Below is my column in The Hill on the release of a new Disinformation Index by a group partially funded by the Biden Administration. Gabe Kaminsky at the Washington Examiner previously ran a story on the Index. The Index appears heavily biased against conservative or libertarian sites. I previously discussed the bizarre inclusion of a legal analysis site of conservative and libertarian law professors. It is easy to dismiss such transparently flawed work, but this is an effort to target advertisers and to justify a type of cancel campaign. It is also part of a more comprehensive effort by the Administration to censor or isolate certain views or groups in the public debate. [N.B.: After this column ran, the National Endowment for Democracy wrote to inform me that it had decided to stop funding the Global Disinformation Index].
Here is the column:
Last year, the Biden administration caved to public outcry and disbanded its infamous Disinformation Governance Board under its “Disinformation Nanny,” Nina Jankowicz. Yet, as explored in a recent hearing (in which I testified), the Biden Administration never told the public about a far larger censorship effort involving an estimated 80 FBI agents secretly targeting citizens and groups for disinformation.
Now it appears that the administration also was partially funding an “index” to warn advertisers to avoid what the index deemed to be dangerous disinformation sites. It turns out that all ten of the “riskiest” sites identified by the Global Disinformation Index are popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents.
The index, run by a British organization, appears to be an effort to score and sanction sites based on their “reliability” to those in the political and media establishments.
That sounds like a knockoff of China’s “social credit” system which scores its citizens, based in part on social media monitoring.
Clearly, the Administration never abandoned its intent to fund and field efforts to curtail speech on the internet — with the support of many in the media and academia. In an Atlantic article in 2020, for example, Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods declared that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.” They concluded that “significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with society norms and values.”
Despite fierce opposition from Democrats in Congress, Twitter continues to release evidence of a comprehensive effort by FBI agents to coordinate the banning or suspensions of people accused of disinformation, including people who were clearly joking.
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a particularly insidious part of that effort. Funded in part by $330 million from the U.S. State Department through the National Endowment for Democracy (which contributes to GDI’s budget), the GDI was designed to steer advertisers and subscribers away from “risky” sites which it says pose “reputational and brand risk” and to help companies avoid “financially supporting disinformation online.”
GDI warned advertisers that these sites could damage their reputations and brands: the New York Post, Reason, Real Clear Politics, the Daily Wire, The Blaze, One America News Network, The Federalist, Newsmax, the American Spectator, and the American Conservative.
The inclusion of Reason was particularly glaring; the site regularly posts legal analysis from conservative and libertarian scholars. With the diminishing number of such academics on university faculties, Reason is a relative rarity in offering a different take on legal cases and issues. GDI incorrectly claimed the site offers “no information regarding authorship attribution.” It also said Reason lacks “pre-publication fact-checking or post-publication corrections processes, or policies to prevent disinformation in its comments section.”
There is a reason why Reason does not have policies posted on the removal of disinformation: It opposes content moderation policies of groups like GDI on free-speech grounds and disinformation “processes” used to limit free speech.
However, that is the point in this and other disinformation efforts: “Disinformation” appears based on what GDI and the Biden administration believe to be the truth. That may explain why some of the most biased sites on the political left are given higher rankings by the index.
While claiming that the conservative sites lacked transparency, GDI is fairly opaque on its own conclusions and standards. The explanations for tagging those sites are riddled with subjective, ambiguous terms. For example, GDI includes RealClearPolitics due to what GDI considers “biased and sensational language” while heralding sites like HuffPost as among the most trustworthy.
GDI further says that RealClearPolitics “lacked clear and diverse sources.” Yet HuffPost and Mother Jones — both of which rate highly on the index — have a range of diversity that runs from the left to the far left.
In discouraging advertisers from supporting the New York Post, the GDI declares that “content sampled from the Post frequently displayed bias, sensationalism and clickbait, which carries the risk of misleading the site’s reader.” Yet the GDI’s self-appointed monitors of disinformation make no effort to explain what constitutes “clickbait” or “sensationalism” by the Post in comparison to favored sites like HuffPost.
Indeed, GDI’s definition of “disinformation” is heavily laden with subjective terms. including any site that GDI views as offering “adversarial narratives.” Disinformation can include anything that is “financially or ideologically motivated” … “foster[s] long-term social, political or economic conflict” or simply creates “a risk of harm by undermining trust in science or targeting at-risk individuals or institutions.” Under that definition, the Gutenberg Bible might be flagged by some skeptics as disinformation.
