Category Archives: Censorship

Robert Bork Jr. criticizes the bipartisan consensus that is emerging on Capitol Hill around censorship on social media:

Big Tech today represents the greatest accumulation of power market power and monopoly power over information that the world has ever seen, Cruz said in a Senate hearing last year. They behave as if they are completely unaccountable. And at times they behave more like nation states than private companies. . . . When it comes to content moderation, they are absolutely a black box. They refuse to answer questions.

All of which makes one wonder: How could it escape this inarguably bright man that he voted to bring a bill to the Senate floor that would subject American business to socialism and make Big Tech social-media companies more woke and dedicated to the censorship of conservatives than ever before?

The bill that Cruz voted to forward in the Senate Judiciary Committee is Senator Amy Klobuchars American Innovation and Choice Online Act. Despite Klobuchars breathless references to her bill as being sweeping, she did not allow it to be subjected to a committee hearing and expert witnesses. If Klobuchar had, other senators would have learned just how sweeping it is. . . .

Jonathan Deluty writes about the political problems with Modern Monetary Theory:

There is a very good reason that fiscal and monetary policy should be kept separate. Monetizing the debt so that the government can put (allegedly) idle resources to use would quickly lead to hyperinflation, which (as mentioned above) the MMT crowd would solve with the only tool at hand: raising taxes. This entails the government, which created the inflation by overspending, having to seize an even greater percentage of control over the economy by taking money away from citizens.

MMTs vision assumes that Congress would, once granted the ability to monetize debt and effectively spend unlimited amounts of newly printed money, spend right up until the economy reaches full employment. At that point, the same political body currently blaming corporate greed rather than itself for increased coffee prices would turn off the money spigot, with no concern for the interest groups reliant on newly created government programs.

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Today in Capital Matters: Censorship and MMT - National Review

Its almost hard to believe that its already been two years since the untimely death in Wuhan Central Hospital of the Chinese ophthalmologist Dr. Li Wenliang, whose attempts to sound the alarm about COVID early in Wuhan were silenced by Chinese security officials. After being arrested on charges of disturbing social order and forced to sign a false statement that his concern over a new, highly contagious illness was an unfounded, illegal rumor, Dr. Li contracted the disease himself and passed away on February 6, 2020. He is survived by his wife, Fu Xuejie, and two sons one born after his death.

We were reminded of Dr. Lis passing by another Chinese national who knows well the horrific consequences that the Chinese Communist Partys (CCPs) censorship can have. In a moving tweet, Cai Xia, a disillusioned former professor of Beijings Central Party School, highlighted the second anniversary of Dr. Lis death and reminded the world that The right to freedom of speech is the first line of defense for people to protect their lives. She rightly points out that even today Wuhan has not dared to announce the real death toll of its outbreak, a figure that has been kept tightly under wraps even though province-level records inadvertently indicate heavy casualties.

Not only were casualties vastly underreported; the Chinese government deliberately covered up the outbreak for several crucial early weeks. According to SCMP, government documents suggest that the first case of COVID in China can now be traced back to November 17, 2019, though health workers would face an uphill battle against CCP authorities in recognizing and reporting the virus until mid-January, when Beijing was forced, too late, to reverse its stance on a number of falsehoods it had spread related to the virus.

As the United States passes 900,000 confirmed COVID deaths and the world reckons with more than five and a half million Dr. Lis death stands as a stark reminder of the CCPs criminal suppression of knowledge about the virus in its pivotal early days. Dr. Li is one of many who were forcibly silenced for trying to get the word out; some like citizen journalist Zhang Zhan are still serving prison sentences under heinous conditions. They and Dr. Li should be remembered as the heroes they are for standing up to the CCPs flagrant disregard for human life, and for seeking to warn the world of what was to come at the risk of their own lives and wellbeing.

See the article here:
We lost a Chinese hero 2 years ago, but the consequences of China's COVID censorship are still with us - American Enterprise Institute

The popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe has taken down yet another conservative donation campaign.

