Dorsey complained more than once about having too many points of contact.
  • Communicate more transparently to the public. Committee members pressed both Dorsey and Sandberg to be more transparent. Warner asked Dorsey if Twitter users have a right to know if the account they’re interacting with is a bot. Dorsey agreed to this, adding the caveat that “as far as we can detect them.”  Warner suggested to Sandberg that most of Facebook’s users don’t know what data Facebook has on them or how that data is used. Further, Warner pressed Sandberg, asking if users had a right to know how much their data was worth to Facebook. Wyden pointed out that data privacy is a national security issue as Russians used our own data to target us, saying, “Personal data is now the weapon of choice for political influence campaigns.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) asked Dorsey if Twitter had done enough to disclose to users that they were exposed to IRA propaganda, which Dorsey admitted the platform had not yet done enough.

Questions still outstanding

For every question Sandberg and Dorsey answered during the hearing, there were plenty that they couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. Most of the time, they promised to follow-up with the committee but here’s what we still don’t know and won’t likely get an answer to before the 2018 elections:

  • What are the tech companies doing to prepare for “deepfake” video and audio? Sen. Angus King (I-ME) asked if the companies were prepared to combat “deepfake” videos and audios, content that is digitally manipulated to look and sound extremely real. Neither Sandberg nor Dorsey had a good answer, which is worrisome given that “deepfake” audio and video are just around the corner.
  • Are the tech companies keeping an archive of suspended and removed accounts and will make this archive available to researchers and/or the general public? Both Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and James Lankford (R-OK) asked about this. which is an important question, especially for academic researchers. Neither Sandberg nor Dorsey had a clear answer.
  • Anything to be done with the selling of opioids online? This question came from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) who also asked Sandberg and Dorsey if their companies bore and moral responsibility for deaths caused by opioid sales on social media.
  • How much did tech companies profit from Russian propaganda?Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has asked Facebook this question repeatedly both during intelligence and judiciary committee hearings. The most follow-up she’s received from Facebook is that the number is “immaterial.”

What happens next?

Burr and Warner generally close these hearings by previewing what happens next. This time there was no such preview. Given that the election is almost two months away, that’s a bit unsettling. But the reality is that with the current makeup in Congress (and the executive branch), the government isn’t going to do anything else to protect Americans. No legislation will be passed, and if social media companies are called to testify before the House again anytime soon, it will likely be another circus hearing devoted to the right’s pet issue of social media censorship. On the Senate’s part, however, holding tech companies accountable and producing reports is about as much as the intelligence committee can do right now.

Facebook, Twitter, and the absentee Google left today’s hearing with questions unresolved and problems nowhere near fixed. Beyond the Senate Intelligence Committee asking pertinent questions, Congress has shown no interest in holding social media companies to account for those issues that remain outstanding.

 

Right-Wing Media Politicize Iowa Murder To Protect Trump

Right-Wing Media Politicize Iowa Murder To Protect Trump

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

 

As Trump associates keep getting indicted, found guilty, and agree to plea deals while surrendering themselves to the FBI, pro-Trump media have seized on the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, and they are exploiting it for their own purposes. The body of Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, was discovered on August 21 and her alleged killer has been charged with first-degree murder. While a lot of news coverage and social media conversation has centered around Cohen, Manafort and why their dual felony convictions are disastrous news for President Donald Trump, some members of right-wing media and their supporters on social media have instead chosen to politicize Tibbetts’ death — ignoring her family’s own grief and objections — in an effort to distract from these bombshell stories.

Below are just a few examples of what the Tibbetts’ family members are having to deal with, just a day after Tibbetts’ body was found:

  • Former Speaker of the House and conservative pundit Newt Gingrich emailed reporters about how Tibbetts’ death was potentially good news for Republicans in the fall, provided they could exploit it enough.
  • Turning Point USA communications director and right-wing social media star Candace Owens got into an argument on Twitter with someone who says she is Tibbetts’ second cousin, accusing her of hating Trump and his supporters more than Tibbetts’ alleged murderer.

    • Fox News contributor Sebastian Gorka, Fox News contributor Tom Homan (the former acting director of ICE), Fox News guest Jonna Spilbor, CRTV host Eric Bolling, and Breitbart editor-at-large Joel Pollak cited the murder as a reason to build a wall on America’s border with Mexican border. Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren, and Fox News guest Mike Huckabee cited the murder as a reason to end the policy of “sanctuary cities.”
    • Mike Cernovich used the occasion to promote his involvement with Republican Senate candidate Kelli Ward’s campaign. Ward has already run a Facebook ad on the matter.

  • In a particularly dark note, users on 4chan and 8chan have been actively celebrating Tibbetts’ death. Anonymous postings on these message boards have been highlighting an old tweet of hers and claiming she got what she deserved because of a combination of her political views and her gender. Mentions of Tibbetts on these boards spiked just as the Manafort and Cohen stories were dominating news coverage. Other far-right communities have pushed the meme as well. And the neo-nazi site Daily Stormer published a misogynist screed in the same vein.

