Townhall’s Takedown of the New York Times Disinformation on Biden’s Pressure on Big Tech

Townhall’s Brad Slager posted a great takedown of The New York Times fulminating on Wednesday against the ruling in Missouri vs. Biden, curtailing the administration’s pressure on Big Tech to censor people: “The press – who love to announce they are charged through the First Amendment to hold the leaders of this country accountable – are decrying the fact that the government is being told to stop trampling on the First Amendment rights of citizens.”

That’s because the press thinks the First Amendment is written specifically for them and not for the rest of the citizenry. Certain citizens should be curtailed so that the “quality information” of the media isn’t spoiled by the “misinforming” rabble.

Reporters Michael Shear and David McCabe wrote a piece headlined “Ruling Puts Social Media at Crossroads of Disinformation and Free Speech.” Apparently, “free speech” and “disinformation” are polar opposites.

The case is a flashpoint in the broader effort by conservatives to document what they contend is a liberal conspiracy by Democrats and tech company executives to silence their views. It taps into fury on the right about how social media companies have treated stories about the origins of Covid, the 2020 election and Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

As Slager writes, “We are only four paragraphs in, and already, the writers discredited themselves. They try to tell us that this is merely a contention by conservatives.” Later, this verbiage repeats:” In his order, Judge Doughty described what he called a campaign by officials in the White House and at government agencies to pressure social media companies.”

Obviously, the ham-handed spiking of the New York Post over the Hunter Biden laptop isn’t a contention, it’s an outrageous reality. The Times only acknowledged the reality of the laptop on March 16, 2022 — in paragraph 23 in a story on Page A-20.

The Times duo also cried “Trump Judge!” 

And it is being overseen by Judge Terry A. Doughty, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump and has previously expressed little skepticism about debunked claims from vaccine skeptics. In one previous case, Judge Doughty accepted as fact the claim that “Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent transmission of the disease.”

Slager is bothered and bewildered: 

This is an utterly amazing passage. That case was initially filed on November 30, 2021, after it had long been established that vaccinated people can transmit Covid-19. Their own paper attested to this fact, and The Times questioned if it was possible as far back as April 2021. The paper even reported on the post-inoculation outbreak in Provincetown, MA, where the vaccinated were contracting and passing the virus. This is The Times dealing out misinformation in a piece defending the silencing of misinformation. You cannot make up something this daft and have it believed by people, yet The Times puts this out with a straight face.

There is a complete lack of humility over how some “facts” about the coronavirus and its origins are now a much more acceptable topic. It was “disinformation” to merely ask the question of the virus origins. 

Read the whole thing.