Censorship is the most important political issue we the people face today, although you wouldn’t know that by watching the political circus performances that pass for “debates” in our present era. I don’t recall the topic being broached—neither in “debates” nor in televised interviews with candidates for high federal offices.
A federal lawsuit, which began as Missouri v. Biden and morphed into Murthy v. Missouri, provided detailed examples of how the Biden administration coerced and intimidated social media platforms to suppress free speech and censor its subjects in clear violation of the most fundamental of our human rights.
Chief Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court, Western Louisiana, who ruled against the federal government in Missouri vs. Biden before his ruling was reversed on appeal, called the censorship “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.”
His ruling blocked the government from intimidating the media companies. The case ultimately ended up this summer in the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a 6-3 vote, the nation’s highest court reversed Doughty’s order—not on its merits but because, the majority opined, the plaintiffs didn’t have a legal right—known as standing—to bring their lawsuit. The plaintiffs couldn’t prove that they were likely to be injured by such censorship in the future.
The details of the government intimidation, which have generally been ignored or denied by the corporate media, are clearly established. In fact, in August, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook—perhaps the most censorship-happy of the major social media platforms—finally came clean in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee:
“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg wrote.
It wasn’t only about covid though.
Missouri vs. Biden, brought by the states of Missouri and Louisiana and five American citizens, said members of federal agencies coerced and intimidated the social media platforms to suppress facts, opinions and other information that didn’t conform with government-approved narratives relating to such issues as the origin of covid-19; the efficacy of masks, lockdowns and vaccines; the integrity of the 2020 elections; the condition of the economy; and even criticism of Biden—including comedy and parody—before and after he became president.
Similar censorship lawsuits against the federal government remain open. One has been filed by Robert Kennedy Jr., who recently withdrew as an independent presidential candidate. Another has been filed by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.
Meanwhile, in September, the House Committee on Small Business released an interim staff report on its 14-month investigation into federal funding and promotion of entities that interfere with the ability of small domestic businesses to compete online because of their lawful speech.
The investigation has focused on the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an agency within the Bureau of Global Public Affairs (GPA) at the U.S. Department of State. GEC says its mission is to lead U.S. government efforts to “recognize, understand, expose and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.”
“For over a year, the committee has been investigating how online censorship has been affecting American small businesses,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), committee chairman. “This interim report outlines how government agencies are working with the private sector to ensure that certain businesses do not have a fair chance to compete online. Even worse, this report uncovers how taxpayer dollars contributed to the censorship that picks winners and losers in the online marketplace.”
Williams said the committee published the interim report because the State Department’s interference and noncooperation has delayed its investigation.
“Throughout the investigation, the [State Department] has repeatedly slow-rolled congressional document requests, disregarded prioritized information and provided incomplete and inadequate document productions,” the committee reported.
The committee said it has now subpoenaed documents it first requested 14 months ago. In response, the State Department said it would take until March 2026 to produce the documents.
The committee, which is charged with investigating “problems of all types of small business,” cited the following among the findings detailed in its 66-page report:
- The federal government has fueled a censorship ecosystem impacting not only individuals’ First Amendment rights but the ability of certain small businesses to compete online;
- The federal government has funded, developed and promoted entities that aim to demonetize news and information outlets because of their lawful speech, impacting domestic businesses’ operations, reputation, customer reach and revenue;
- GEC circumvented its strict international mandate by funding, developing, then promoting tech startups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space to private-sector entities with domestic censorship capabilities; and
- The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a private nonprofit funded almost entirely by congressional appropriations, violated its international restrictions by collaborating with fact-checking entities in assessing domestic press businesses’ admission to a credibility organization.
If you would like to read what the mainstream corporate media are reporting about the interim report and the committee’s investigation, good luck on your search. Curiously—or not so curiously—mainstream newspapers, magazines and televised news agencies—those organizations that should be the most unwavering defenders of free expression—have become the most passionate defenders of censorship.
And the most reliable spreaders of government propaganda.
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