As donations for the Freedom Convoy trucker protest in Ottawa, Ontario, reached $10 million on Feb. 4, GoFundMe pulled the plug on it and took the page down, alleging violence and unlawful activity as an excuse.

To add insult to injury, the company wasnt originally planning on returning the donated funds from the canceled page unless asked. Instead, GoFundMe claimed it intended to distribute the money to charities the truckers selected. After massive public pushbackespecially from a number of states attorneys generalthe platform relented and said it would automatically return the funds.

GoFundMes excuse for closing the donations page down doesnt pass the smell test, because it has a long history of deplatforming conservative causes while conspicuously leaving leftist crowdfunding efforts alone.

Consider a case from back in November 2020, when the site canceled a campaign to erect a billboard in California advertising a book critical of puberty blockers for kids. Local parents tried to get a sign erected that would have read Puberty is not a medical condition, along with a photo of the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier.

GoFundMe offered no explanation beyond claiming the campaign went against the sites user rules.

In March of last year, it censored another cause for purely political reasons: A womens rape crisis center in Vancouver, British Columbia, had crowdfunded $7,000 before GoFundMe killed the page. The page was started by a short-lived internet community called Super Straight that wanted to support the one rape crisis center in the city explicitly for biological women. That ran afoul of GoFundMes liberal sensibilities regarding transgender people, so the page had to go.

While GoFundMe has ramped up its efforts against conservatives in recent years, the practice tracks back to the sites early days.

In April 2015, The Daily Signal reported a pair of stories about bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein and florist Barronelle Stutzman, who had their GoFundMe campaigns stripped from the platform after they refused to provide service for gay weddings. The Kleins story is notable insofar as it ushered in a change in policy directly responsible for todays problems.

Prior to the Kleins, GoFundMes terms of service prohibited campaigns in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts. After they removed the Kleins page, the terms were updated to include discriminatory acts.

To the leftists in charge at GoFundMe, anything contrary to their narrative can be construed as hateful or discriminatory, and therefore, ripe for takedown.

GoFundMes bias in deciding what stays and what goes on its platform becomes even more evident when one looks at the types of violent leftist content thats allowed to remain.

Numerous funding campaigns for violent Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters have been allowed to remain up on the site while conservatives who have done nothing wrong except go against leftist dogma are frequently deleted.

The double standard employed by platforms like GoFundMe over what is acceptable is dangerous. American democracy cannot survive a system where only one political ideology can support causes it likes.

Thankfully, however, there are burgeoning alternatives. As of this writing, the Canadian truckers have raised more than $6 million on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. While it would be preferable if GoFundMe would drop its ideological bias and accept donations to non-leftist causes, in the meantime conservatives should financially support causes they agree with through whatever means necessary.

The left might try and stop us, but well just keep on truckin.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email[emailprotected]and well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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GoFundMe's Sordid History of Censorship of Conservative Causes - Daily Signal

February 9, 2022 by Rayna Kanas&Shelley Reback and filed under African American, American History, Education, LGBT, Literature, News and Public Affairs, State Government, Youth.

The banning of books and the prohibition against teaching real, accurate history used to be the plot of dystopian novels and Nazi policy in Germany in 1933, but now its part of our reality. WMNF MidPoint host Shelley Reback spoke with award-winning author Lois Lowry, author of The Giver and other books for middle readers, and Colette Bancroft, book editor of the Tampa Bay Times, on Feb. 9 about this increasing threat in our communities.

Listen to the full episode here:

As new anti-woke legislation continues to pass through the Florida legislature, Polk County decided to skip the wait and take matters into their own hands. In Polk County, 16 books have already been pulled from school shelves after a bible-based group lobbied for their removal on the grounds that they allegedly violated Florida obscenity laws by containing explicit sexual material distributed to children. The books, which include award-winners like Beloved and The Kite Runner, largely center around racism or LGBTQ+ issues. The new Stop Woke legislation pending now in Tallahassee and supported by Governor DeSantis, would not only require they be removed for making adolescents uncomfortable,but would also give parents the right to sue the school system and teachers for making them available.

