Filmmaker Calls Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg ‘An Enemy Of The State’

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns called Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “an enemy of the state” in a recent podcast.

Appearing Monday on the New York Times’ "Sway" podcast to promote his upcoming documentary on Muhammad Ali, Burns was asked by host Kara Swisher about what current tech figure would have the same social impact as the beloved boxer featured in his film.

“Stacey Abrams [is] the person who has the closest chops to being somebody that we could carve into Mount Rushmore,” Burns said.

He continued, “I hope Zuckerberg is in jail by then. This is an enemy of the state. He knows he can transcend it. He can get away to any place. And so it’s just about filthy lucre, that’s it.”

Burns, who is best known for his Academy Award-winning docuseries "The Civil War," has been a critic of Zuckerberg particularly during the pandemic. He claims Zuckerberg is failing to stop misinformation on his social media platforms, leading to conspiracy theories and vaccine skeptics.

In July, Burns said on MSNBC that America's current climate is "the most fraught time" in the history of the Republic.

“Historically, misinformation lives on Facebook quite a bit,” Burns said. "The convergence of all those viruses, the side effects of the misinformation and the paranoia and the lying, voter suppression. And then the rewriting of our history is saying that we're not interested in facts. We're not interested in the truth. We're not interested in the many varied voices that make us up."

Facebook has been under growing pressure to stop the spread of misinformation on its platforms.

President Joe Biden in July warned that the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on social media is "killing people."

Facebook has said it is taking "aggressive action" to protect public health.