Return to Transcripts main page
CNN 10
Facebook Makes A Policy Change Related To Holocaust Content; CNN Election Trackers Explain How They Project Results; U.S. Scientists Trace Murder Hornets. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired October 14, 2020 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Social media company and the information they allow people to share. That`s our first topic today on CNN 10. I`m Carl
Azuz. Earlier this week, Facebook said any content, posts or articles that deny the Holocaust would no longer be allowed on its platform.
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jewish people and millions of others during World War II. The Holocaust is
an infamous example of genocide, the intentional destruction of a religious or ethnic group. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, said in 2018
that though he finds it deeply offensive for people to deny the Holocaust. He didn`t think Facebook should remove content that does that.
He said there are things that different people get wrong. But on Monday, Facebook told the Bloomberg financial and media company that it would ban
Holocaust denial on its platform. It said it was reversing its policy because there`s been a worldwide increase in anti-Semitism, discrimination
against Jews, and because there`s a quote "alarming level of ignorance" about the Holocaust especially among young people.
The company`s new rule does not apply to other genocides though like the Rwandan genocide or the Armenian genocide which the nation of Turkey
denies. And Bloomberg says Facebook did not explain why it would still allow the other content. Zuckerberg admits he struggled with the tension
between standing for free speech and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the Holocaust, but he thinks his company has found the right
balance.
But that`s a challenge that`s not only faced by Facebook. People often get their news from social media. There are more than 2 billion Facebook users
every month. There are 2 billion who use YouTube. More than 1 billion who use Instagram, 330 million who use Twitter. And all of these sites have
been criticized over the information they choose to allow.
In the political world, American Democrats have said Twitter and Facebook haven`t done enough to stop misinformation or fake news that spreads
online. American Republicans have said the companies unfairly censor conservative speech online. This is according to the Forbes business media
company. So social media organizations are often criticized for an uneven approach whenever they work to filter what`s posted by hundreds of millions
of users.
10 Second Trivia. To win an election, a U.S. presidential candidate needs at least how many electoral votes? 538, 435, 270 or 101. There are 538
electors in total so a majority of 270 is needed to win the election.
And it`s projecting that winner that`s a key part of our election night coverage but there may be some additional challenges to doing that this
year and a big one is mail-in voting. There`s been some controversy over this as we reported on our August 20th show. There`s also been more
interest in it this time around because many Americans are concerned about catching coronavirus in public polling places.
However, people feel about mail-in ballots though, several states don`t require them to be received and counted by election day. So if the election
is close and if millions of ballots are still in the mail when the polls close on November 3rd, we may not know the outcome for days possibly weeks.
Still, news networks across America are gearing up for the event that`s 20 days away. Here`s a look at how CNN plans to propose projections.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER AGIESTA, CNN DIRECTOR OF POLLING AND ELECTION ANALYTICS: On election night, we`ll be doing all the major maths behind CNN`s major
projections.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: We`re going to share the numbers with you right now and some major projections.
AGIESTA: I`m Jennifer Agiesta. I`m CNN`s director of polling and election analytics. Behind me, you see CNN`s decision desk. We`ve got about 14
people who will be working with us on election night. In the weeks leading up to election day, we rehearse election night so many times. We`re divided
up into teams.
Each of the teams typically has one statistician. Someone who really understands the math behind the projections that we`re making. Each team
also has a political expert. A person who knows the geography of each state. So we use several different types of data in making our projections
on election night.
Our first bit of information about how people are behaving is going to be the exit polls. We`ll be looking at what voters who voted to the early in
the morning and through the afternoon are saying to pollsters about why they supported the candidates that they did. When we`re ready to make a
projection in a state, we`re typically looking at several different pieces. It`s not just an exit poll and I suppose one component of that.
What we really need to see in a lot of the battleground states, places like Florida, New Hampshire, we`re going to be looking for a lot more than the
exit poll. Our first line of defense is a group of sample precincts that match precincts where the exit polls were conducted. And we`ll know pretty
early in the night, how voters in those precincts voted and how that compares to the results of the exit poll.
BLITZER: CNN projects that Barack Obama will be reelected --
AGIESTA: When we`re approaching 270 electoral votes, that level that would actually mean we`re saying that a person will win the White House. That`s
when things get very intense on the decision desk and we`re looking very closely at the states that are outstanding. Our best line of defense when
we`re making these projections is that we`re getting data from multiple sources. Vote count numbers that come to us from the Associated Press. We
look at vote count numbers that are posted on Secretary of State websites and county websites.
And we try to confirm that what we`re seeing is correct across multiple reporting sources and look for that internal consistency in the data that
we`re seeing. The decision desk has one of the hardest jobs in journalism. We really want to make sure that anything we project is going to hold up in
the end. We`re lucky in that we haven`t had a -- an incorrect prediction come out of CNN since 2000 and we hope to never have it happen again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: In Washington State, agriculture officials are working to track down murder hornets and bring them to justice, and by that we mean kill them.
These insects also known as Asian Giant Hornets are evasive in the U.S. They first appeared in Washington last year and no one was sure how they
got there.
They got their name from the fact that they can kill a human with multiple stings. But they`re an even greater threat to bees as murder hornets can
take out a beehive in a few hours. So they`re not wanted in America. Several have been spotted near Washington`s border with Canada.
Entomologists think the insects might have a nest there. So they`ve been trying to attach tracking devices to the hornets in the hopes they`ll lead
officials to the nest. One device was glued but if fell off and the glue got caught in the hornet`s wings so it couldn`t fly. One device was tied
with dental floss but scientists lost track of it shortly after the bug flew away. So the hunt continues.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (NOT TRANSLATED)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (NOT TRANSLATED)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (NOT TRANSLATED)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (NOT TRANSLATED)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: If we were to tell you about a diamond named Spirit of the Rose, you might expect to look like this. The 14.83 carat diamond is believed to be
the largest pink crystal ever unearthed in the nation of Russia. But it`s not the world record holder. That title went to the 59.6 carat Pink Star
which sold in Hong Kong a few years ago for more than $71 million. The Spirit of the Rose, expected to fetch a measly $38 million, but anyone who
gets his or her hands on such a titanic treasure will "never let go Rose".
Now you need an awful lot of cushion to make that purchase. Unless you`re a princess, it`s anything but "marqueasy" unless it has a twin you won`t find
a "pear". But there`s no doubt it`s a radiant diamond in the rough and it brings us to a "dazzling denuma" on CNN 10. Orono, don`t you know, is in
Maine. It`s the home of Orono High School. It`s great to have you watching from our YouTube channel. I`m Carl Azuz.
END