Reback questioned Lowry about writing books for young people about difficult subjects that may make them uncomfortable. Thats the purpose of many of the books kids read today, Lowry told WMNF. Growing up is a lonely existence The thing that alleviates that loneliness is the companionship of a book.

Since its publication in 1993, Lowrys Newbery-Award-winning novel The Giver has- ironically- been both widely assigned in middle schools and is often the subject of censorship. The novel takes place in a dystopian society that celebrates Sameness and which has censored all sources of negativity: history, memories, color and even human emotion have all been suppressed. The plot centers around the quest of the only two citizens who retain memories of the past to return their society to one that accepts the full reality of existence: its not always positive, but with knowledge and feelings it is richer and deeper and makes life worth living. Reback noted that many of these themes in The Giver are at issue in Florida in 2022 as the Legislature debates these new censorship and surveillance bills.

Bancroft noted that these calls for censorship are not new, though the recent influx of censorship legislation could be prompted by an increase in diversity among content producers. As more minority groups find their voice and speak up, the white-majority lens of history is shed, but the white Republican majority that controls our politics may feel threatened.

The reality of history and its effects on the current world is uncomfortable. Learning about it is undeniably difficult. But Reback, Lowry and Bancroft agreed on the philosophy proposed by George Santayana:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Tags: books, censorship, Florida Legislature, literature, MidPoint, wmnf, WMNF News

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MidPoint: The Age of Censorship with Lois Lowry and Colette Bancroft - WMNF

A man, or woman, can only stand for just so much gibberish, balderdash, and jabberwocky from the nation of projection, otherwise known as the progressive left. In the latest episode of the Marxist loving, progressive pot calling the liberty loving conservative kettle black, we were provided with Professor Lynn Rudmin Chong's latest letter on Feb. 9.

Her warped interpretation of HB 1255 is to assert that it will "stymie inquiry". That is Democratic groupthink for not allowing we elitists to indoctrinate your children in the ways of socialism, communism, Marxism, critical race theory, white privilege, and equity because equality is so yesterday and unfair.

As Dennis Prager has reminded us, advanced educational degrees provide no certainty that wisdom will follow. It seems that Ms. Chong has two options to explain her wackado interpretation of this bill. Stymie inquiry? Surely you jest. Either you are ignorant of the true intent of this bill, or you believe that it will not allow free discourse in the classroom. Teachers will be allowed to teach history and politics without being censored, as long as they are not advocating doctrine that promotes a certain ideology as the truth, such as the progressive left's intent to teach our children that the United States was founded on racism.

There are children's books being sold to elementary schools in this country that promote the notion that not only is this nation racist, but it is all the fault of white people. I give you an example from one book titled "Not My Idea" by Anastasia Higginbotham. There are racist insinuations made about white people sprinkled throughout the book. Near the end of the book, there is this quote, "Whiteness is a bad deal ... it always was". That in response to a picture of a devil holding out a contract binding you to whiteness. Does Ms. Chong purport that it is a good idea to indoctrinate kids to think that if you are white, you are the oppressor, and if you are Black, you are the oppressed? Dr. Martin Luther King's goal of "contact of character" judgment over "color of your skin" is just not what the progressive left wants. Which party adored Senator and former grand wizard Robert Byrd? At least Ms. Chong and I can agree that censoring has no place in this country.

The Democrat Party always was and still is the party of segregation. Black mother Kila Posey was outraged after learning that her child's Atlanta public elementary school was segregating classrooms based on race. Columbia University offered students segregated graduations and called them multicultural celebrations. Seems like being "woke" means that the leftists still lust for those Jim Crow era policies. Perhaps Ms. Chong can now have a better understanding of HB 1255. Oh, and Ms. Chong, just which side of the political aisle has been hell bent on stifling inquiry and censoring free speech? Cancel culture anyone?

Continued here:
Russ Wiles: Censorship and cancel culture have no place in this country - The Laconia Daily Sun

Weve probably seen similar images during a news blooper reel, people camera bombing behind the reporter during a live news report. This time, the kiss signaled something bigger than just a kiss.

