MRC President Brent Bozell left no doubt about what he thinks is the “greatest threat” to freedom right now.
WMAL had Bozell on both The Chris Plante Show and O’Connor and Company where he discussed Big Tech censorship and freedom of speech. With radio host Chris Plante, Bozell stressed how concerning it is to see censorship in the United States despite the First Amendment on Thursday.
“[C]ensorship is the greatest threat to freedom in the world in the history of mankind,” Bozell told Plante. Larry O’Connor, Patrice Onwuka and Bozell discussed Big Tech bias and fake fact-checkers on Friday. “[A]ll these organizations all say they’re objective impartial platforms. This is absolutely nonsense,” said Bozell.
Plante and Bozell underscored the importance of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. “You are involved, as we all ought to be right now, fighting censorship in the United States of America. I never could have imagined that we would reach this point in the United States,” Plante said. Bozell shared Plante’s sentiment.
“No other nation in the world has freedom of speech enshrined in its id, enshrined in its natural definition. We do,” Bozell said. “[N]not only do we have it, but it is the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is the single most important thing to our country and yet [censorship is] happening in our country.”
Bozell noted that if users want access to the audiences of millions – and in the case of Facebook billions – of users and the assets of using social media platforms, they must “follow the narrative of the left.” “You must say this, you may not talk about this, you may not sell a confederate flag, you may not support the traditional family, you may not criticize transgenders or you’ll be banished,” he said.
He also noted the irreversible impact of censorship when it came to the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story that was heavily blocked and suppressed by Twitter and Facebook. “If these guys had allowed free speech in the United States of America, Joe Biden wouldn’t be president,” he said, citing an MRC poll.
The 2020 poll found that 45 percent of President Joe Biden’s voters weren’t fully aware of the New York Post story because the media and Big Tech whitewashed it. Had Americans been fully aware of the scandal, 9.4 percent of Biden voters would have abandoned Biden, flipping all six of the swing states he won to former President Donald Trump, giving Trump a victorious 311 electoral votes.
The MRC president talked with hosts O’Connor and Onwuka of O’Connor and Company about insidious fact-checking sites spoiling freedom of speech. Onwuka noted that so-called fact-checkers have become a “cottage industry” in the post-Trump era. “Before Trump the only fact checks people ever knew about was maybe Snopes … to debunk is it true, x, y and z,” she said. But now, “these fact checks are so biased and another tool by the mainstream media to silence conservative voices.”
Bozell agreed, noting that there are numerous “dishonest” fact-checking organizations like the Global Disinformation Index, the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network and NewsGuard. “They all purport to be purveyors of truth when, in fact, every single one is a left-wing organization, and this is what’s so fundamentally dishonest about the news media today,” he said.
Bozell added that, like these fact-checkers, Big Tech platform’s so-called objectivity and impartiality is “nonsense” but the platforms use the guise of impartiality to take advantage of special government protections.
“[C]ongress needs to look at these special protections that they’ve been giving them as impartial sites. They are not impartial,” he said. “They don’t need these special protections. They need to be held to account just as The New York Times is, just as The Washington Times is, just as Salem Network is.”
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 at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
