Sherman R. Frederick/Properly Subversive

If you think the Biden Administration did not censor speech during the pandemic, then there’s a chance you drank the water at Camp Lejeune. You may be entitled to immediate compensation.

Sherman Frederick

The prevailing truth is that from the time of feather pens to modern cell phones, government administrations have worked hard to spin the news. And most of it is fair play in a free society.

But intellectual fascists who inhabit the Biden Administration took it to an inappropriate level during the COVID pandemic. It’s detailed, chapter and verse, in a case before the Supreme Court called Murthy v. Missouri.

Various arms of the government – the FBI, the DOJ, and the White House – pressured social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to throttle posts by people who contradicted the Biden Administration’s line on the pandemic. You remember: Close schools. Wear masks. Quarantine the sick and elderly. Get vaxxed, or else.

THEN TWITTER SOLD

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, he discovered a paper trail showing more than a government arguing for its side of how to handle the pandemic. It showed an un-holy interaction of forced suppression of free speech. While the evidence was fresh and undisturbed, he smartly invited credible third party journalists to take a look.

Matt Taibbi was one of them. A former editor of the Rolling Stone, he sifted through the interactions and concluded the Biden Administration wasn’t just jawboning with social media companies about the pandemic, arguing the government’s stake on pandemic issues. The Biden crew engaged in “industrial” sized moderation demands, using Section 230 as bully club to ensure not only attention, but absolute compliance. In other words, censorship.

THE BULLY CLUB

What is Section 230?

Well, it is that part of the Communications Decency Act that allows social media companies to exist as we know them today. Essentially, it protects platforms from liability for the things third parties (that’s you, by the way) say on those platforms.

Believe me when I tell you that when I published the largest newspaper in Nevada and a group of other newspapers around the country, we had to edit and fact check everything we published from letters to the editor and statements made by anonymous sources.

But Section 230 let Facebook, Twitter et al exempt from liability. Had they been held to traditional publishing rules, the business model for these big Internet platforms would have imploded.

MURTHY V. MISSOURI

In the Murthy v. Missouri case now before the Supreme Court evidence shows that the Biden Administration demanded answers for why certain posts were allowed to stay up.

“I want an answer, I want it right away,” one email from the government to Twitter read.

Another suggested Facebook let the government come up for rules on what is legitimate posts: “Why don’t you tell us everything that you’re going to do so we can help you and we can look it over?”

Justice Samuel A. Alito during oral arguments said he couldn’t imagine “federal officials taking that approach to the print media.”

He added: “The only reason why this is taking place is because the federal government has got Section 230 and antitrust in its pocket and it’s, to mix my metaphors, and it’s got these big clubs available to it. And so it’s treating Facebook and these other platforms like they’re subordinates. Would you do that to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Associated Press or any other big newspaper or wire service?”

Justice Alito is on the right path of inquiry. It’s one thing for the government to make its case on pandemic protocol. It’s quite another to use Section 230 (wink-wink, nod nod) to force private businesses to violate citizen rights to free speech.

WACKADOODLES

Unfortunately, Justice Alito may be in the minority. Consider the youngest and newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. She posited a hypothetical in which a new fad on social media dares kids to jump out of windows. Doesn’t the government have a “duty,” to censor such posts, she asked, adding:

“I’ve heard you say a couple times that the government can post its own speech, but in my hypothetical, ‘Kids, this is not safe, don’t do it,’ is not going to get it done. And so, I guess, some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country. And you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information. So, can you help me, because I’m really worried about that, because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”

Justice Jackson suggests the government must retain the right to forcibly shutter speech in times of crisis if it deems the information inaccurate or dangerous.

Hoo-boy. My liberal friends may sit by in the comfort of knowing it is the Biden wackadoodles who currently define inaccurate and dangerous. Will they feel the same if Trump is re-elected?

FREE SPEECH

It’s clear to me we need the court to provide some common-sense guidance on how far the government may go when sparring with private media businesses about proper content. What went on here was a perversion of how I want my country to behave. Clear guidance needed. And please, let Justice Alito write the rules, not Justice Jackson.

ONE MORE THING

– Have you noticed that no one gives up college basketball for Lent?

Sherman R. Frederick is a longtime Nevada writer and a member of the Nevada Press Association’s Hall of Fame. You can find more of his work a shermanfrederick.substack.com/.