Last year, GDI’s cofounder and executive director, Daniel Rogers, wrote an op-ed for Time magazine calling for government intervention to change the “rules that govern the manipulation of our information environment in order to prevent another nihilistic narcissist gaining power.” That includes not just Donald Trump but “someone like” him who lies “outright solely to further their own immediate interests.” Rogers does not explain how the federal government will be barring candidates who might otherwise be elected. He also called for liability for social media companies for any postings linked to a reader or viewer becoming radicalized and violent.
The funding of GDI, and the FBI’s censorship efforts, are consistent with President Biden’s pronounced anti-free-speech policies since taking office in 2021. The president previously asked “how do people know the truth” if social media companies did not control what they could read or hear on these platforms.
The full range of such efforts by the Biden administration is still unclear. What is clear is that the government is working to censor and harass sites with opposing views on subjects ranging from the pandemic to climate change to elections. This includes efforts to deter others from supporting these sites through advertising revenue. The financial viability of these sites could depend on the GDI’s good-citizen score.
Congress should ban the use of federal funds from such anti-free speech grants and programs. The first step, however, is to force the transparency that is being opposed by so many politicians and pundits. That should include any prior such efforts by the Trump or Obama administrations; the public can handle the truth of finding out if our government has been in the business of speech control. Otherwise, we may have succeeded in ridding the government of the “Mary Poppins of Disinformation” but not of her underlying philosophy.
At least the original Mary Poppins was open and warned her wards: “First of all, I would like to make one thing clear: I never explain anything.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at The George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
NB: After this column ran, NED wrote me to emphasize that it is not directed by the Administration in how to spend this money.
I thought I’d seen some really big witch hunts in my life. The Red Scare, Kristallnacht, RussiaGate, Japanese interment, and the Rwandan massacre. The GDI witch hunt puts them all to shame. Here’s their mission statement. https://www.disinformationindex.org/blog/2019-9-22-the-quarter-billion-dollar-question-for-ad-tech/. They’ve gone from local to world wide hunting. The U.S. Government is riding along on the Safari with Joe Biden taking the lead. When they say that China has the right idea they mean it.
Tit, you’re such a liar. The GDI is not a witch-hunt. It’s no different than the freedom indexes many conservative non-profits provide to the public. I don’t know why you insist on making yourself look so stupid. Good grief man.
Svelaz – obviously the GDI is not like the various “freedom indecis” used by conservative groups. GDI’s enemies list is intended to put pressure on advertisers to cancel sponsorship of the targeted thought criminals, similar to the previous attempts of leftists to scare away the sponsors of Tucker Carlson. Sometimes this indirect form of censorship has been successful, e.g., where Direct TV was persuaded to deplatform the OAN network.
When Trump encountered speech he disagreed with as president, he waded in the fray and gave ’em hell. Biden’s instinct is to hide out in the White House living quarters and unleash his anti-free-speech thugs on the American people.
“When Trump encountered speech he disagreed with as president, he waded in the fray and gave ’em hell.”
He also demanded twitter remove critics from the platform. Often directly. I think that’s called censorship.
.Let’s be Honest here, ‘Anonymous..’ Trump wanted the liars removed… vis-a-vis those that just disagreed with him but were Diplomatic in the process…. DISINFORMATION is just a fancy term for: I don’t agree with you and I hate you for your position…enough to lie about you.
You need to learn what censorship is. Twitter was not following Trump’s “calls for”. Therefore there is no censorship. Further there is no proof of Trump influence. That too tells you censorship doesn’t exist.
You should know these things but you don’t.
Matt Taibbi makes the story clear on how censorship has been practiced by Democrats for years, all the while Democrats respond, “but Trump”. Dems are Nazis.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1627657264428457986
Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
There is zero evidence that Trump had any influence on Twitter policies. On the other hand there are massive amounts of evidence that other politicians (including the Republican-Democrat duo of Richard Burr and Mark Warner) did have such influence…
(2/2) So why would I waste my time looking for a dumb, rejected Trump complaint when I know for a fact, from reading the correspondence of the company’s top lawyers, that they’re up at night worrying about the SSCI, (Warner/Burr), HPSCI (Schiff), the FBI/DHS, etc?
Lastly, in the Twitter Files, you should see I’m focused on the bigger story of how institutional digital censorship works. Donald Trump is not and never has been a serious factor in that story. People don’t want to hear it, but the Democrats have been. It’s just a fact.
Also: if the “reputable” media is going to make a capital case out of Chrissy Teigen but completely ignore proof that, say, Trump was being “visibility filtered” before the 2020 election, why should I take any press criticisms seriously?