Channel News Asiais a 24-hour multinational news television channel headquarteredin Singapore. Vice News shared that Channel News Asiareporter Low Minmin was reporting on the atmosphere during the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Doing a field report, she visited a local pubholding a watch party. While reporting live from the pub, two men enter the frame behind her and begin kissing passionately. They then give a knowing smile to the camera and exit.

Who are the two men? Pranksters? Protesters? Either is a possibility.

The significance of the action lies in the fact that Singapore still has Section 377A in the countrys penal code. The law, a holdover from British colonialism, gives a sentence of up to two years in jail for gross indecency. That makes Singapore one of 69 countries with laws that criminalize LGBTQ people and their relationships.

Singapores criminalization partners with a censorship law that prohibits "contents which depict or propagate sexual perversions such as homosexuality, lesbianism."

Due to censorship laws, this kiss could not normally be aired or depicted on Singapore television. And the kiss was edited out of the clip posted to the Channel News Asia website. By staging the kiss during a live news broadcast from Beijing, the Singapore population, including LGBTQ Singaporeans, witnessed something to which they are regularly denied access.

Section 377A has survived court challenges so far. Three men have waged a legal battle to have the law declared unconstitutional, but in 2020, Singapores high court dismissed the case.

"This kiss, while a small action, is a breakthrough for the Singaporean LGBTQ community, who are still criminalized and censored in Singapore," said Ross Murray, Senior Director of the GLAAD Media Institute. "Let this Olympian kiss be a call to strike down Section 377A of Singapore's penal code, and end the criminalization of LGBTQ people globally."

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This Olympic gay kiss challenges censorship and criminalization - GLAAD

On March 4, 2003, the City of Pasco apologizes to artists Sharon Rupp and Janette Hopper, the culmination of lawsuit brought by the artists after their works on display at Pasco City Hall were taken down because of public complaints about their content. Defended by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the artists had contended that their First Amendment rights had been violated. A federal appeals court sided with the artists, writing, "The mere fact that the works caused controversy is, of course, patently insufficient to justify their suppression" ("Court Sides With Pasco Artists"). In addition to apologizing for its actions, the City of Pasco pays $75,000 to cover the plaintiffs' legal fees.

A Case Study

When officials in Pasco opened a gallery for art displays, they envisioned showing pastoral landscapes and pleasing scenes. What they got instead was a major public controversy and a landmark legal case about art censorship. Or as a federal appeals court called it, "a case study in the politics and law of public art" ("Pasco Apologizes ...").

In 1995 the City of Pasco launched a program to display artworks at its City Hall, a newly renovated former high school. The project was the brainchild of Pasco Assistant City Manager Kurt Luhrs, who thought art would enhance the building's barren expanses of walls. The Mid-Columbia Arts Council was to provide works by local artists to be exhibited for three months at a time. Pasco City Manager Gary Crutchfield paid for the program with discretionary funds, planning to seek permanent support from the city council after a year.But as an old adage has it, the road to perdition is paved with good intentions.

For the program's third quarter, two women were invited to exhibit their art. Sculptor Sharon Rupp's submissions included a satirical bronze sculpture titled "To the Democrats, Republicans, and Bipartisans," which featured a woman with her head stuck in a wall and her backside exposed in effect, mooning the viewer. Her works were displayed at City Hall for only a week before city officials ordered them removed. Rupp was informed that the action came because of the works' sexual nature, because the city had received a complaint about them, and because displayingher sculpture would make the exhibition "political."

Visual artist Janette Hopper submitted black-and-white linoleum prints depicting a naked Adam and Eve touring German landmarks. But Pasco officials prevented the Arts Council from hanging the pieces. Hopper was told that the works were considered "sexual" and "sensual," and officials worried they might generate complaints from a local anti-pornography crusader.

The two artists were incensed, feeling their artwork had been censored. The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU) took up their cause and filed suit (Hopper v. City of Pasco) in federal court on the artists' behalf, with attorneys Paul Lawrence and Dan Poliak handling the case. Pasco officials resisted the suit, asserting that the works had violated a "non-controversy" policy for the arts program. The nudity had upset some citizens and civic employees. The city manager contended that excluding the artists' work was not an act of censorship, as they were free to display it elsewhere in town.

