FreeSpeech and Censorship: Thread

[grarpamp]

It's pretty bad when trackers and mirrors startup
to track all the censorship that's going on...


Spotify Removes 113 'JRE' Episodes With No Explanation

https://jremissing.com/

While the tsunami of piler-on'rs grows - because what is more virtuous
that signaling your disdain for someone that dares to think for
themselves - there is also a gathering storm of support for Rogan and
what his podcast stands for...

    The eclectic group of @joerogan guests who were pulled from
Spotify just shows you this censorship shit isn’t about left or right.
It’s about an authoritarian push for complete control over speech.
They hate Rogan bc he’s not controlled by corporate media.
    — Krystal Ball (@krystalball) February 5, 2022

    The effort to smear Joe Rogan as a racist is one of the most
despicable efforts I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. They don’t actually
care, they’re just trying to destroy him. We either live in a society
where context matters or we don’t. By their standard Joe Biden is a
racist pic.twitter.com/7wUI8aeL3P
    — Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) February 5, 2022

    Rogan is the man. If they cancel him just end your Spotify subscription.
    — Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) February 6, 2022

    Nobody targeting Joe Rogan right now gives two damns about
anything he's said in the past. This is all just an opportunity for
activists to destroy a guy who doesn't carry water for those with
institutional power, and whose audience dwarfs their own. It is that
simple.
    — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 6, 2022

    If they can cancel Joe they can cancel anyone. Time to stand up people.
    — Funky (@Benaskren) February 5, 2022

    Nobody is offended by anything @joerogan said. Nobody is hurt.
Nobody is a victim. They went digging for the “offensive” comments.
They’re happy to have found them. That’s why these damned vultures
deserve a middle finger, not an apology. Rogan owes them nothing but
contempt.
    — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 5, 2022

So far, Spotify has removed at least 113 episodes, according to a
running count by JRE Missing, a website dedicated to monitoring how
many episodes of the show are no longer available on the service.
Some of the episodes were removed months ago, but the biggest purge
has taken place since Friday. The show has been exclusively available
on Spotify for about a year.






CNN's Collapse Is Now Complete

By Joe Concha

It all began 42 years ago — Ted Turner's creation of a 24/7 news
network that would exist on something called cable TV. Few believed it
could succeed.

And, for its first decade, CNN largely chugged along but wasn't seen
as a game-changer or ​a true competitor to big broadcast news entities
based in New York in the form of CBS, NBC and ABC. That all changed
when war broke out between the United States and Iraq in 1991.

On the night war exploded over Baghdad, CNN was the only news
organization that was able to broadcast from the city under siege as
the U.S. onslaught began, all courtesy of the CNN team’s ability to
convince the Iraqi government to grant them a line out of the city to
broadcast​, one that the competition could not secure.

"How CNN Won the War" was the glowing headline from the Washington
Post on a story that perfectly chronicled the events that led to CNN
officially becoming a major player. And off it went.

Until 2002, CNN was ​No. 1 in the cable news race. But competition
that hadn't existed before ended its dominance forever, primarily in
the form of Fox News and, to a lesser extent, MSNBC. Despite the
ratings results, CNN continued to carry itself as a credible,
facts-first network of integrity that leaned heavily on solid
reporting with a sprinkling of opinion and infotainment mixed in via
programs such as "Larry King Live" and "Crossfire."

In 2013, the network hired former NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker
to take the reins as ratings continued to be below average at best.
This gave Zucker a mandate to radically change the network from its
journalistic roots of more than three decades — the months-long
wall-to-wall coverage of a missing Malaysian airliner being an early
example.

But two years later, the move to insert heavy doses of partisan
opinion into its news reports only accelerated when Donald Trump – a
Zucker hire at NBC for "The Apprentice" – jumped in to the 2016
presidential race. At first, CNN bear-hugged Trump's every move.
(Hillary Clinton's giving a speech somewhere? Screw it. Let's show an
empty Trump podium with chyrons stating "Trump to speak soon"
instead.) The real estate mogul's 17 Republican challengers never had
a shot; Trump blotted out the sun in terms of media coverage ​on his
way to winning the nomination.

At that point, Zucker and CNN began to worry. Because while it was a
ratings boon for the network to make Trump the centerpiece, there was
growing concern that the guy could actually beat Hillary and become
the nation's 45th president. So Zucker unleashed the hounds, but it
was too late. Trump would go on to shock the world in November 2016.

Undeterred, CNN decided there would be no honeymoon period for the new
president. Talk ​about Russian collusion handing Trump the White House
began even before the inauguration. And after the nonstop
Trump-bashing, Harvard University concluded that CNN led the way,
along with Zucker's former home of NBC, in giving Trump 93 percent
negative coverage in his first 100 days.

For the next four years, CNN served as the leading media resistance to
Trump, throwing objectivity out the window. And after Joe Biden got
elected, the network cheered the new president as it had throughout
the entire campaign while still making Trump a prime centerpiece for
over-the-top negative coverage despite ​his being out of office.

But as much as CNN tried to resurrect its lead character – who was
banned from social media and largely off the grid for the year – his
absence ​clearly showed the network was a one-trick partisan pony.
Ratings fell 90 percent overall when comparing Jan​uary 2021 to
Jan​uary 2022. That’s hard to do.

Which brings us to the events of this week: Zucker released a
statement saying he had to resign because of a consensual affair with
a female executive named Allison Gollust. WarnerMedia apparently has a
rule against this, so Zucker – instead of a slap on the wrist for a
benign offense – simply had to go abruptly.

Nobody believed this excuse. Turns out they may have had plenty of
reason to be skeptical.

Per several reports, Zucker and Gollust allegedly advised then Gov.
Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) – the older brother of then-​CNN anchor Chris
Cuomo – on what to say during his COVID-19 daily briefings in the
spring of 2020. They also reportedly told Cuomo how to respond to and
how to criticize then-President Trump, to make it more compelling TV.
(Gollust is a former communications director for Andrew Cuomo.)

Let's unpack all of this:

In the spring of 2020, the country was in a horrific place. Businesses
shut completely; people were scared. There were no COVID therapeutics,
no vaccines. Hospitals ​were overwhelmed, thousands were dying ​each
day. If ​ever there was a time for news organizations to educate and
inform the public, this was it.

Instead, Zucker apparently believed it was the perfect time to exploit
the situation for political gain and to help the network's ratings.

Andrew Cuomo benefitted from briefings that made him​ appear to be the
adult in the room ​regarding COVID and Trump ​appear to be the
villain. ​Cuomo got a $5.1 million book deal as a result.

Chris Cuomo and Zucker/Gollust/CNN benefitted from marathon interviews
with ​Cuomo's governor/brother, which didn't touch the governor's
alleged nursing home scandal. Ratings soared.

So, was Zucker's departure ​simply about a consensual relationship
with a co-worker? One might be forgiven for questioning that.

Moving forward, what's next for CNN when the company falls under the
Discovery Channel umbrella later this year? Let's hear from its
soon-to-be largest shareholder, John Malone of Liberty Media.

"I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it
started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and
refreshing," Malone said in an interview that recently aired on CNBC.

The collapse of CNN is now complete: Nine-out-of-ten viewers, gone.
Its top-rated anchor, ​Chris Cuomo, gone. Its network president, gone.
Its integrity in shambles.

​Oh, and new management coming in that is signaling big-time changes
... changes that may bring CNN back to the proud network it once was
before Jeff Zucker destroyed it.