From the Fox News article linked on the column,
“GDI has also disclosed taking money from Disinfo Cloud, an unclassified and defunct platform through the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Disinfo Cloud was used between 2018 and 2021 by Congress and over a dozen federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Energy, Treasury, and the FBI, according to the State Department.”
…”The State Department told Fox News Digital that the GEC’s work with GDI was limited to disinformation efforts in East Asia and Europe, and the Global Engagement Center does not moderate content on social media platforms. It said that the role of the GEC is to identify foreign state and non-state disinformation narratives and trends that can undermine or influence the policies of the U.S. and its allies and partner nations.”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/state-department-funds-disinformation-index-targeting-non-liberal-and-conservative-news-outlets-report
This was also happening under Trump’s administration. Turley didn’t mention that pertinent fact.
This is an attempt to deflect and enrage gullible Fox News viewers from the news that Fox News has been lying to them about Trump’s election fraud claims and Hunter Biden’s “laptop scandal”.
What is amazing is that it only takes a cursory rummaging thru his links to a little bit of research to find out that Turley is indeed being disingenuous and hypocritical. That’s why he’s criticized and mocked relentlessly. He brings it upon himself and somehow wonders why that is. The only explanation would be a bout of cognitive dissonance on his part. Or just simple ignorance.
Svelaz, on the GDI website they name many large U.S.companies who they say are allowing disinformation in their advertising. With this in mind do you think that GDI is sending a shot across the bow? Does GDI think that it is an influential organization.
Tit, they name a lot of companies. News organizations, government entities, internet sites, basically everything. It’s a global list. Not just conservative or libertarian sites.
Given the recent revelations that Fox News was deliberately lying to their viewers is proof that their index is pretty accurate. Turley would find it difficult to defend Fox News ranking among the top of the list after knowing that Fox News knew Trump’s voter fraud claims were pure BS. THAT is what the GDI informs anyone who reads the index. It allows advertisers to choose whether to advertise with them or not. The point Turley leaves out is that the decision is up to the advertisers. They are not forced by the GDI to not advertise on certain sites as Turley falsely implies.
Svelaz: I agree with everything you said except for your “only explanation”–you forgot the fat paycheck Turley receives from Fox (fake) News. That makes Turley worse than ignorant or engaging in cognitive dissonance–he’s just a cynical paid mouthpiece that has sold his credentials. And, his cynicism is palpable when you carefully read what he writes and uses qualifiers like “assumed”, “appears”, “allegedly” and similar words to prevent getting sued for defamation. He doesn’t even outright claim that “censorship by proxy” and other accusations HAVE occurred–he just states these are “allegedly” or “reportedly” happening, and then launches into a diatribe about how bad this is. And, he conveniently leaves out details showing that Republican office holders did the same thing. That’s why I have no respect for the man anymore.
Let’s talk about monied interest in censorship. The GDI is partially funded by a multi billionaire. Who might that billionaire be you ask? Why none other than George Soros the head of the open society foundation. https://www.disinformationindex.org/about/. They want to protect you from being brainwashed accept when they are doing the brain washing. Soros can do what he wants but when he acts in a financial partnership with the U.S. Government to shut you up not with my tax dollars should be your response.
TiT– Last night in Austin a riot occurred at one of the busiest intersections in town when a large group of people commandeered the intersection, racing about in their cars,spinning out and generally causing chaos. It was far more chaotic and dangerous than January 6. The sky was filled with exploding fireworks. A city council member called 911 when she happened on the scene and she was on hold for 28 minutes. When the police finally did arrive, the crowd turned on them and their cars. Thankfully, only one officer was injured but a number of police and Sheriff’s cars were damaged. It is significant that George Soros bankrolled the DA’s election in Travis County (which includes Austin). The new DA made it clear early on that day-to-day law enforcement is a low priority (except prosecutions of police officers). True to form and in an effort to signal as much virtue as they could muster, the woke city council significantly defunded the police in the wake of the criminal George Floyd’s death. Believe it or not, there are criminals in our society. We know that very few crimes are committed in the actual presence of police officers. It follows, that if police are removed, as in Austin, crime is likely to follow. Last night was but one example.