Tibbetts’ aunt took to Facebook the evening of August 21 and begged others not to politicize her niece’s murder, writing, “Please remember, Evil comes in EVERY color. Our family has been blessed to be surrounded by love, friendship and support throughout this entire ordeal by friends from all different nations and races. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.”

Grieving families shouldn’t have to make statements like this. They shouldn’t have to beg politicians and media figures not to exploit the tragic death of a loved one. They shouldn’t have to watch in real time as their loved one is defamed and dehumanized until her memory is merely a caricature to be memed on the internet in perpetuity. But that’s exactly what happens. Right-wing media exploit tragedies and rewrite biographies of victims in the blink of an eye. They have no consideration for the victims they claim to care about or the grieving families and friends they’ve left behind.

Additional Research by Nick Fernandez, Natalie Martinez, and Katie Sullivan.

Trump Campaign Manager Promotes Neo-Nazis’ Favorite Media Platform

Trump Campaign Manager Promotes Neo-Nazis’ Favorite Media Platform

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

 

Gab, a social media app dubbed “a haven for white nationalists” just wants President Donald Trump to notice it. Recently Gab tweeted at Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign manager, about the myth that Facebook is censoring conservative speech.

Parscale, who was also the digital director of Trump’s 2016 campaign, has taken a combative stance against mainstream social media companies. He trolls about conservatives being mistreated on social media and has publicly called on Facebook and Twitter not to censor conservative content leading up to the 2020 election, even though social media companies aren’t actually doing this. Parscale’s continued calls for tech companies to address a problem that doesn’t exist are disingenuous given that he (working alongside Cambridge Analytica) exploited Facebook’s ad platform all the way to a Trump victory in 2016 — even former Clinton campaign staffers have acknowledged that Parscale’s ad buys were much more efficient than their own — and that Trump himself is the world’s most notorious Twitter user. Parscale’s efforts have worked. Just a few weeks ago, Facebook executives met with Parscale and other Republican leaders to hear their “concerns.” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also recently met with conservatives.

On Twitter, Parscale gifted Gab with a reply. “I’m not against @getongab,” he wrote, but he said he needs the company to do something for him. Remove white nationalists and neo-Nazis from its platform? Nope. He said he is “all for a @Twitter replacement,” but he’d like Gab to “get me an iPhone app.” Trump’s campaign manager is 100 percent on board with using the social media app that white nationalists favor — just as long as he can do it from his iPhone!

Parscale’s interactions with Facebook, Twitter, and Gab are all political theater. Playing footsie with Gab will get the base excited, and as we’ve learned, Trump faces minimal fallout whenever he caters to his white nationalist constituency. The Trump campaign isn’t going to leave mainstream social media platforms anytime soon either. It needs Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to win. The campaign spent millions on digital ads in 2016 and that isn’t going to change. No matter how much Parscale whines about social media companies, the Trump campaign can’t afford to abandon them. It’s no surprise Parscale made this complaint on Twitter.

The tech platforms know this. They also know that the claim of conservative censorship has no basis in reality. But the Trump campaign is still a priority customer. It remains to be seen how much tech companies will cater to the campaign’s demands, and how much that might hurt them with the majority of their other users.

As I was writing this up, Parscale tweeted another whine about Facebook. He blamed management’s inability to control Facebook’s supposedly liberal staff but offered no evidence whatsoever to support the claim.

Header image by Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Cambridge Analytica Executive Delivers Stunning Testimony In Senate Hearing

Cambridge Analytica Executive Delivers Stunning Testimony In Senate Hearing

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

 

Christopher Wylie testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 16, warning of “resegregation of society that’s catalyzed by algorithms” and speaking at length about how Cambridge Analytica exploited Americans on Facebook.

Wylie, the whistleblower who helped expose Cambridge Analytica’s exploitation of 87 million Facebook users’ data, had met privately with House Democrats last month but the Republican majority refused to allow an open hearing. He has testified before Parliament in the U.K., but yesterday’s hearing was Wylie’s first public appearance in the U.S. He spoke about Cambridge Analytica’s U.S. election work, the systemic failures of tech companies that led to the data breach, and what the future holds if said failures remain unaddressed. Wylie emphasized that Americans are simply unable to opt out of using the internet and that regulation is the only protection available. Senators on the committee asked Wylie about some of Cambridge Analytica’s practices that will likely be adopted by other entities, such as voter suppression ads and predictive algorithms.

