The New York Times, NPR and CNN all have come out in opposition to a ruling delivered by a Louisanna judge on Tuesday that issued a preliminary injuction against the President. In essence, they want the government to continue to censor Americans online. During the past few years, The New York Times, NPR and CNN have all been complicit in censorship.
The Hunter Biden laptop story was declared Russian disinformation by all three outlets, though they later had to admit that it was true. The Covid lab leak theory, also ridiculed by all three, was also proven true. Face masks, of which they were major proponents, were revealed to be useless, lockdowns were found to have been far more harmful than good. Vaccines did not prevent transmission of Covid but they all touted them, and the follow-up boosters. The government's word was gospel to these social media companies they interfered with, and to these big three outlets that enjoined suppression of concerns over mass voting by mail.
The judge also cited the government for "suppressing parody accounts" about themselves, "suppressing negative posts about the economy; and suppressing negative posts about President Biden."
"If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true," the ruling read, "the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech."
But for the news outlets that have guided public opinion and play an outsized role in the way events are perceived, the importance of the First Amendment pales in comparison to the need to push a partisan, ideological narrative.
"This is one of the most aggressive, far reaching rulings you'll ever see. What this judge is purporting to do is micromanage," CNN said, "really, the day to day interactions between essentially the entire executive branch, all these agencies that are listed as defendants, and the leading social media companies in the actual temporary injuction."
And they are concerned about enforcement. "The judge basically says," the CNN pundit goes on, "'you're not allowed, administration, to talk to the social media companies about any protected free speech, except for cybersecurity threats, national security threats, criminal threats.' But where's the line? Who's going to police this?"
CNN is not alone in this. The New York Times also framed their reporting on the case as limiting the Biden administration's ability to suppress free speech. "In granting a preliminary injunction," the Times writes, "Judge Doughty said that the agencies could not flag specific posts to the social media platforms or request reports about their efforts to take down content. The ruling said that the government could still notify the platforms about posts detailing crimes, national security threats or foreign attempts to influence elections."
For the Times, the main concern is that the ruling could force government agencies "to refrain from notifying the platforms of troublesome content." The assumption in that statement, of course, is that speech which is "troublesome" should come with a government warning or be flagged by government officials.
This is The New York Times, a newspaper that was once the arbiter of truth and facts, which is now suggesting that freedom of speech, an inalienable natural right, should be limited when government officials believe that speech is "troublesome."
NPR feels similiarly, and I say "feels" because that's basically all the public broadcaster is good for these days. NPR claimed outright that the judge has "blocked some government agencies and Biden administration officials from communicating with tech companies."
In discussing the case, NPR's anchor said, "I just can't think of another instance where government officials were told they could not talk to key players in an industry." Of course, that's not the basis of the ruling. The ruling is based on securing Americans' free speech rights.
The case was brought by Missouri's attorney general, who was joined by other states' attorneys general, claiming that the federal government under Joe Biden targeted Americans' speech during the Covid pandemic by directly instructing social media companies what speech to allow on their platforms and what speech to identify as so-called misinformation or disinformation.
"Plaintiffs allege," the judge wrote, "that Defendants, through public pressure campaigns, private meetings, and other forms of direct communication, regarding what Defendants described as 'disinformation,' 'misinformation,' and 'malinformation,' have colluded with and/or coerced social-media platforms to suppress disfavored peakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms."
As a result, the judge limited the government's access to tools of suppression, even going as far as to limit their ability to engage with academic institutions to limit Americans' free speech.
The job of a free press is to uphold the same First Amendment that makes it possible for them to do their jobs, to speak truth to power, to expose inconvenient truths. The job of a free press is not to spin a narrative designed to lure Americans into compliance, or giving up their rights, or capitulating to the viewpoints of the elites in the ruling class.
We are a long way from the time in which we had a mainstream media that was believable, trustworthy, and upheld the First Amendment above all else. While they pontificate against "activism" on the court, they propagate only propaganda from their own pages.