It seems to me that we are winning. The Catholic Church has taught for millennia, per New Testament Scriptures and St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, that the laws of God are written in the hearts of people, i.e. natural law. It could be that we are witnessing the pendulum starting to swing back. It might be because those individuals, many that there have been and will continue to be, who live by urges, fits and self-destructive appetites, are seeing that eventually the rush of it all wears off. The party becomes a drag, then a dirge, much like the early 2000s with the gay male population and HIV. They are seeing that the damage from these appetites is destructive. I do not think that people who are now condemning the Left, the Woke, the alphabet BLM ANTIFA CRT LGBTQIA crowd, have received instruction from any monolithic source. I think inwardly they are starting to conclude: “this is all bad…..just as we were told” (natural law). With every time the Left judges, condemns, excommunicates and labels their critics as “bad”, they are proving that “bad” does exist. Recall that the Left, since the 1960s has excoriated the Catholic Church for being judgmental, dogmatic and rigid. Pot. Kettle. Black. People are now seeing that the Left is every bit as intolerant, hateful and dogmatic as those whom they have attacked for decades. Worse actually, there is no redemption in the Church of Woke, and nothing sacred nor life giving. They are eunuchs, as I have stated many times on here. They have no offspring.
Case in point is the Trans issue. It is instructive that the UK Guardian, a leftist rag, has published a favorable review of a new book written by a BBC reporter. The subject of the book is on the lies that took place, and subsequent horrific damage that resulted in children, in the UK Gender Identity Development Service for children (Gids), at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London. The Guardian book review is eye opening.
Perhaps the pendulum is swinging back to people realizing that natural law exists, and deviating from it has deadly consequences like defunding the police in Austin.
Time to Think by Hannah Barnes review – what went wrong at Gids?
As Barnes makes perfectly clear, this isn’t a culture war story. This is a medical scandal, the full consequences of which may only be understood in many years’ time…..times, the world Barnes describes, with its genitalia fashioned from colons and its fierce culture of omertà, feels like some dystopian novel. But it isn’t, of course. It really happened, and she has worked bravely and unstintingly to expose it. This is what journalism is for.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids
Estovir……..Outstanding comment!
The list of GDI funders is a Who’s Who of Democrat millionaire and billionaire donors. Yes, George Soros’s Open Society foundation.
But also the foundation of the guy who founded Craig’s List, Craig Newmark. Then there’s the Bohemian Foundation, founded by a member of the lucky sperm club, Pat Stryker, who inherited billions created by her grandfather who founded the Stryker medical equipment empire.
She and three other Colorado millionaires are often called the Four Horsemen, who effectively bought themselves the Colorado legislature by spending heavily on Democrats who support their homosexual agenda. A different Stryker member of the lucky sperm club has used the billions he inherited to create a vast global activist network to normalize homosexuality.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-billionaires-behind-the-lgbt-movement
One of the ironies is that Ann Applebaum is listed as a member of the GDI advisory panel. It’s hard to identify anyone more involved in pushing the Hillary Clinton and Democrat National Committee funded Russia collusion hoax, yet GDI has invited Applebaum to be an advisor to it – an organization that claims to be concerned about disinformation.
Why any organization funded by taxpayers is shoveling money to GDI given the wealth of its donors makes no sense.
Ooohhh its that evil Soros. Oh no what a travesty! LOL!! Tit you’re a riot. Your paranoia is certainly entertaining.
The majority of news organizations in the U.S. are owned by Billionaires. Fox News who just got caught lying to it’s audience and the nation is owned and run by a billionaire. Continuing to peddle Trump’s lies about the election while knowing full well his claims were not true is censorship of the truth. The fact that all of Fox News most popular personalities all knew Trump was full of $hit and still allowed his BS to pass as legitimate claims says a lot about the network. They take their viewers for fools and gullible idiots who are good for ratings. That’s pretty bad in itself.
Daniel,
It has been fun to watch MSM attempt to smear DeSantis and he keeps out maneuvering them with things like facts.
The American president least capable of speech since our nation was founded has become the president most involved in censoring the speech of Americans who disagree with the government.
In some instances, taxpayers have standing to sue the government to prevent an unconstitutional use of taxpayer funds. See Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968). I would think that applies even where the funds go to overseas organizations to help them violate First Amendment rights at home. I wonder if a taxpayer would have standing to bring a court challenge to this particular unconstitutional program?
Good question. As we’ve seen from this administration, the strategy is always to “nudge” the cultural and thus the political needle to the Left before they get shutdown by the Courts. This is going to sound hyperbolic, but didn’t the rise of the Third Reich begin by nudging the culture to demonize and persecute small groups. By moving the culture, they were able to move the politics, which ultimately led the culture to support the annihilation of Jews and any dissenters. Even the Courts might be too slow to stop this cultural shift.
” Even the Courts might be too slow to stop this cultural shift.”
You got that right, and that is one reason one sometimes has to curb their ideological preferences to prevent complete disaster. We now have Biden. Will we be able to recover?
Will we be able to recover?
