Adam Steinbaugh
@adamsteinbaugh
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Wow: The City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, got a court order yesterday directing a newspaper to delete an editorial criticizing city officials -- without a hearing. Here's the TRO issuing the prior restraint:
2:55 PM · Feb 19, 2025. //

The particulars make this all the more unacceptable. The mayor called a special commission meeting regarding the creation of a sin tax in order to boost revenue to help pay for more police services. All well and good, except there was a lax public notice and local media was not alerted to this public meeting. The editorial took exception to this development, and basically delivered what was a series of questions being raised as a result of this lack of notification.

However, the city officials filed suit, and the judge issued a temporary restraining order on the paper, requiring that it take down the editorial. The newspaper complied, and that web address now returns a "404 page not found" screen. But as the city officials are overstepping their position, and the law, we are more than happy to post the archived editorial. //

In one of the court documents, it is revealed that the city clerk actually admits that an official media notification regarding this special meeting had not actually been sent out to the press. But on top of this, the curious aspect of this entire ruling is that Judge Crystal Martin of the Hinds County Chancery Court (5th District) issued the TRO.

Clarksdale resides inside Coahoma County, which would be covered by the Chancery Court of Coahoma County in the 7th District. Now, it needs to be asked why this city matter would lead to a filing taking place at least three counties south of Clarksdale. Are we looking at a case of shopping for a favorable judge to get this rapid order issued? //

this is a blatant case of government censorship of a newspaper. The lack of wailing from the major news outlets is quite revealing. If it does not involve President Trump, then it is not considered important enough. //

Maximus Decimus Cassius
11 hours ago
This whole thing is racial. A black judge (and female, btw) is protecting a black mayor and city council from a white newspaper publisher.

The Meta CEO tried to paint the censorship as well-intentioned, claiming:

"I still think it's good for more people to get the vaccine. I'm not sure in that case how much of it was like a personal political gain that they were going for. I think that they had a kind of goal that they thought was in the interests of the country."

But Rogan wasn't having it. He fired back:

"Well, there's a bunch of problems with that," //

"There's the emergency use authorization that they needed in order to get this pushed through. And you can't have that without valid therapeutics being available. And so they suppressed valid therapeutics." //

"This was Fauci's game plan. I mean, this is the movie Dallas Buyers Club. That's Fauci in that movie. That was with the AIDS crisis. This exact same game plan that was played out with the COVID vaccine." //

They pushed one solution, this only one, suppressed all therapeutics through propaganda, through suppressing monoclonal antibodies, like all of it. And that was done, in my opinion, for profit. The amount of money that was made was extraordinary during that time." //

While Zuckerberg tried to frame the censorship as serving the greater good, Rogan exposed how it actually served to create a vaccine monopoly by eliminating discussion of alternative treatments.

For conservatives who have warned about the dangers of Big Tech-government collusion, this conversation provided smoking-gun evidence. It showed how content moderation policies were used to enforce a single narrative about COVID treatment, even when that meant suppressing legitimate medical information. //

Gordon of Cartoon
13 hours ago
Fascism is the systemic coordination of totalitarian government with monopolistic big business to crush competition and individual liberty. Naturally the thugs in charge get rich. //

Neil_
9 hours ago
Zuck is pulling back now because he probably realized colluding with the government in the way that he did is the definition of fascism. The Biden Administration and most leftist governments in Europe and around the world proved that leftists CAN be fascists.

mopani Neil_
a minute ago edited
It's because he doesn't want to cooperate with the next [Trump] administration, and free speech will be his defense.

He will pivot back to fascism and cooperation with the government as soon as the next Democrat administration counts along, he just won't advertise it like he is advertising the embrace of free speech.

