NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck and MRC contributing writer Stephanie Hamill were guests on Friday's Fox News at Night for a segment on Big Tech censorship, and how House Republicans are digging in to investigate how free speech was squelched during the COVID pandemic.
TRACE GALLAGHER: Curtis we knew in the very height of the pandemic, the CDC was telling Big Tech who and what to censor. Jim Jordan's subpoena reads in part the following, quoting here: "It is necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which the CDC coerced, pressured, worked with or relied upon social media and other tech companies in order to censor speech." So, now, it's about the extent of the censoring.
CURTIS HOUCK: Yes, exactly, Trace. This is the teeth that conservatives and my colleagues at Free Speech America and my boss Brent Bozell have been calling for, for years. What did the CDC know? When did they know it? You know, we at News Busters documented last year 275 million examples of second-hand censorship, many of that involving the CDC and COVID-19, a lot of the coordination that conservatives have felt for years. And I would just say that we've documented here only 5,400 examples on our Censor Track database of censorship. So, Americans deserve answers.
Hamill added that "the Twitter Files really exposed a lot of what many of us already knew was going on, but now it's official. Now there was actual evidence to show that maybe the possibility of the government persuading, having Big Tech censoring conservatives and dissenting voices."
They also discussed how ABC News interviewed Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on their streaming service, but Linsey Davis explained to viewers that they edited out what they considered to be misinformation on the negative health effects of vaccines.
Houck said you had to appreciate ABC's transparency in announcing what they had decided was too dangerously wrong to include, but that doesn't mean "the speech should be silenced." Hamill called it "an egregious violation of journalistic ethics," that Kennedy is running for president and should have a right to share his views.