Will we? Our experiment has been uncharted, so I don’t know to what extent we’ll recover. The good news is we know what is possible given the right set of circumstances. The bad news is the right set of circumstances don’t seem to come about without hitting rock bottom (including war). As far as that goes, I believe we’re somewhere in the 1760’s phase of US history, or the 1930’s stage of German history.
“The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a particularly insidious part of that effort. Funded in part by $330 million from the U.S. State Department through the National Endowment for Democracy (which contributes to GDI’s budget), the GDI was designed to steer advertisers and subscribers away from “risky” sites which it says pose “reputational and brand risk” and to help companies avoid “financially supporting disinformation online.”
Turley needs to check his facts. The state department is not giving the GDI $330 million. That is not what the article he cites for his column is saying. It’s $330,000. That’s 330 THOUSAND dollars.
“The Examiner reported the group “has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government” and is “likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars.”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/state-department-funds-disinformation-index-targeting-non-liberal-and-conservative-news-outlets-report
One of those entities is the National Endowment for Democracy which paid for part of that $330,000 in grants.
CONGRESS appropriated the funds to the state department. It has been funding that program long before Biden. In fact it was singed into law by Ronald Reagan and voted on by republicans multiple times since 1983.
Turley is either a liar or an idiot for not realizing that the amount given was NOT $330 million , but $330,000 and that was split between two private non-profits. he should correct that glaring error OR ironically call it what it is disinformation.
The index is no different than those “freedom indexes” libertarian organizations put out so that people or companies can choose to use when deciding which states, countries, or legislators, ranked by those indexes are worthy of their money, ads, or support. The GDI is no different. It doesn’t tell you NOT to advertise or who to avoid that’s a false claim being made by Turley and those critical of the GDI. It only ranks organizations based on the amount of disinformation they put out. The choice whether to advertise is still left to the advertisers. Turley is being a disingenuous hypocrite as usual.
Svelaz, the Professor clearly stated that GDI is funded “in part” by the U.S. Why should the U.S. Government be funding an organization bent on censorship at all. Here’s something you have trouble understanding. It’s the principle of it.
Tit, you have trouble understanding. The GDI is not censoring anything. All they do is provide information and an index for anyone to use. Clearly you don’t comprehend what you read.
“Turley is either a liar or an idiot “
(Without commenting on Professor Turley’s simple typo)
The continuous flow of information by Svelaz, repeatedly proven wrong, makes one wonder what is going on in Svelaz’s head, if anything.
Many blame his problem on a congenital disorder of the mind, moral degeneracy or simple stupidity. Shiela brought in another dimension to the problem. Is Svelaz a product of demoralization?
How does Svelaz fit into what Besmanov said? I am not concluding, but I find the following interesting.
“Besmanov said the Soviet method of demoralization targets:
* The ability to understand morality and right from wrong …
Demoralization is a totalitarian tactic that destroys the ability of people to resist. …
You cannot prove to them that white is white and black is black. …
condition people so they can no longer tell true from false. … they can’t tell real from fake …
Demoralization is the process of breaking somebody down so they enter a totalitarian cult. …
it’s also the inability to perceive reality. …”
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/02/18/gallup-fifty-percent-of-american-believe-media-lies-to-promote-agenda/comment-page-3/#comments
The above is worth reading or listen to Bezmenov yourself.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=interview+with+Besmanov.&t=osx&ia=web
S. Meyer, yet you have not proven me wrong. All you have is insults. You’re too ignorant to discuss substance.
Svelaz: “The index is no different than those “freedom indexes” libertarian organizations put out so that people or companies can choose to use when deciding which states, countries, or legislators, ranked by those indexes are worthy of their money, ads, or support.”
And soooooo… which of those freedom indices get federal funding?
Proving you wrong is easy. Getting you to listen or respond to fact is impossible, so why should I waste the time. I did so in the past. However, since you want evidence follow the link to many comments that demonstrate your bone-headedness.
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/02/12/is-the-red-scare-going-blue-democrats-accuse-government-critics-of-being-putin-lovers-and-supporting-insurrectionists/comment-page-3/#comment-2262626
Start with your own comment and then look at the comments that follow. See if you can prove any of them wrong.
“Disinformation” appears based on what GDI and the Biden administration believe to be the truth.
They could not care less about truth. Their definition of “disinformation” is whatever departs from their narrative.
The suppression of speech is being undertaken by a coalition composed of CCP-bought off politicians in DC, aligned with China, and our own intel community. All of it has the fingerprints of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s how they roll in China. Our own sociopathic overlords LOVE the brutal, illegitimate CCP regime and are emulating their successes here. But it isn’t going to work IMHO.
