Just weeks away from the 2024 Presidential Election, CNN launched an absurd attack on some elected Republicans: They are willing to fight for free speech.
CNN Technology Reporter Brian Fung wrote a wildly anti-free speech article on Oct. 21, unbelievably complaining that Big Tech doesn’t censor enough. Fung pointed to X-owner Elon Musk’s moves against rampant censorship on X, as well as some social media companies stepping away from prior outrageous acts like banning former President Donald Trump or colluding with the federal government to silence speech.
The CNN journalist wrote that a shift away from censorship “took place against the backdrop of a yearslong intimidation campaign led by Republican attorneys general and state and federal lawmakers.” Fung claimed that the free speech movement was “aimed at forcing social media companies to platform falsehoods and hate speech and thwarting those working to study or limit the spread of that destabilizing content.” Hate speech and falsehoods are often buzzwords used to refer to information that the left disagrees with.
A great free Speech Week to you too, Fung.
Fung would go on to minimize social media censorship as “conservative politicians” complaining about “what they claimed was censorship of right-wing views on social media.” He also repeatedly lamented that Big Tech was not doing more to silence the right.
Apparently, censorship isn’t happening, but there isn’t enough of it. MRC’s exclusive CensorTrack database has 7,242 documented cases of censorship that shows otherwise. Censorship is happening, and it’s happening all too often.
Instead, Fung whined that Big Tech censors, leftist fact-checkers, misinformation and disinformation researchers, and colluding government agencies had been frustrated by free speech advocates in Congress. Fung said that “other House Republicans have hauled tech leaders before Congress for uncomfortable hearings, further sending the message that well-intentioned efforts to protect America’s information spaces would be interpreted as bad-faith censorship.”
[For The Five Senators Who Truly Earned Fung’s High But Unintentional Praise Click Here]
Fung claimed that Republicans only “alleged” that companies like Google and Meta were “discriminating against right-wing viewpoints,” while simultaneously mourning Trump’s return to social media and calling for more censorship. He also complained that Republicans calling out Big Tech for "platforms of violating their own self-professed neutrality" has had a “devastating effect.”
By contrast, the technology reporter admitted that Democrats lobbied for censorship: “Democrats put their own pressure on social media too, but for the opposite reason: They wanted platforms to moderate more, not less.”
To bolster his call for more censorship, Fung cited George Washington University (GW) School of Media and Public Affairs Associate Professor David Karpf, who held up the censorship-prone European Union as a positive example for American social media regulation.
He also quoted Baybars Orsek the Managing Director at the fact-checking organization, Logically Facts. Orsek ridiculously warned of “troubling precedents as we approach the upcoming elections,” because social media companies like X had downsized draconian “Trust and Safety” departments that famously censor disfavored speech.
Both Karpf and Baybars’s employers are connected with leftist billionaire George Soros The GW School of Media and Public Affairs received $50,000 from Soros and half a million from the leftist Pritzker family. Similarly Logically Facts was a member of the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) until 2024 which Soros funded to the tune of $492,000 from 2016 to 2020.
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