David135
13 hours ago
Name names. Produce emails of all WH and Fed emails employees who were pressuring him and his company. Give them to the Taibbi gang to sort through. That would help a little.

bpbatch David135
12 hours ago
Yep, this. Musk put himself in danger with the Biden regime by exposure through the Twitter Files. Commission a "Facebook Files" type investigation and let the cards fall where they may, despite the political outcome. Do this, and I'll trust Zuck more, otherwise he's proving he's moving towards the constitutional right only for financial reasons and to save FB from the overturning of Section 230. //

veritaseequitas
2 hours ago
A) He must be losing money
B) He will change back if and when the Communist Democrats get back in office
C) He's a wuss who was too afraid to be a trail blazer. //

Mark Clancey
10 hours ago
What Could Mark Zuckerberg Do to Convince People He's Turned Into a Defender of Liberty?
Get on his knees and beg God and this nation for forgiveness that he spent $450 million to rig and steal the 2020 election. Until then he's just a garden variety Marxist twerp looking for secular salvation that will not come. //

Political-Paige
42 minutes ago edited
A tale of two billionaires.

Faced with the exact same pressures, Zuckerberg censored, lied, undermined a presidential election, and sentenced us to 4 years of national rot, while Musk spent 44 billion dollars of his own money to restore free speech across the globe and brought us back from the brink.

Though the reactions from various fact-checking groups were pretty predictable, it was the one from CNN media hall monitor Brian Stelter that was perhaps most revealing of all:

Big picture: Mark Zuckerberg just announced sweeping changes to the social internet, all in line with the desires of President Trump and Trump voters.

Out with the fact-checkers that conservatives deride. In with more permissive rules for posting conservative opinions.

I mean, how absolutely horrifying, right? The free flow of conservative opinions on social media as opposed to the lopsided political biases from "fact checkers' we've seen for years on these platforms and which almost universally impact conservatives the hardest is apparently too bitter a pill for the pro-censorship Stelter to swallow: //

Chuck Ross @ChuckRossDC
·
CNN is currently in court in Florida in a defamation case, had to settle with Nicholas Sandmann for defaming him, was the leading purveyor of the Russia collusion hoax, and hired the reporter who peddled the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinfo. https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1876666450208825470
Brian Stelter @brianstelter
Meta's framing – in its PR blog post – is "More Speech and Fewer Mistakes." An alternate title could be "More Lies and More Confusion." https://cnn.com/2025/01/07/media/mark-zuckerberg-meta-fact-checking-analysis/index.html
11:56 AM · Jan 7, 2025

Before I go full throttle with my story, here's something I like to tell my kids when they wonder which side is telling the truth: The side that's trying to silence others are the liars. This is a complete rip-off from the teachings of the great Dennis Prager, but it consistently holds true.

And, oh how Zuck did silence us. //

Turns out, we weren't the only ones who amused themselves during lockdown by mocking our enfeebled president.

The botched Afghanistan withdrawal was our undoing. Zuck just wasn't going to let you criticize Joe Biden over this. //

Sorry, but Zuck's newfound love of free speech is just words at this point. His half-hearted pledge to improve things rings hollow to conservatives who have been under the ban hammer for at least a decade. An apology would be a good place to start, but being a leftist means never having to apologize.

There was some talk on X Tuesday about Facebook providing reparations to all the conservative accounts they damaged over the years, and I'm all for it. Zuck should put some money where his mouth is and prove he's serious about stopping the censorship.

Reparations for conservatives! //

Robert A Hahn
3 hours ago
All true, but we can't forget Dog 101: When the dog finally does something you've been trying to get him to do, give him a treat.

Doesn't have to be a big treat.

We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.

