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Facebook Joins in Criticizing Wall Street Journal for Publishing Trump Letter Repeating Election Lies

Facebook’s communications chief on Thursday became the latest person to criticize the Wall Street Journal for publishing a letter from former President Donald Trump.

“Anyone read any good letters to the editor this morning?” Andy Stone quipped on Twitter. Prior to joining Facebook, he did communications for various Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups.

In the letter, Trump repeated his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him by President Joe Biden.

“Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out,” the Republican fumed in the message to Journal editors.

The letter appeared in the Journal on Wednesday and was widely criticized all day, though it is worth noting that the storied outlet’s opinion and news divisions have a clear distinction between them.

Stone’s attack on the Journal was particularly timely: That is the paper that recently published a lengthy investigation into Facebook and its practices, revealing that the social media giant found in its research that Facebook and Instagram negatively impact young people — but did nothing with that information. In September, Facebook doubled down in self-defense, calling the Journal’s reporting “just plain false.”

In a blog post called “What the Wall Street Journal Got Wong,” vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote, “These are serious and complex issues, and it is absolutely legitimate for us to be held to account for how we deal with them. But these stories have contained deliberate mischaracterizations of what we are trying to do, and conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees.”