A major media association presented its First Amendment Awards ceremony on Saturday which featured woke media personalities who have been anything but champions of free speech.
The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) Foundation invited MSNBC host and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to be the Master of Ceremonies for the First Amendment Awards even though she has openly supported censorship from the White House press briefing podium. RTDNA also honored Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who has downplayed government Big Tech collusion to censor content, and CBS President Ingrid Ciprián-Matthews, who has come under fire for allegedly firing veteran CBS journalist Catherine Herridge.
Psaki, who did not receive an award but had the honor of emceeing the event, has not been shy about encouraging censorship. During a July 15, 2021 White House press briefing, she specifically called for more censorship. “Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts—posts that will be within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That’s too long,” she said.
During the same briefing, she strongly implied that Facebook should censor certain accounts whose content supposedly made up 65 percent of so-called anti-vaccine misinformation on social media. “All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms [...] ones that Facebook owns,” Psaki said.
She even went so far as to brag that the White House was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
RTDNA hailed Rep. Raskin for “his tireless support for press freedoms during his time in Congress.” But his support for press freedoms did not extend to the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden Laptop story when Big Tech censored the outlet.
After The Twitter Files uncovered that the FBI reportedly colluded with Big Tech to censor the story, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing to investigate government collusion with Big Tech to censor the New York Post story. At the time, Raskin, the committee’s ranking member, called the hearing “silly” and “an authentically trivial pursuit.”
“The majority has called a hearing to revisit a two-year-old story about a private editorial decision by Twitter not to allow links to a single New York Post article made for a two-day period that had no discernible influence on anyone or anything,” he lamented. But a 2020 MRC poll found that just the opposite is true. A 2020 MRC poll showed that 45 percent of President Joe Biden’s voters weren’t fully aware of the New York Post story precisely because the media and Big Tech whitewashed it. Had Americans been aware of the scandal, 9.4 percent of Biden voters in key swing states would have abandoned him, ultimately altering the 2020 election results.
The Foundation also honored CBS News's Ciprián-Matthews for her “leadership” and alleged “commitment to excellent and ethical journalism,” despite the fact that she is currently embroiled in scandal for reportedly playing favorites at CBS.
Ciprián-Matthews has been criticized for her hiring and firing practices concerning alleged anti-white racial discrimination, which came under scrutiny during a six-month human resources investigation in 2021, according to the Post.
The criticism reached a boiling point last month when CBS fired Catherine Herridge, whose reporting of the Biden family scandals triggered an internal outcry.
The Post broke the story of Herridge’s contentious firing. Sources reportedly told the Post that, “Herridge had clashed with CBS News president Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews — a sharp-elbowed executive who was investigated in 2021 over favoritism and discriminatory hiring and management practices, as revealed by The Post.”
The Post stressed how well respected Herridge was by her viewers, fellow journalists and sources: “It was well understood on Capitol Hill that Herridge was among the first to receive tips about the Hunter Biden investigation but she ran into ‘internal roadblocks at CBS News.’”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency and an 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.