This was disputed by the former fact-checkers in a New York Times article headlined, and I swear I'm not making this up, Mark Zuckerberg Says Meta Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False. //

While the fact-checkers may be technically correct that they didn't have the authority to meddle with content on Facebook and Instagram, that is sort of like the guy working in the Zyklon B factory claiming he never gassed anyone. Of course, they knew what the result of their work product was, and of course, they acted with political bias. //

When we first reported rumors of a lab leak at Wuhan, we were forced to choose between staying in business and withdrawing a post. Both Mike Ford and I had posts pulled that dealt with January 6. These people were not only evil, but most of them were profoundly stupid. They literally did not understand the subject matter they were reviewing and made no effort to do so; on the bright side, there was no internal check on their journalistic terrorism by Meta, so YOLO; //

On Wednesday morning, the International Fact-Checking Network (there actually is such a thing) will convene an emergency meeting of its members to decide what to do. The money stream has dried up, and the few remaining clients for KGB-like editorial control don't have deep pockets. Most of them will, if there is justice, spend a long period of time unemployed and suffer financial devastation. //

Zuckerberg knows he's up to his eyebrows in highly questionable censorship activity at the behest of the Biden administration and that no one is around to rescue him now.

Hopefully, this will change the culture in Big Tech from defaulting toward fascistic government control to favoring individual freedom. Only time will tell.

Meta announced it is ending its notorious fact-checking program and lifting restrictions on speech to "restore free expression" across Facebook, Instagram, and Meta platforms, finally admitting that its current content moderation practices have "gone too far." Zuckerberg said in a video posted Tuesday morning:

We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S. //

We went to independent, third-party fact-checkers. It has become clear there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check because, basically, they get to fact-check whatever they see on the platform. //

Chelan Jim
13 minutes ago
And another domino falls in the leftist wall of control of information.

But I don't believe it. They are admitting that they got caught. They see the pendulum swinging and don't want to be left behind. Plus, they want to appear as if they will be more 'trustworthy' going forward. They will still maintain their ability to limit the reach of information that they don't like. They will just not be as transparent.

Tom Elliott
@tomselliott
·
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SUPERCUT!

The 10 Most Mortifying Media Moments of 2024

Read our wrap-up:https://news.grabien.com/story-supercut-2024-s-most-mortifying-media-moments

10:56 AM · Dec 27, 2024

https://x.com/tomselliott/status/1872672931396178238

Rocuall
9 hours ago
The sad part is they don't care one bit and will double or triple down now.. No lesson learned here. they keep getting away with it. Unless the lawsuits start and that is what I have been saying for years.. freedom of speech does not mean you can SLANDER a person You have the right to SLANDER but we also have the right to take you to court. It erks me how much slandering takes place in our congress and they use the excuse... Thats Politics.. I say BS..pay up loser

Emma-Jo Morris was the first on the scene. She had the real October Surprise for the 2020 election: Hunter Biden’s laptop. While loaded with images of drug use and sexually explicit images from the exploits of the cracked-out son of Joe Biden, it was also a roadmap into the Biden Family’s allegedly illegal government access deal from which they were the beneficiaries of millions of dollars in bribes. This family set up multiple shell corporations run by Biden clan members to funnel the proceeds from the Romanian government. Right now, the meat and potatoes allegation stems from Hunter’s time in Ukraine, where Joe, then serving as vice president, forced the firing a prosecutor looking into Burisma in exchange for foreign aid.

The release of the FD-1023 report from the FBI’s confidential human source on Biden’s Burisma deal is damning, arguably impeachable for Joe Biden. It shows that the company only hired Hunter to protect them and that Mykola Zlochevsky, co-founder of Burisma Holdings, felt coerced into paying Joe and Hunter $5 million each. Zlochevsky has a ledger of the payments and recordings of their conversations. The source reported this intelligence to the FBI about the Bidens’ sordid deal with the Ukrainians in 2018.

All of this would have been disregarded as Russian disinformation three years ago. Mr. Morris delivered testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on July 20, where her opening remarks took a flamethrower to the FBI, intelligence community, and social media. Morris was then a New York Post editor/reporter at the time.

She revealed how The New York Post was locked out of their social media accounts for days, users could not share their links on the platform, and the intelligence community did not go through proper channels and released a letter claiming this laptop and its contents to be a disinformation operation. //

Morris, now the politics editor for Breitbart, also went into the censorship operation between the FBI, Silicon Valley, and the intelligence community. Social media companies are stacking their top positions with these former spooks who ooze political bias. //

“On October 19, five days after the Post first began publishing, Politico ran a story headlined, ‘Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” Morris continued while breaking down laughing.