If you need a refresher on the Cambridge Analytica story, Wylie’s opening statement is worth a watch:

Before Wylie’s exposé, Cambridge Analytica was understood as a data company that billed itself as a political consulting firm. The company, founded by right-wing megadonor Robert Mercer, had political clients in the U.S. and around the world; it did work for President Donald Trump’s campaign, Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, current national security adviser John Bolton’s super PAC, and more. Following Wylie’s exposé, more information was revealed about the firm: Its leadership was caught on camera selling services including bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers. It gave a sales presentation about disrupting elections to a Russian oligarch in 2014. And the firm reached out to WikiLeaks in 2016 offering to help distribute then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s emails. Following these revelations, Cambridge Analytica shut down (though there are serious questions about that). In short, the data breach didn’t just expose Facebook user data to a political consulting firm; it exposed it to a company whose motivations aren’t clear and whose full operations aren’t yet known. The same goes for Cambridge’s parent company, SCL Group.

During the hearing, senators asked Wylie about Cambridge Analytica’s work in the U.S. as well as data privacy and social media issues. Many Democratic members tried to get information about Cambridge Analytica and any potential work it did with the Russian government. Republican members attempted to portray Cambridge Analytica as a data firm doing what similar firms in the space do and suggested the concern was perhaps overblown, mirroring right-wing media’s response to the data breach.

For his part, Wylie called out Cambridge Analytica for contributing to the “resegregation of society that’s catalyzed by algorithms.” He was specifically referring to voter suppression ads, digital ads that attempt to discourage people from voting. The Trump campaign bragged about targeting voter suppression ads to Black voters on Facebook just days before the 2016 election. Wylie confirmed that Cambridge Analytica offered voter suppression ads and that the company’s decision to explore voter suppression ads was part of what led him to leave.

Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Chris Coons (D-DE), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) all discussed voter suppression ads with Wylie:

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked Wylie about Immigration and Customs Enforcement now using predictive algorithms such as those Cambridge Analytica used to detect potential criminals. Wylie responded that there’s no algorithm that could predict if someone is a bad person, but that an algorithm could confirm biases built in by programmers.

 

 

Also of note: Two committee members asking questions at the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), were former clients of Cambridge Analytica. Tillis disclosed this former association. Cruz did not.

Wylie is an important messenger on both Cambridge Analytica and the societal problems that let such a company operate. The firm is no more, but its tactics could become commonplace in future elections.

While we can hope America listened to Wylie, it’s highly unlikely that Congress will pass any meaningful legislation or regulation to address the concerns he raised before the midterms. Our best course of action is to continue pressuring the tech giants. After all, it’s Facebook and similar companies that enabled Cambridge Analytica in the first place.

Additional research by Alex Kaplan

Will Zuckerberg’s Apology Tour Spark Real Change?

Will Zuckerberg’s Apology Tour Spark Real Change?

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is sorry. Specifically, as he told CNN, he’s “really sorry that this happened.”

“I think we let the community down, and I feel really bad and I’m sorry about that,” he told Recode’s Kara Swisher. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, appearing on CNBC, also offered an apology: “I am so sorry that we let so many people down.”

Zuckerberg and Facebook have a lot to apologize for. In addition to the numerous other problems plaguing Facebook under Zuckerberg’s watch, he allowed Cambridge Analytica to obtain and exploit the Facebook data of 50 million users in multiple countries. When the platform discovered the stolen data, it took the firm’s word that the data had been deleted (it hadn’t). Facebook made no attempts to independently verify that the data was no longer being used, nor did it notify users whose data was exploited. Even after the news broke, it took Zuckerberg and Sandberg six days to face the public and give interviews.

In addition to offering their apologies, both Sandberg and Zuckerberg acknowledged that trust between Facebook and users had been breached. Sandberg said on CNBC, “This is about trust, and earning the trust of the people who use our service is the most important thing we do. And we are very committed to earning it.”

What surprised me most, however, was their acknowledgment that regulation was coming and that perhaps Facebook needs to be checked. Zuckerberg in his CNN interview suggested that regulation of tech companies like Facebook might be necessary. Sandberg went even further: “It’s not a question of if regulation, it’s a question of what type. … We’re open to regulation. We work with lawmakers all over the world.” At first this read to me like another attempt at passing the buck of responsibility onto another entity, and while that might still be partially true, there’s more to it. Facebook is responding to public outrage, including the growing calls for regulation. Facebook executives have concluded they’re not getting out of this mess without regulation, and their best path forward is to try to get the best deal they can get, given the circumstances.

Were Zuckerberg and Sandberg forthcoming enough? No. I don’t think anyone was convinced that Facebook is telling us everything it knows, nor did the company present much of a plan for protecting consumers moving forward. But consumers have the momentum. Facebook will change only as much as its users demand. The fact that Facebook’s leadership is on a full-blown apology tour means that public pressure is starting to work. After months of bad press and user backlash, Facebook is finally acknowledging that some things need to change.