The ACLU countered that the city's administration of the program was so inconsistent and arbitrary that it violated First Amendment rights. Some works selected earlier included nudity, and one, featuring an emaciated man, had drawn complaints. Yet those works had remained up.

Legally, the matter turned on case law about the nature of the venue where the artwork was shown. The City of Pasco contended that its arts program had established a "limited public forum," under which the standard for evaluating censorship was the "reasonableness" of its actions. U.S. District Court Judge Fred Van Sickle agreed and threw out the suit in 1998. The judge said, "... the case boils down to a matter of taste and perception." He found the City's decision to exclude the artwork reasonable given the controversy it provoked. He noted that "bare rumps and cavorting nude couples are not family fare" (Justia, February 15, 2001).

Overturned on Appeal

The artists took the case to the 9thCircuit Court of Appeals, which accepted the ACLU's characterization of the venue as a "designated public forum." This required that the City of Pasco's actions be subjected to "strict scrutiny" and serve a "compelling public interest."Under that standard, the appeals court in 2001 reversed the lower court, finding that the City of Pasco had violated the artists' rights to freedom of expression. Writing for the 2-1 majority, Judge Margaret McKeown said, "We do not endorse Pasco's cramped view of what constitutes censorship, and we find none of the city's reasons for excluding the artwork compelling" ("Court Sides With Pasco Artists").

A key consideration was the city's failure to establish a review process or specify criteria for the selection of public art. City manager Crutchfield had expressed concern that any controversy generated by artwork could torpedo the program, given Pasco's conservative climate (Justia, February 15, 2001). The 1990s, after all, were a decade marked by high-profile conflicts over public art, notably photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe in Cincinnati and policies of the National Endowment for the Arts. But the city manager had left it to the Middle-Columbia Arts Council to select art which would not provoke controversy, while the Arts Council claimed that it assumed the city manager would review its selections.

The appeals court ruling agreed with the ACLU that the city's non-controversy policy in practice was no policy at all, calling it a "standardless standard." Getting to the heart of the matter, the court said, "The mere fact that the works caused controversy is, of course, patently insufficient to justify their suppression" ("Court Sides With Pasco Artists").

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the ruling. Pasco and the artists reached a settlement in 2003. The city apologized to the artists for censoring their work and paid $75,000 in legal fees and costs to their lawyers.

The case set a precedent for the handling of public art displays and was cited in cases around the country. "That gives me pleasure that we have made things better for other artists," Rupp said ("Pasco Apologizes ..."). The city terminated the public-art program soon after the controversy arose. As for the sculpture that helped spark the conflict, Rupp gave it to her attorney, Paul Lawrence.

David Henderson, "Local Artist Faces Censorship in Pasco," Central Washington University Observer, February 12, 1998; "Janette Hopper and Sharon Rupp, Plaintiffs-appellants, v. City of Pasco and Arts Council of the Mid-columbia Region," Justia, February 15, 2001; Mike Carter, "Court Sides With Pasco Artists," The Seattle Times, February 16, 2001, accessed January 15, 2022 (seattletimes.com); Linda Ashton, The Associated Press, "No Supreme Court Briefs for Pasco Nudes," Ibid., October 10, 2001; Kim Bradford, "Richland Decision Shows Cities Don't Have to Shun Public Art," Tri-City Herald, October 28, 2001, accessed January 15, 2022 (tri-cityherald.com);ACLU of Washington, "Pasco Art Censorship," Annual Report, 2000-2001; Dori O'Neal, "Artists Get Apology in Censorship Lawsuit," Tri-City Herald, March 4, 2003, accessed January 15, 2022 (tri-cityherald.com); Sarah Anne Wright, "Pasco Apologizes Over Artwork," The Seattle, Times, March 5, 2003, accessed January 15, 2022 (seatttletimes.com); ACLU of Washington, "Pasco Apologizes to Artists for Censorship," Civil Liberties, April 2003.