“God, I can’t even say that with a straight face,” she said.

And for good reason: every aspect of her reporting was confirmed to be accurate years later. From The New York Times to The Washington Post, the story of the laptop, the shady Biden deals, and how this was not a Russian disinformation scheme were proven true. The laptop is genuine, and it’s not going away.

The FBI and the Justice Department are under heavy scrutiny now that there’s credible evidence that the DOJ ran interference pervasively on any Hunter Biden investigation, with the wrongdoing seemingly reaching Attorney General Merrick Garland’s office. //

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
·
This is the NY Post reporter who used authentic docs to report on Joe Biden's role in Hunter's business deals in Ukraine and China before the 2020 vote.

CIA and @NatashaBertrand smeared her with lies that it was "Russian disinformation," then Big Tech censored her reporting.

Simon Ateba @simonateba
BREAKING: Journalist Emma-Jo Morris (@EmmaJoNYC), who broke the Hunter Biden laptop story for @NYPost but was immediately censored by the state on social media in an attempt to influence the 2020 election, just delivered a mind-boggling testimony on the extent of censorship in…
Embedded video
2:52 PM · Jul 20, 2023

The federal government shouldn’t be involved, directly or indirectly, in the fact-checking industry. Nor should it engage in efforts designed to limit the speech of citizens, particularly when taxpayers are the ones footing the bill.

But the cost and creation of these misinformation programs is just the tip of the iceberg. Open the Books conducted a detailed review of many of the programs, contracts and grants as part of its report, and I subsequently verified and expanded upon some of their findings.

What we found is clear evidence that the Biden-Harris White House used funds to support or develop Orwellian surveillance and propaganda strategies, create methods and tools to restrict speech online, and even to finance highly politicized reports critical of Trump.

This is the point where I usually suggest that if the above story were flipped; if the first Trump administration had spent more than a quarter billion dollars trying to restrict speech on the left and to finance highly politicized critical of, say, Kamala Harris, the histrionics on the left would have set off alarms on seismic detectors across America. //

Random US Citizen
41 minutes ago
Everything those who are no longer our countrymen do boils down to one of two things: a power grab or money laundering. Those hundreds of millions of dollars Obama gave out in green energy “loans” that were never repaid? Money that was laundered through those companies, a high percentage of which ended up back in the coffers of the DNC as corporate or personal donations. Most of the billion dollars Harris spent on “consultants” is a similar thing, and this “disinformation” spending is just another scheme to get money from the public purse into the pockets of people who really aren’t Americans in any meaningful sense.

There’s an important update on the lawsuit that Missouri and Louisiana filed back in May against members of the Biden Administration, including Joe Biden, to expose the collusion between them and social media companies to censor speech on a variety of subjects–including things like the Hunter Biden laptop and COVID.

After a series of “Twitter Files” detailed Twitter’s extensive collusion with the FBI and federal agencies to control public discourse before Elon Musk took over the tech giant, the FBI on Wednesday tried to salvage its reputation by spinning the revelations as normal procedure.

Twitter head Elon Musk had some more to say on Tuesday about the reach to which the censorship by the government went.

We saw with the release of the last Twitter files the pressure that the Biden administration was putting on Twitter to de-platform people over things like COVID. https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/12/26/the-one-weve-been-waiting-for-twitter-files-on-covid-19-drops-n679095. //

Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
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Replying to @ggreenwald and @mtaibbi
Most people don’t appreciate the significance of the point Matt was making:

Every social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government.