“Otherwise, we may have succeeded in ridding the government of the “Mary Poppins of Disinformation” but not of her underlying philosophy.”
Oh, it’s not a secret she went to Britain. I’d be very surprised if this isn’t something she’s involved in, as I have said. The irony is thick – this country was founded in rebellion against totalitarian Britain; modern dems have aligned themselves with totalitarian Britain to return our country to totalitarianism hundreds of years later. There is quite literally nothing good remaining in our dem party. Privilege and ideology have squeezed the soul right out.
This type of circumvention of our Constitution is never going to cease on their part. Despicable on every level. We are in for a long and bumpy ride, methinks.
James,
Just read an article about a taxpayer UK study that concluded books by Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Tennyson, Orwell, Huxley, Kipling and Edmund Burke could be “key texts” for “white nationalists/supremacists”.
Really.
Shakespeare and Chaucer? Someone explain that one to me. Too many “White Europeans?”
Orwell and Huxley? What? For the Leftists to get called out for the parallels?
@Upstate
Well, these days anything a millimeter to the side from CRT is ‘white supremacy’ to these ignorant fools, so i’m not surprised, though I am saddened. A few more authors to hang onto old copies of. Madness. Guess things like Othello don’t count. Oh wait, they haven’t actually *read* any of these books! And that is the thing that really bothers me – even a great many older liberals these days haven’t even bothered to investigate the sources of their ire up close, i.e.: how many angry dems do you think have actually read or even *seen* something like the ‘banned’ Gender Queer in real life? Likely very few. I doubt the trolls here could quote anything from it verbatim off the top of their heads, either. Anyway.
Whenever I see a right wing rant about free speech I want to laugh, scream and just plane wonder where they have been while right wing billionaires have bought up huge swathes of the media combining radio, television and print. They send out scrips for the news all over the country to make sure the news is reported in the same biased language in as many markets as possible. And the the same free speech champions hold high the image of of all people Elon Musk. It’s insane but then it’s not surprising.
Free speech is absolutely key to a functioning democracy unfortunately the right wing only believes in free speech for the monied few and their supporters. They buy legislatures who work hard to strip communities of the right to have a say in what they want for their communities because those community view might eat into the profits of their owners. They freeze out those who oppose their theocratic views that aim to target women and those who views on sexuality might not fit their own credo.
If we going to talk free speech let’s talk DiSantis and his don’t say gay or his lists of LGTBQ students in Florida universities just as an example. Or let’s talk about the gag rule on doctors to stop them just talking about abortion.
But of course they are Republicans, Libertarians and the KOCHS among others so that’s ok!
Justice Holmes is always so inflamed about Republican big money interests but here’s something he has never voiced his concern about. https://www.salon.com/2016/10/08/in-paid-speeches-hillary-clinton-said-she-represented-and-had-great-relations-with-wall-street/.
TiT,
He also skips out the part that 90% of the media is controlled by 6 companies/conglomerates.
5 lean hard left.
The 6th is Fox.
Oh, yeah, and the WaPo is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Lets just ignore that fact.
There is no “dont say gay” wording in the so-called (intentionally misdescribed) “dont say gay” bill. Do your research and dont be a parrot.
Don’t delve into anything Holmes says. He thought Justice Sotomayor was a man and never corrected himself.
We will soon have the usual suspects defending state-sponsored censorship. They will attempt to do this by arguing definitions, what-abouts, equity, and so on. All of this will be to deflect attention away from the government’s advancing unconstitutional methods to violate the 1st amendment.
Have at least one unbreakable ground rule for this debate: there is no legitimate defense for government-enabled censorship. That means do not respond to these trolls…period.
Ollly – agreed . . . and it took all of 13 minutes for for your prediction to come true (see above)
oldman, it was like predicting the sun coming up in the east. Sad to say however, we will have the usual “conservative” suspects that will still get sucked into a debate with them.
Olly – I have had a back-and-forth with conservatives on this forum about that. My preference would be for everyone to ignore them, but one or two others have said to me that they see value in pushing back.
oldman,
I’ve had the same back-and-forth with them and getting the same result. Usually the value they are talking about revolves around how others not participating in the discussions might “learn” from such a debate. Maybe that’s true. But I can honestly tell you I no longer read the trolls and usually don’t read replies to the trolls.
Olly,
Well said.
It is their usual, there is nothing to see here, even though it is taking place.
They are just too brainwashed to see the obvious.