Facebook failed to protect users from a consulting firm so shady that it bragged to a potential client about entrapping candidates for office, potentially breaking U.S. election laws to help Donald Trump win in 2016, and avoiding congressional investigations. Consumers are outraged, many to the point of quitting Facebook entirely. Cambridge Analytica probably isn’t the only problematic company that Facebook allowed to exploit user data, but from an organizing perspective, we couldn’t ask for a better villain. After months of outrage, Facebook is on the defensive. This is the best opportunity we’ll have to force it and other tech platforms to make systemic change.

Here’s a good place to start: Media Matters is calling on Facebook to ban any entity, be it the Trump campaign or any other, that is using a copy of Cambridge Analytica’s data or any other data set acquired by cheating.

Click here and join our call to action.

Header image by Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

50 Million Reasons Why Facebook Must Change

50 Million Reasons Why Facebook Must Change

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

››› MELISSA RYAN

Tech companies have repeatedly failed to protect the consumers who use their platforms, and despite the outrage that arises when news of another failure breaks, remarkably little has been done to fix the problem. Consumers have been left to deal with fake news, predatory political ads, and data breaches largely on their own without assistance from companies, government, or other institutions. We’re dealing with systemic failures of the social media ecosystem, but the solutions offered largely call on individuals to sort out their online experience for themselves.

This past weekend, a series of stories broke that illustrate just how colossal those failures are. On Friday, Facebook abruptly announced that it had banned Cambridge Analytica, the firm that did data targeting for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, from using the platform for “violating its policies around data collection and retention,” as The Verge described it. On Saturday, The New York Times and The Observer broke the story Facebook was clearly trying to get ahead of: Cambridge Analytica had illegally obtained and exploited the Facebook data of 50 million users in multiple countries.

Via The New York Times:

The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work.

So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.

Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer worked with whistleblower Christopher Wylie for over a year to expose Cambridge Analytica’s practices and Facebook’s complicity in allowing them:

Wylie oversaw what may have been the first critical breach. Aged 24, while studying for a PhD in fashion trend forecasting, he came up with a plan to harvest the Facebook profiles of millions of people in the US, and to use their private and personal information to create sophisticated psychological and political profiles. And then target them with political ads designed to work on their particular psychological makeup.

“We ‘broke’ Facebook,” he says.

And he did it on behalf of his new boss, Steve Bannon.

“Is it fair to say you ‘hacked’ Facebook?” I ask him one night. He hesitates. “I’ll point out that I assumed it was entirely legal and above board.”

It’s particularly troubling that this stolen data was used in a political campaign. Cambridge Analytica has long had a reputation for being “shady”; during the 2016 Republican primaries, many GOP consultants complained about the company’s practices and methodology. Democratic data consultants have also speculated prior to this week’s revelations that Cambridge Analytica would have had to steal data in order to do the work its team has bragged about doing. Even the Trump campaign, despite having staff from Cambridge Analytica embedded in its headquarters, attempted to deny that the company had done what it had claimed: used psychographic profiling to help Trump win.

More troubling is the connection to Russia. In 2014, Chris Wylie was asked to help Cambridge Analytica prepare a pitch to Vagit Alekperov, a Russian oligarch and the CEO of Lukoil. “It didn’t make any sense to me,” he told The Guardian, “I didn’t understand either the email or the pitch presentation we did. Why would a Russian oil company want to target information on American voters?” The eventual presentation “focused on election disruption techniques,” The Guardian reported. “The first slide illustrates how a ‘rumour campaign’ spread fear in the 2007 Nigerian election – in which the company worked – by spreading the idea that the ‘election would be rigged’. The final slide, branded with Lukoil’s logo and that of SCL Group and SCL Elections, headlines its ‘deliverables’: ‘psychographic messaging.’”

An illegal data breach. Russian oligarchs. Psychographic profiling to manipulate voters. Social media is breaking democracy, aided by companies with shady practices and politicians who have turned a blind eye. By not disclosing the leak and allowing Cambridge Analytica to continue using its platform, Facebook failed us. By not asking more questions and considering regulations much earlier, political leaders on two continents, have failed us as well. What’s a social media user supposed to do? And remember, this is to say nothing about similar commercial practices on Facebook.

The only recourse we consumers have is to demand systemic changes. Tech companies must feel more pressure from us. Governments and regulatory bodies must be similarly pressured to force tech companies to protect consumers using regulations and legislation. We need more citizens like Parsons professor David Carroll, who is mounting a legal effort against Cambridge Analytica, to explore the potential of lawsuits.

We have 50 million reasons to be mad at Facebook. If that anger can be turned into action, the potential exists to create a global consumer movement on a scale never seen before. Social media is broken, but with the right amount of pressure we can force the tech giants, starting with Facebook, to fix themselves.

Header image by Sarah Wasko / Media Matters