You might assume that journalists, more than any other American group, would value and support a member’s right to free speech and expression under the First Amendment, but this is no longer the case.
The Twitter platform, under previous management, coordinated and cooperated with various government agencies to stifle certain users who advocated opinions, viewpoints, and now-established factual information because it was unpopular or did not fit with official narratives, even though those narratives turned out to be false or incorrect, as was revealed by Elon Musk and the serial releases of what became known as “The Twitter Files,” which were published in pieces.
The topic of a contentious discussion on Fox News’ well-liked pre-prime-time show “The Five” on Friday was the growing problem of censorship under the pretense of limiting the spread of “misinformation,” which seems to depend more and more on one person or another’s political views.
A portion of the panel discussion was devoted to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent congressional testimony, a longshot Democratic contender for president who expressed concerns about social media censorship for posting information concerning COVID and vaccines. The data was found to have broken content restrictions at the time. He claimed that the repeated practice of the government asking social media companies to remove false content amounted to government censorship.
RFK Jr. stated last week that he thought the virus was “targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people based on evidence he claims to have seen.
Due to this, House Democrats urged Republicans to reschedule his appearance before a committee this week—on censorship, no less—but GOP leaders resisted.
“Jessica, why is it that the Democrats all of a sudden have this totalitarian instinct to shut people down, to claim that what they are saying is disinformation, misinformation, or malinformation, where they admit that what Kennedy is saying is true but it doesn’t jive with their ideology?” co-host Jeanine Pirro asked co-host Jessica Tarlov.
“So first of all, when we’re talking about the censorship – and I mentioned this yesterday, but it is important to reiterate – RFK Jr. began his statement by saying, ‘I was censored by the Trump administration and I was censored by the Biden administration.’ The Hunter Biden laptop story happened in October of 2020, when Donald Trump was the president. His administration made the same kinds of requests of big tech to take things down that the Biden…” she began.
“We agree — the FBI is out of control,” co-panelist Jesse Watters chimed in.
“It wasn’t Trump,” co-host Greg Gutfeld added.
“Yeah, the Trump-appointed FBI director,” Tarlov responded.
Watters responded by saying, “No, no, no, no, the FBI that’s been against Trump and for Biden for six years.”
Sarcastically, Tarlov retorted, “I forgot, the ultimate victim.”
“Don’t even go there!” Pirro said.
“You guys went there,” Tarlov said.
It continued:
GUTFELD: We know what it was like when Trump was president. He didn’t have a friend among Republicans.
PIRRO: Especially the State Department, especially the FBI.
TARLOV: Ugh, Donald Trump, my heart breaks for you. Ok–
PIRRO: Well you brought him up! Let’s talk about Kennedy.
[CROSSTALK]
TARLOV: All right, let’s talk about your guys’ boyfriend, RFK Jr. So, first of all, he’s polling at 14%, not 17%. The reason it’s going down is people are hearing him and they don’t like what he has to say because he has no agenda that speaks to the Democratic Party and our values.
He wants to talk about being anti-vaxx, which is not what we think come he wants to do, videos at the border. And I think the border is an important issue, but you know what I want to hear them talk about? Talk about your work as an environmental lawyer, talk about what’s going on with climate change–
PAVLICH: He did. He did!
TARLOV: No, lead with it. Have a set of economic policies.
PAVLICH: It’s also 17%.
[CROSSTALK]
PIRRO: Fox today said 17.
