Media

Liberal Media Cries Because A Judge Revoked Biden’s Censorship Privileges

The left-wing legacy media is having a meltdown because the government has been stopped – albeit temporarily – from stripping Americans' of their right to free speech. [Screenshot MSNBC]

[Screenshot MSNBC]

Brianna Lyman News and Commentary Writer
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The left-wing media had a meltdown Wednesday because the government has been stopped, albeit temporarily, from stripping Americans’ of their right to free speech.

Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued an injunction Tuesday ruling the Biden administration and other federal agencies suppressed free speech in an “Orwellian” manner during the COVID-19 pandemic. Doughty ruled members of the Biden administration, including officials with the FBI and Department of Health and Human Services could not communicate with social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri had alleged Biden officials “went too far” in their efforts to stifle discussion of topics such as election integrity and vaccines. Facebook, for example, routinely took direction from the CDC regarding COVID-19 moderation and fact-checking policies throughout 2021, according to documents published by Reason in January.

Talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and elsewhere lamented the ruling Wednesday.

CNN’s Elie Honig called the decision to protect Americans’ free speech “dramatic.”

“It is a dramatic decision by this judge,” Honig said. “He is citing to literature and George Washington, Ben Franklin. Here is what is astonishing to me, this is a conservative ideology that clearly comes through in this decision. It is a conservative political ideology. We saw some of the quotes questioning vaccines, questioning masks – conservative talking points. But the ruling is opposite of judicial conservatism. This is one of the most aggressive, far reaching rulings you will ever see.”

Tulane University history Professor Walter Isaacson said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the decision “goes too far,” while also saying the “Twitter Files” showed the government and big tech companies did take it “a bit far.”

“It wasn’t just government saying, ‘Don’t print things or amplify things about, say, the Barrington doctrine,’ which talks about the spread of COVID. It was somehow coercing a bit, and what was worse, the social media companies didn’t just play along, they colluded and tried to stop some of the flow of information. So I think this is a little bit of a corrective, but I clearly feel that in the end, the decision will be refined somewhat, because government has to have the right to have its own free speech, to push back when they see things on social media they think are dangerous.”

NBC’s Ryan Reilly argued the real problem is the FBI is not policing social media enough.

“And if you look at the reality, it’s like, the FBI is not very good at monitoring social media,” Reilly said Wednesday. “Look at what happened on January 6. There were all of these warning signs, red flags going up all over the place and they weren’t prepared. They didn’t do enough. They did not take proper precautions, or instruct other law enforcement agencies to take proper precautions.”

“So I think that that’s the framework you have to remember that this is important to look by,” he continued. “I mean, this … 155-page opinion starts off with a essentially a ‘big if true’ comment. It says, ‘OK, if these things are true, this is one of the biggest First Amendment abuses in American history.’ And I suppose, so if it were true, but that’s not necessarily where the facts are lining up with and how exactly — what exactly the evidence shows that social media companies, how they were interacting with at least the FBI.”

NBC’s Ryan Nobles also weighed in, questioning whether “elections could be undermined” without censorship of alleged disinformation.

The New York Times raised a similar argument, painting the ruling protecting free speech as one that hurts the government’s ability to protect Americans from alleged disinformation.

“A judge limited Biden administration officials from contacting social media sites, a ruling that could curtail efforts to fight disinformation,” the outlet tweeted Tuesday.