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Artists receive an apology from the City of Pasco in censorship lawsuit on March 4, 2003. - HistoryLink.org

This is Underreported with Nicholas Lemann, from the publishing imprint Columbia Global Reports. We dont just publish books; we use books to start conversations about topics that werent getting the attention they deserved. At least, until we took them on. This podcast is your audio connection to these important topics.

This season, were is focusing on our upcoming book, The Subplot: What China Is Reading and Why It Matters. This three-part series will explore not only the content of the book, but the issues surrounding it.

In The Subplot, journalist and critic Megan Walsh takes the reader on a lively journey through the last two decades of Chinas literary landscape, illustrating the countrys complex relationship between art and politics. She also dispels assumptions Westerners make about censorship, and opens up a view of Chinese society that you dont see through conventional news coverage.

Before we speak to Megan Walsh herself in upcoming episodes, we want to set the stage, so were joined by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellors Professor of History at UC Irvine. Hes one of Americas leading China specialists and has written several important books, including Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, also published by Columbia Global Reports. Theres no better guest to help us wade into the intricate and nuanced realities of China, a country that the US has locked in its gaze.

From the episode:

Nicholas Lemann: If there were a sort of typical urban Chinese citizen, can that person walk into a bookstore? What would be for sale?

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Yeah, its a great question. And I will bracket off this sort ofwhen we talk about typical, clearly urban is different from rural. But lets just imagine walking into a bookstore in Shanghai or Nanjing or Beijing. There are amazing bookstores in terms of just varieties of things that you can buy. Some of the things that would be probably surprising, and radically different from the United States in a positive sense, is theres much more translated literature. There are plenty of books by Chinese authors, but there are also really quite extraordinary selections of translations of Western fiction, and fiction from many different languages. Fiction in Eastern European languages and novelists from Africa.

I mean, in some ways, though we can go into a kind of feeling superior to people who are living in a censored society, theres another way in which at least the kind of intellectually curious Chinese reader has an amazing number of choices. There are lots of popular genres there, and this is something that The Subplot goes through very well. So its interestingit can be in a way a very cosmopolitan thing. Even at this moment when its harder to physically have people move across the border, there is plenty of translated literature.

________________________

Subscribe now on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever else you find your podcasts!

Jeffrey Wasserstromis Chancellors Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, where he also holds courtesy appointment in law and literary journalism. He is the author of six books, including Eight Juxtapositions: China through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuo, and Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink. He is an adviser to the Hong Kong International Literary Festival and a former member of the Board of Directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Follow him on Twitter at@jwassers

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Jeffrey Wasserstrom on Censorship and Translated Literature in China - Literary Hub

Wanda Nara He continues to deny the rumors about a new break with Mauro Icardi. The Argentine influencer makes it clear that both are living together in her impressive Paris mansion and she also expresses her tranquility in one of her last posts, a dangerous photograph on the verge of censorship with which she has revolutionized networks as forever.

Spa Sunday at home, Wanda Nara wrote next to the inn, in which she appears in the private indoor pool of her house with the straps of her swimsuit lowered, to the limit that an oversight reveals more than necessary and playing with it to delight her millions of followers.

A few hours ago, the Argentine businesswoman and representative spoke about her relationship with Mauro Icardi and the fact that the PSG striker first stopped following her and then closed her account. There was no hacking, there was nothing. Faced with so many messages that he received, and that everyone had an opinion, he said I am unsubscribing and I am no longer interacting. She received messages from all over the world. They all asked him things. They werent love messages, huh. Eye , she said.

A Wanda Nara which has also been in the news in recent days because the Argentine press has leaked part of the audios that the influencer sent to Eugenia la China Surez when the actress had an affair with her husband, a slip by Icardi that almost caused her divorce but was finally forgiven by Wanda. Tell me what happened that day, the strikers wife told him in the aforementioned audio. Chinawhose flirtation with the PSG footballer ended up causing the famous Wandagate.

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The most dangerous pose of Wanda Nara on the verge of censorship from her Paris pool - Then24

The editors of a peer-reviewed medical journal penned a scathing letter demanding that Facebook reevaluate its bogus third-party fact-checking processes after the journal was censored for publishing information about COVID-19 vaccine trials.

