A Democrat lawyer argued for government-funded censorship at a Senate Subcommittee on Tuesday. He defended former President Joe Biden’s “censorship industrial complex” and drew a rebuke from Republicans and experts.
“Protecting Americans’ freedom of speech is critical,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution that held the “Censorship Industrial Complex” hearing, wrote on X.
“The Biden Administration has created a massive censorship project to muzzle disfavored online speech. NGOs fuel this censorship.”
Mary Anne Franks of George Washington University, a guest on the panel of Democrats, raised Republican objections by arguing in favor of government “persuasion and encouragement” to censor speech that it disagrees with.
Franks stated at the hearing, “No official can dictate to Americans what they can think or believe. The First Amendment prohibits government interference with freedom of expression.”
“[But] the government has the right of preference for certain viewpoints and is allowed to communicate these preferences through persuasion and encouragement.
What the government cannot do is force private actors, through threats or coercion, to think or talk a particular way.
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for its coordination with Big Tech in the Section 230 protections, which were under government review.
Benjamin Weingarten, a reporter for RealClear Investigations, said at the hearing that “NGOs launch campaigns to crush wrongthinkers.” Federally funded “fact-checkers” work with social media firms to algorithmically suppress unfavorable media. “Risk-raters,” working under the government’s approval, create blacklists to rob such outlets of their advertising revenue.
“For-profits, too, are often fuelled by our tax dollars to develop analytics that support industrial-scale censure.
These entities have used overlapping and mutually reinforcing methods to control the American minds.
Weingarten called the liberally biased NewsGuard out for its defunding campaign against conservative media.
Weingarten said that “risk-rating agencies” like NewsGuard, GDI, and other recipients of government subsidies have reportedly hampered disfavored media firms- mostly on the right- causing these companies to lose traffic, revenue, and partners.
Weingarten wants to defund and dismantle the “censorship industry complex” but also hold those responsible for censoring conservative views on social media during the Biden era criminally accountable.
“As I stated in my testimony, they continue to persist. They refuse to disarm. And their victims have received very little justice,” Weingarten wrote following the hearing on Wednesday.
This must be changed.
Schmitt believes that the government-sponsored censors represent a “faceless enemy.”
He shared clips from the opening statement of his hearing where he called out the “permanent Left-wing activist Class,” which includes “the same groups and names time and again.”
Schmitt also took aim at Franks.
He wrote: “At today’s censorship meeting, Democrats invited a speaker who believes that the First Amendment essentially is a white man fetish,” he said on X. He linked to another hearing clip that exposed his bias, when he denounced “government outsourcing what they cannot do” by censoring speeches because of the First Amendment.” You can’t make this stuff up.
She reacted with a sharp rebuke when Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) mocked conservative reporter Molly Hemingway for giving Democrats “way too much credit” for being “that organized.”
She said, “You can count on the censorship industry complex to do all the work for you.”
