If Only Jim Jordan Hadn’t Cried Wolf So Often, We Could Tell If His Claims About The White House Pressuring Amazon Were Serious

Overhype

from the could-be-a-big-story,-but-probably-isn't dept

Over the last few days there have been a few stories making the rounds on right wing media sites, claiming that Rep. Jim Jordan had exposed the White House pressuring Amazon to remove books related to COVID disinformation. This is based on a thread Jordan posted to ExTwitter.

If it’s true that the White House did coerce Amazon to remove books, that would be a clear First Amendment violation and a real problem. The White House should not be in the business of telling anyone what speech they can and cannot host. Ever.

Unfortunately, Rep. Jim Jordan has cried wolf so many times on misleading to outright false claims of the White House demanding censorship that it’s tough to take him seriously (which might also why no one outside of the Fox News/NY Post bubble has picked up on this story). Jordan has a track record of taking a complete nothingburger and misrepresenting it into “OMG CeNSorSHiP.”

And, because Jordan only released a few selected screenshots, and not the full details of the docs, it’s (again) difficult to know what actually happened here, and whether or not the White House actually overstepped its bounds. From what’s disclosed I think it’s possible that it did go too far, but what Jordan released doesn’t actually show that, and you would think if he’d actually found the smoking gun, he’d put it front and center. Instead, what he put front and center… is something that doesn’t say what Jordan claims it says.

To be clear, what books Amazon sells is none of the White House’s business, and the First Amendment forbids them from trying to coerce the company on this. There’s literally a famous Supreme Court case detailing why the government can’t pressure book sellers to remove books.

But, again, (and this is what the Supreme Court will be considering shortly in the Murthy case) the White House is still allowed to try to persuade private companies to change their policies. It just can’t coerce or threaten them into doing so. What’s unclear here (in part because Jordan is only releasing snippets, and not the full record) is which side of the line things fell on here.

What does seem clear is that Andy Slavitt, who at the time was the “Senior Pandemic Advisor” to the White House, wanted to talk to someone at Amazon about books promoting COVID misinformation:

If it’s just talking, that’s fine. If it’s pushing them to remove the content that’s a problem. And there’s at least some indication that people inside Amazon felt it might be the latter. This is the email that Jordan has been waving around the most:

Though, note that this is a “pre-brief” discussion, meaning Amazon folks trying to figure out what the White House might be asking. If it were after the meeting, that would obviously be even more concerning. But it’s not. It’s Amazon employees internally expressing concern that the White House might be trying to pressure them (which would be a problem) and telling other employees that they need to find out directly if that’s the case.

Jordan presents some of the screenshots out of order to make the narrative flow better (which again, raises questions about what’s really here). For example, he highlights Amazon declining to make certain changes that would get picked up by Fox News as being “too visible,” but (1) this email is from a week before talking to the White House so isn’t about pressure from them, and (2) doesn’t even appear to be about removing books, but about “customer behavior associations” and (3) the concern was in response to a wholly separate incident when Amazon chose to remove a book for violating its hate speech policies.

That suggests that the discussion was more about book recommendations rather than removing books (even as Jordan implies otherwise).

Also reading the actual screenshots that Jordan released, it looks like the White House was questioning if some of the books violated Amazon’s publicly stated policies on false or misleading information. That is, rather than demanding the books be removed, the White House was asking if they violated existing policy (which is very different than asking them to take them down). And, internally, Amazon was pointing out that the White House appeared to be misreading Amazon’s policy, which was actually about false or misleading metadata about the books, not about the content of the books (not that Jordan acknowledges this important nuance, because that would wreck his narrative):

Later on, Jordan claims that Amazon made decisions because they were “feeling pressure from the White House.” Though, again, reading the underlying document shows that they were much, much more concerned with bad press from Buzzfeed, and the “pressure from the White House” line is both partially redacted and a little unclear as to what exactly it refers to.

And, later on, when Amazon did change its policy, it was in response to a coming negative Buzzfeed article, not… the White House.

So, in the end… this again doesn’t seem to be the smoking gun the Fox News-o-sphere is running with.

I still think the White House probably shouldn’t be talking to Amazon about what books it offers anyway, but it’s difficult to see this being particularly damning, especially given the details. Combined with Jordan’s history of crying wolf on things like this, and his selective and misleading quoting here, this is just another non-story.

And, of course, that also means that even if Jordan ever did turn up a serious First Amendment issue, he’s already trained anyone serious not to pay attention to him. But, when looked at in context, this looks like the White House was asking Amazon if certain books violated existing policies, and Amazon telling them “no, you’ve misread our policies.” And then, later, following Buzzfeed reporters working on an article highlighting the promotion of nonsense peddling medical misinfo, they adjusted their policy not to remove books, but maybe not recommend them as highly. And, again, that appeared to be in response to bad press, and not the White House.

But, I guess, when you’re Jim Jordan and you’ve built up a huge profile making these exaggerated claims, you have to take what little breadcrumbs you’ve found and pretend they’re something much bigger.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, andy slavitt, jim jordan, journalism, persuasion
Companies: amazon