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Fox News host Tucker Carlson called attention to White House press secretary Jen Psaki effectively suggesting that Spotify should take further action to censor Joe Rogan, calling it “one of the amazing moments in politics.”
Psaki was commenting on Spotify adding disclaimers to Rogan’s podcasts, calling it a “positive step,” before saying “there’s more that can be done.” President Biden’s spokesperson also said the White House hopes “all major tech platforms — and all major news sources for that matter — be responsible and be vigilant to ensure the American people have access to accurate information on something as significant as COVID-19 … That certainly includes Spotify.”
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to warn of an “explicit strategy” by Democrats to use corporate allies to censor free speech, which is a violation of the First Amendment.
Carlson noted that for years now, apologists who look the other way at censorship have argued that there is no such violation as long as the government is not involved.
“But here you have the government, the president’s own spokeschair, demanding censorship,” he said. “And then the company obeying –Spotify removed 70 episodes of Joe Rogan’s show. This seems like a crime.”
“Obviously that comment [by Psaki] that you just referenced is in and of itself disturbing. Why should the White House be weighing in at all on who they think should be on Spotify, who they think should not be what they think Spotify should and shouldn’t be doing about their podcast host?” Greenwald said.
“But it’s even more alarming when you consider that it’s actually part of a broad pattern, even an explicit strategy by Democrats to use their majority in power in Washington to coerce companies to censor for them in ways the Constitution would prohibit,” he continued. “They’ve repeatedly subpoenaed social media companies and explicitly said If you don’t start censoring more, you will face legal and regulatory reprisals.”
Greenwald reminded Carlson of Twitter competitor Parlor being taking off the internet after U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called out Google and Apple to take action against the social media platform for allegedly allowing calls for violence.
“So this is exactly the kind of coercion that the Supreme Court has said in the First Amendment that the government can’t engage in without violating the First Amendment,” he noted.
Carlson observed that while these are private businesses, they are not acting independently but “in response to the threats of government that regulates them.
“I think this is one of the key most overlooked parts of the whole censorship debate is these Silicon Valley companies never set out to want to censor — why would they? Why would you want to kick people off your platform?” Greenwald replied. “You want more people on your platform. And ideologically, they came out of Silicon Valley, which is about the free internet. So why are they now doing it? It’s in part because they got pressured by journalists from the New York Times and NBC saying, ‘If you don’t censor, you have blood on your hands and you’re responsible for the destruction of democracy,'”
“But a big reason is they know that Democrats will start enacting laws and enforcing regulation against them if they don’t censor more,” he said. “And they know that because Democrats are saying it explicitly over and over.”
Censorship has become a major concern in America today, especially for conservative outlets. The broad pattern Greenwald spoke of includes alleged “fact-checkers” pursuing a liberal agenda.
Newsguard is one of these so-called fact-checkers, positioning itself as an “internet trust tool.” The company’s software displays a sort of report card or “Nutritional Label” when you visit a news website, as American Wire News previously reported.
Here’s more from that story:
The report card purports to rate the site’s trustworthiness and legitimacy. But the criterion is a joke. A so-called “respected journalist” contacts editors of sites to bully them into complying with the organization’s made-up legitimacy standards — or else they get a bad rating. This “misinformation scam” is similar to some of the fake fact-checkers on Facebook who “add context” to stories that don’t comply with their left-wing agenda. Newsguard politely and smugly tries to blackmail sites into adding a liberal narrative to the content. Comply or they will give you a bad mark. They “fact-check” opinions and decide how the content of a site should be labeled. You can find stories that detail examples of this all over the web.
To get a feel for how Newsguard grades news sites, the company released it’s “Best and Worst of 2021,” and listed The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, NPR and USA Today among the top ten sites “that earned a perfect 100 score.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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