BMJ editors Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi addressed the letter to Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg with the intention of raising serious concerns about Facebooks third-party fact-checking system.

According to the editors, one of the well-researched articles BMJ published on a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia, one of the companies facilitating trials for Pfizers version of the COVID-19 vaccine, was suppressed by Facebook and censored with labels that directed readers to a fact check by the obscure website Lead Stories, which routinely issues fake fact-checks.

Those trying to post the article were informed by Facebook that people who repeatedly share false information might have their posts moved lower in Facebooks News Feed. Group administrators where the article was shared received messages from Facebook informing them that such posts were partly false, Godlee and Abbasi wrote.

The editors said that this fact check, which Facebook used to justify threats against users who shared the BMJ article, however, was inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.

Not only did Godlee and Abbasi say that Lead Stories went out of its way to circumvent any direct accusations of wrongdoing or falsity in the BMJ article, but it also falsely labeled the prominent, longstanding medical journal as a news blog. Like most other Lead Stories fact checks, the webpage thats linked to the missing context warning on Facebook features a big, bolded title claiming to discredit the BMJs findings.

Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials, the headline states.

As the BMJ editors note, Lead Stories refused to make any changes to its bogus fact-check and instead issued an unapologetic counter-statement to its letter. Lead Stories complained that BMJ wouldnt allow the fact checkers to see their basis for the story and did not make the documents available on a transparency site and attempted to justify the censorship label.

Godlee and Abbasi concluded their letter by demanding that Facebook, if it continues its censorship campaign against so-called misinformation, choose wiser and more competent organizations for fact-checking such as Cochrane, which reviews medical evidence on a regular basis.

Rather than investing a proportion of Metas substantial profits to help ensure the accuracy of medical information shared through social media, you have apparently delegated responsibility to people incompetent in carrying out this crucial task. Fact checking has been a staple of good journalism for decades. What has happened in this instance should be of concern to anyone who values and relies on sources such as The BMJ, the letter states.

The Federalist, much like BMJ, has been the target of fake fact-checks and censorship on Facebook thanks to third-party organizations such as Lead Stories. Just last week, Facebook flagged a Federalist article, titledForcing People Into COVID Vaccines Ignores Important Scientific Information,with a missing context label and linked to aLead Storiesarticle dissecting a United Kingdom publicationsarticle.

The purported fact-check, authored by a former CNN employee for the obscure third-party company with ties to the sketchy Chinese companyByteDance, however, doesnt actually address The Federalist article or any of the claims made in it. Instead, the fact-check tries to downplay the fact that COVID case data from the U.K. shows that vaccinated people are increasingly contracting COVID-19.

Earlier this year, Politifact, another leftist organization employed by Facebook to curb misinformation, targeted a Federalist article focused on green energys inability to hold up during the Texas winter storm. The fact-check claimed that natural gas plants were the biggest cause of the power shortfall, not wind. The author, however, did acknowledge that wind farms ran at about half of what was expected, which contributed to the widespread blackouts, a similar point made in the article by Federalist contributor Jason Isaac and by The Wall Street Journal.

That same week, Lead Stories also added a false information label to the article. The fact-check did not address The Federalist articles argument directly but merely focused on criticizing a Facebookpostearlier in the week from a user who noted the green energy sectors failures during the Texas power crisis.

When The Federalist confronted Politifact for its selective fact-checking and failure to call out any of Vice President Kamala Harriss lies with an article, the organizations Editor-in-Chief Angie Holan demanded corrections even though there were no inaccuracies in The Federalist article.

Earlier this month, Facebook admitted that its so-called fact-checking program is actually cranking out opinions used to censor certain viewpoints. In a legal battle with TV journalist John Stossel over a post about the origins of the deadly 2020 California forest fires, Facebook, or Meta,claimedthat its fact-checking program should not be the target of adefamation suitbecause its attempts to regulate content are done by third-party organizations who are entitled to their opinion.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordangdavidson.

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Medical Journal Blasts Facebook For Using Fake 'Fact ...