Not a surprise, considering what we know about the Biden administration and the Democratic Party in general. It still shocks me, even at this stage of revelation, that Democrats as a group are not married to the concept of free speech and will manipulate it for political gain. Beyond tragic.
I don’t think that this is Mr. Biden’s program at all. I doubt everyone on this column thinks that this program has been dreamed up by the presently senile and addled President. My own opinion is that he is nothing but a catspaw of the former president Barack Obama. We have just seen where Susan Rice (I’m sure we all remember her and her press conferences on Benghazi) has been appointed to spearhead the transformation of the entire Federal Government into the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity world. No bills passed to implement this, no consent of congress, cabinet level post not requiring senate approval. That administration was total obfuscation and it continues.
The real question is what are we going to do about it and how much is it going to cost us in the end in treasure, power and prestige as a nation, survival or worse.
The Republicans are going to have to come up with someone as unyielding and long term. This is a long political war. Trump is too much of narcissistic simpleton to fight this battle. He was the canary in the mine. We need a lot more now.If the Republicans want to win this battle they need to grab both houses and the presidency in 2024, trash the filibuster and launch a full blown counterattack and dismantling of a significant portion of the federal government.
GEB, this sounds right to me. The only potential candidate smart and tough enough to do this is DeSantis.
GEB, I do not think that President Biden came up with many, if any, of the policies of his Administration. To me, it seems like Obama 3.0. Remember that Obama stated that he wanted to fundamentally change our country. Now, with a complicit MSM, a Marxist movement is gaining momentum more rapidly than I could have imagined. We need a well-coordinated, grassroots effort to launch the counter-attack. Republicans should be leading the effort – WAKE UP AMERICA!
Catherine, we know that when Obama came into office, he was prepared for service by various leftists and became the chosen one. Obama is the name, and now is one of the voices, but I don’t know if we can say who has control of Biden’s political authority.
Biden has appointed people based on race and sex who have very little understanding of our knowledge, so much of what is happening might be political economy due to flakey ideas. Biden’s glider is floating to an eventual crash.
The government gives THREE HUNDRED MILLION to GDI and GDI tells advertisers that sites like Reason and Realclear should be avoided…and people like Svelaz and Anonymous think that’s fine???? The government has EIGHTY FBI agents working on the censorship front lines…and Svelaz and Anonymous thinks that is fine????
Maybe Svelaz and Anonymous commenting here 200 times a column are part of this THREE HUNDRED MILLION and EIGHTY AGENT program. Why else would these two never, not once, agree with Turley or disagree with the state? Would that be possible in a real world of issues and debates. I disagreed with Trump many times, I disagree with DeSantis once in awhile, I disagree with Lindsey Graham often, I disagree with MYG and Lauren Boebert on many things, but these two never disagree with the party in control of our government…why is that?
Hullbobby, as usual you are hyperventilating over nonsense. The government is NOT giving the GDI three hundred million. The government, congress, passed legislation funding a program that has bipartisan support AND is a legacy of Ronald Reagan. A very small grant was given to the group that created the GDI. Republicans have voted to fund this program. Turley doesn’t mention it because it would be inconvenient for the goal of his narrative.
What you are demonstrating is total ignorance. You don’t know what you are talking about and you have no idea what this program does. No wonder Fox News relies on folks like you. You are so easily led and gullible when someone of “credible authority” tells you something and accept it at face value.
The GDI does not tell advertisers not to do business with the organizations on the list. The only people saying that are those who are deliberately engaging in actual misinformation about what the GDI is about. All it does is rank organizations according to how often they engage in or disseminate misinformation that clearly is. Just look at Fox News, they are clearly not wrong when it comes to the ranking it gets after the fact that they have been lying to their viewers while knowing their reporting on the election fraud claims was not what Trump or his allies claimed. Tucker Carlson himself called out Trump lawyer Sidney Powell a liar while still peddling her BS on his show.
Turley still hasn’t brought up this massive failure of journalistic integrity and ethics which completely overshadows any of his criticisms of other media.
“Why else would these two never, not once, agree with Turley or disagree with the state?”
Because Turley is doing EXACTLY what Fox News did with the election fraud claims. He’s been doing EXACTLY the same thing Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham did. They KNEW the information they were reporting was pure BS and kept peddling it because ratings are more important. Turley is always proud of how many millions of views his site gets, precisely because he is peddling the same BS and hypocrisy that Fox News viewers love to be fed.
HullBobby,
Good job.
You called it.
The usual suspects, spreading their misinformation and disinformation to defend da party.
