Now, however, major media figures are shrugging off free speech concerns and supporting censorship as what former CNN media host CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter called a “harm reduction model.” While once fiercely opposed to censorship and government-supported blacklists, many in the media are echoing Mattingly’s view that the natural default should be to obey the government and its directions on permitted speech. After all, this is all for our own protection. Censorship just “makes sense.”
As a long-standing free speech advocate, the last few years have been alarming and, frankly, depressing. The censorship efforts of the government are, unfortunately, not new. However, what is new is the support of the media and the Democratic Party in such censorship. That was on display on various channels after the recent opinion finding that the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment in “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” However, the New York Times immediately warned that the outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.” Yet, no one expressed more simply and chillingly than CNN Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly who stated that it “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands.
Mattingly admitted that social media platforms “more often than not” gave in to the censorship demands by the Biden administration. However, he insisted that it “makes sense,” and is “probably what we should do on public health grounds.”
“[T]he Biden administration would regularly reach out to Twitter and Facebook and other companies in kind of the early stages of their COVID response and say, this person is spreading lies about vaccines, this account is spreading misinformation that is inhibiting — not just our efforts, the administration’s efforts to address COVID — but also public health, do something about it. And often, I think more often than not, the companies would respond and say, okay. And there are emails that came out during the course of this case that that was something that I think — when it was explained to me at the time, I thought, alright, that makes sense, that’s probably what we should do on public health grounds.”
What is striking is not just the blind acceptance that the government should be protecting us from harmful thoughts. It is also the failure to recognize that the government was wrong on many of these points while experts were being banned and blacklisted.
Many people were routinely censored on Twitter and other platforms for daring to challenge the official position on masks.
The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.
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