Google frequently makes links disappear, for example.
9:19 AM · Dec 27, 2022 //

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
·
Dec 27, 2022
·
Replying to @elonmusk and @mtaibbi
When Dems controlled both houses of Congress and the WH (and Exec Branch), they repeatedly summoned Big Tech CEOs and openly and explicitly threatened them: if you don't censor more, you will be punished. And DHS/FBI/CIA applied immense pressure:
greenwald.substack.com
Congress Escalates Pressure on Tech Giants to Censor More, Threatening the First Amendment

Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
Exactly!
9:33 AM · Dec 27, 2022

We've seen a lot of examples of the mainstream media seeming to act like an arm of the Democratic Party.

But a story from Catherine Herridge may tell the tale of how much media has truly abandoned their purported jobs of journalism. Herridge explained on News Nation how she had the opportunity in the fall of 2023 to do a live interview with X owner Elon Musk on X about the revelations in the Twitter files.

That would have been a big interview with a lot of things breaking at the time from the files, revealing a lot about social media censorship and government involvement.

But listen as Herridge explains what happened next. //

She took it to the CBS executives and they told her she "couldn't do it live."

She asked, "What do you mean I can't do it live?"

"Well, we don't know what he's going to say" was their replay according to Herridge.

She said she replied to her bosses, "Isn't that what journalism is all about?"

Herridge explained that CBS then tried to condition the interview with possible alternatives, including having it edited, taped, and only on CBS. She said she felt so ashamed that a news organization would place so many restrictions on an interview like that that she couldn't go back to Elon Musk, the free speech advocate. But it indicates how fearful CBS was that something that they might not want to come out might come out in such an interview. When you think that way, you're no longer operating as a journalistic organization. You should want to report on the truth, whatever it is. //

This story just cements it, but that's one of the reasons why people no longer have any trust in legacy media. They also can't get the viewership that stories can now get on X, as Herridge explained last week. People can find the news on X without having to view it through a legacy media filter.

Legacy media seems to be imploding. This CBS story is a great example of why.

The analyst claimed during a discussion with the Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) division of the FBI was using the tool to "search open-source databases about content indicative of criminal conduct."

“According to the analyst’s testimony, the FBI uses this tool to monitor social media posts by users, regardless of whether the users are American citizens or foreign actors, to search for ‘content indicative of criminal conduct,'” Jordan wrote. //

House Judiciary Committee Republicans posted a copy of the letter on X asking, "Was the FBI using a software tool to spy on you during election season?"

"Seems like it," they concluded. //

Americans will recognize this example of the FBI spreading its tentacles of election interference into social media and squeezing the hell out of free speech as the norm, not an exception.

They tipped the scales of the 2020 presidential election by intimidating Facebook and Twitter (now X) to censor stories regarding the New York Post's bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped jaws by admitting Facebook throttled information about the laptop scandal in the days leading up to that election thanks in part to the FBI coming to them with a message having all the subtleties of a mob boss meeting.

Last week, Fox News contributor Tyrus sat down with Donald Trump for an exclusive interview for the latest episode of Maintaing With Tyrus on OutKick. The conversation focused on manhood, religion, schools, surviving an assassination attempt and also delved into who Trump is as a person.

A reader contacted OutKick to alert us that when they tried to share the YouTube link of the interview on Facebook, they were unable to do so and instead received a message stating the following: "Your content couldn't be shared because this goes against our Community Standards."

In response, we tried to share the video ourselves and were met with the same notification (see below). OutKick heard from dozens of people across America who had the same experience. //

The Trump-Tyrus interview wasn't the only video that people had trouble sharing. After the initial issue was pointed out, we tried to post Clay Travis' interview with Donald Trump from the Alabama-Georgia game earlier this month. The link to that interview was also blocked from sharing on Facebook and supposedly violated the same "Community Standards" as the Tyrus interview.

Perhaps you've seen the video of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg going around where he tells citizens to refrain from sending drones into the air, or piloting aircraft in the area where Helene has left a path of destruction.

"There's also some safety issues that come up," said Buttigieg. "For example, temporary flight restrictions to make sure the airspace is clear for any flights or drone activity that might be involved in helping to allow those emergency responders to do their job."