Hillbobby says,
“The government gives THREE HUNDRED MILLION to GDI…”
No they didn’t. Two private non-profit gave $330,000. One of which was the national endowment for democracy that is given a grant from the state department. It’s funding that has been voted by republicans and democrats since 1983.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/state-department-funds-disinformation-index-targeting-non-liberal-and-conservative-news-outlets-report
hullhobby: If we only knew the depths to which the Left and all of their accomplices (inside the government as well as outside) go to ruin our country and culture, we would likely be shocked. Paid “professional protestors”? There’s money floating around which would be easily tracked by a government agency e.g. the FBI, that truly cared about our citizens and their safety. If the truth were known, I am guessing that Soros gets major FREE MONEY at his dozens of NGOs and then uses it against all things that make up Western Civilization. All with the blessing of the Obama crew during his third term in office.
Fair minded, free thinking consumers (really, all consumers) should think twice about where and what they purchase. Support small, local businesses if possible or at least ones who are not participating in political and social activism. Support companies who chose not to ship manufacturing to offshore sweatshops.
I used to watch a lot of movies in the theater. I’ve seen one Hollywood production in the past three or four years. It was Top Gun. It was insanely popular and successful. Why? It entertained. It didn’t preach. Outside of a handful of well-produced series, television programming is uninteresting. If I watch movies or series, it is usually older productions.
We live in a bizarre era of time and the malfeasance and insanity escalates. Those with the levers of control do not have good intentions for mankind. They despise free thought, free speech and freedom of mind.
It is not surprising they do not tolerate debate and free speech. When you stand on truth, you have nothing to fear from transparency and scrutiny. When it is untruth or half truths it cannot stand alone and thus the liar resorts to subterfuge.
@EM
I’m all for it, but: since the lockdown, where I am, small businesses are out of business. Most of what is left are chains; there is just one gigantic school district encompassing the whole city. It’s impossible to support alternatives when there aren’t any, and I think that’s the idea.
James,
I recall an LA Times article early on in the COVID lockdowns.
They were interviewing small business owners and how the lockdowns affected them.
One, a florist, her business was declared non essential and forced to close. While Wal-Mart remained open and even began carrying flowers.
The COVID lockdowns was the greatest wealth transfer in history. Lot of big box stores, on line stores made huge amounts of money while thousands of small businesses were forced closed.
“[A]ny site that GDI views as offering ‘adversarial narratives.’ Disinformation can include anything that is ‘financially or ideologically motivated’ … ‘foster[s] long-term social, political or economic conflict’ or simply creates ‘a risk of harm by undermining trust in science or targeting at-risk individuals or institutions.'”
It would be a lot simpler, clearer, and more honest if the Biden administration paid GDI to write: “Disinformation is any opinion that the Left doesn’t like. And if you don’t agree with us, we have 80 FBI agents to persuade you.”
Sam, the Biden administration is NOT paying the GDI. It’s a private non-profit that granted part of a $330,000 grant. The money was appropriated by congress and voted by republicans since 1983. That non-profit is the National Endowment for Democracy. It’s a legacy of Ronald Reagan.
“[T]he Biden administration is NOT paying the GDI.”
Now you’re just lying.
The Biden administration is laundering money to achieve censorship: From the State Department to NED to GDI.
It matters not one whit who did it, who approved the funding, or the amount of the censorship money. It’s the *principle* — free speech versus government censorship.
Sam, the GDI does not censor anything. It’s an index. It’s just a list ranking organizations according to the amount of disinformation they produce. It does NOT force anyone to adhere to the list. It’s there for anyone to look at and decide whether to make a choice based on the index or not. The heritage foundation does the same thing with their freedom indexes. Are they telling others not to support liberal leaning organizations? Wouldn’t that be censorship?
[T]he GDI does not censor anything. It’s an index.”
Why do you keep evading the *government* agency behind the curtain?
If I torch a building, I’m guilty of arson. If I hire someone to torch a building, I’m guilty of arson.
A “Good Citizen” score ? Seriously ? This sounds hauntingly like the Chinese Government’s Social Credit score (at least to me anyway). The Biden Administration’s relentless pursuit of censorship in America, with the assistance of Merrick Garland’s DOJ and his loyal little foot soldiers at the FBI, are determined to crush dissent any way they can. Honestly, I think they would circumvent a Supreme Court decision against them by simply issuing another Presidential Executive Order. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article and for keeping this critical issue front & center.
“Congress should ban the use of federal funds…” This should be how the House proceeds. It should exclude from its appropriations any funding for ideological NGOs such as these as well as any DEI staffing and programs. The power of the purse is theirs to wield. They should use it. Everything else is just talk.