FreeSpeech and Censorship: Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Tue Jan 17 01:05:54 PST 2023


https://www.theepochtimes.com/covid-narrative-dissenters-file-antitrust-action-against-legacy-media-over-coordinated-censorship_4977641.html
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/TNI-Complaint-1.10.22.pdf

COVID-Narrative Dissenters File Lawsuit Against Legacy Media Over
Coordinated Censorship

A coalition of outspoken critics and skeptics of the mainstream
narratives on COVID-19 has brought an antitrust lawsuit against some
of the world’s largest news organizations, accusing them of working in
collaboration to suppress dissenting voices surrounding the pandemic.
Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy
Human Rights' Ripple Of Hope Awards at New York Hilton Midtown in New
York City on Dec. 12, 2018. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

The lawsuit (pdf), filed on Tuesday in a federal court in Texas,
targets The Washington Post, the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC), The
Associated Press (AP), and Reuters—all of which are members of the
“Trusted News Initiative (TNI),” a self-described “industry
partnership” formed in 2020 among legacy media giants and big tech
companies.

“By their own admission, members of the TNI have agreed to work
together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the
world’s dominant internet platforms rival news publishers who engage
in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting
on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics,” the
complaint reads.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of the Biden administration’s COVID-19
vaccination policies, led the lawsuit. He is joined by Creative
Destruction Media, Trial Site News, Truth About Vaccines founders Ty
and Charlene Bollinger, independent journalist Ben Swann, Health Nut
News publisher Erin Elizabeth Finn, Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft,
Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ben Tapper, a chiropractor.

The plaintiffs, the lawsuit alleges, are among the many victims of the
TNI’s “group boycott” tactic, defined as a coordinated effort to
facilitate monopoly by cutting off the competitors’ access to supplies
and necessities.

In this case, the TNI members are accused of engaging in group
boycott—in concert with their big tech partners—against small,
independent news publishers by denying them access to internet
platforms they need to compete and even survive in the online news
market.

“As a result of the TNI’s group boycott, [the plaintiffs] have been
censored, de-monetized, demoted, throttled, shadow-banned, and/or
excluded entirely from platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter,
Instagram, and Linked-In,” the lawsuit states.

For example, the lawsuit claims, TNI members have been working with
Big Tech to censor what they condemned as “misinformation,” such as
reports that COVID may have originated in a laboratory in the Chinese
city of Wuhan, that the COVID vaccines do not prevent infection, and
that vaccinated people may still transmit COVID to others.

This alleged effort to establish a dominant media narrative by
shutting off nonestablishment outlets, according to the lawsuit, has
violated both federal antitrust and freedom of speech laws.

“Federal antitrust law has its own name for this kind of ‘industry
partnership,'” the lawsuit states. “It’s called a group boycott and is
a per se violation of the Sherman Act.”

Read more here...


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