Brandon Morse @TheBrandonMorse
·
This video is the government attempting to stop footage from getting out that shows the extent of their ineptitude and halt civilians help so there’s no contrast to highlight it’s failure. Full stop.

12:26 PM · Oct 3, 2024

The excuse is that you need to keep your drone or aircraft out of the sky in order to allow emergency workers to do their jobs and not complicate matters. That would be a valid thing to suggest... if there was an effective rescue operation going on, but there's not. As I covered in my last VIP article, FEMA is out of disaster relief money because it was spent on illegals.

If you're like me, you probably didn't see this as a federal official attempting to help people. Given that this is the Biden-Harris administration, you probably became suspicious pretty quickly that something else was likely behind Buttigieg's words.

Personally, this feels a lot like a call for censorship, even if it's just an attempt to encourage it through "advice."

If you want to know what the real story on the ground is, the government isn't going to tell you. Their response has been disastrous, and it makes them look awful. The less you see of this disastrous response, the better for them. They can craft their own narrative where they were the ever-present heroes working hard to help victims.

But it would be an egregious lie. The real heroes are the ones out there helping their fellow civilians in any way they can. Private pilots are attempting to rescue stranded victims. Food and water are being delivered where it can be effective, and this is in spite of government disaster groups telling them to stop. //

Maximus Decimus Cassius
19 hours ago
The "authorities" are trying to enforce no-fly zones for everything--helicopters, drones, whatever--to prevent assistance to the stricken. This is beyond treason.

Lets just call it what it is: government sponsored genocide. //

Vigilo
17 hours ago
This is like the Biden regime response to the Maui wild fire. "No cameras allowed". //

Sancho Panza
18 hours ago
The idea of citizens taking direct action to make things better for their communities, neighbors, families and selves has uncomfortable connotations for fascists. They feel it keenly, and instinctively suppress it any way they can.

A clear bias has been uncovered in the AI image creator Image Creator from Microsoft Bing, also known as Microsoft Designer. The online tool will allow the creation of images with Kamala Harris for President content, but will not allow the same for Donald Trump.

My take at the time? Zuck sees something coming. He's the CEO of one of the largest social media corporations in the world. He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows when you've been bad or good, and he doesn't care which, just keep posting for goodness’ sake. All those posts probably indicate that Donald Trump is likely going to win the election handily, and he's preparing his business for a Trump administration that will likely be seeking some retribution.

In my opinion, this is Zuck smearing lambs blood over his door so that spirit of retribution passes over him without trouble. //

The difference is that Zuck is not nearly as bold or combative as Musk is willing to be. Zuck is far more corporate in his approach. Cautious and careful is his strategy. You'll never find Zuck telling people to "go f*** themselves" when they try to screw him over, at least not in public.

Moreover, I think that Musk is blazing a trail that Zuck is quietly following. There is success in resistance to the left, to the system that has tried controlling everything. Zuck's "libertarianism" could be a signal that he's pulling away from the controlling aspects of the expectations put upon him by leftist governments. //

Of course, this could all be fake and Zuck is being Zuck, bending and moving with the socio-political climate. Once it's in the air that leftism is in vogue or gaining power, he could very well revert back to the pro-censorship guy he started as.

I would posit that it is far more than Democrats trying to absolve themselves of their contributions to America’s current political divisions and tensions. Indeed, I believe it is an effort to silence those who oppose their ideology.

People pretending that Trump brought the assassination attempts on himself are, consciously or unconsciously, sending the message that if a prominent individual forcefully opposes progressive views, then they could also face violence or other types of punishments. Even further, any negative consequences for expressing their views are their own fault for daring to argue against progressivism.

To put it simply, they want to blame the assassination attempt on Trump because they want you to shut up.

This isn’t just about deflecting blame from themselves. Their arguments carry with it a covert threat: If you don’t shut up, something like this can happen to you. //

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons
19 hours ago
It might be even darker than Jeff posited. The media are actually saying Trump is not only asking for assassination because of his rhetoric, but he deserves it.