GOP Really Committed To The Bit That Speech They Don’t Like Is Censorship
from the the-grifter-cinematic-universe-expands dept
The House Oversight Committee is investigating NewsGuard, a private company, for supposed “censorship” for the crime of… offering its own opinions on the quality of news sites. The old marketplace of ideas seems to keep getting rejected whenever Republicans find that their ideas aren’t selling quite as well as they’d hoped.
Up is down, left is right, black is white, day is night. The modern GOP, which has left any semblance of its historical roots in the trash, continues to make sure that “every accusation, a confession” is the basic party line. And now, it’s claiming that free speech is censorship.
Apparently Rep. James Comer was getting kinda jealous that his good buddy Rep. Jim Jordan was out there weaponizing the government to suppress speech, all while pretending it was in an attempt to stop the weaponization of the government to suppress speech.
Comer heads the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. He has apparently decided that it’s his job to investigate companies for the kind of speech he dislikes. In this case, it’s NewsGuard he’s investigating.
Today, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) launched an investigation into the impact of NewsGuard on protected First Amendment speech and its potential to serve as a non-transparent agent of censorship campaigns. In a letter to NewsGuard Chief Executive Officers Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, Chairman Comer raises concerns over reports highlighting NewsGuard’s contracts with federal agencies and possible actions being taken to suppress accurate information. Chairman Comer’s letter includes requests seeking documents and information on NewsGuard’s business relationships with federal agencies and its adherence to its own policies in light of highly political social media activity by NewsGuard employees.
First off, it helps to understand what NewsGuard is. The organization was set up in 2018 by two journalism moguls, Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, in an effort to combat the rise of disinformation and nonsense peddling online. The basic product is rating journalism websites to give a scoring of how credible and reliable they are.
And, let me be upfront: I’m not a fan of NewsGuard’s methodology, which I think isn’t particularly useful for doing what they’re trying to do. It’s formulaic in a somewhat arcane way, which enables terrible news sites to get rated well, while dinging (especially smaller, newer) publications that don’t check off all the boxes NewsGuard demands.
But, they’re allowed to do whatever they want. They are expressing their own First Amendment-protected opinion. And that’s a good thing. People don’t have to believe NewsGuard’s rankings (and my personal opinion is that everyone should take them with a large grain of salt). But it’s still their opinion. It’s their speech.
However, NewsGuard has been singled out as one of the enemies of free speech, like so much of the fantasy industrial complex that is making the rounds these days. This is because some of the nuttier nonsense-peddling grifters out there have been rated poorly by NewsGuard, and that’s resulted in some advertisers deciding to pull advertising.
Somehow that is a form of censorship. Of course, it’s not: it’s speech by a private party, in which other private parties listen to and potentially take some action on, exercising their own rights of association.
But, as the Comer “investigation” calls out, some US government agencies have worked with NewsGuard, most notably the Defense Department. A few years back, the DoD signed a contract with NewsGuard, in which NewsGuard would flag content it found online that it believed were foreign influence campaigns. Basically, it’s the Defense Department contracting with some internet watchers to see if they spot anything the DoD should be aware of.
I have no idea if NewsGuard is any good at this, and frankly, I’d be surprised if the DoD actually got any value out of the deal. But, it’s got nothing to do with “censorship” of any kind. It’s still just more speech.
To date, Crovitz (who was formerly the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, so you’d think the GOP grifter class would realize he’s much closer to them politically speaking) has tried defending NewsGuard by (1) inserting some facts into a discussion that will reject such facts and (2) stupidly insisting that his is the only “non-partisan” rating service, and the rest are all leftists.
“We look forward to clarifying the misunderstanding by the committee about our work for the Defense Department,” Crovitz said in a statement to The Hill. “Our work for the Pentagon has been solely related to hostile disinformation efforts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian government-linked operations targeting Americans and our allies.”
Crovitz, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, also touted NewsGuard as “the only apolitical service” that rates news outlets, saying, “the others are either digital platforms with their secret ratings or left-wing partisan advocacy groups.”
In some ways, this strategy of responding to the investigation kinda serves to explain why NewsGuard has always been kinda useless. They bring fact-checking to a vibes fight. That doesn’t work.
If we’ve learned anything from the failures of media over the past decade, it is not that we had a lack of fact-checking or other “objective” ways of measuring news. It’s that people don’t want that. What we’ve discovered is that tons of people are in the market for the Confirmation Bias Times, and they’re going to lap up anything that confirms their priors and outright reject anything that challenges what they believe.
We’ve seen things like Stanford’s Internet Observatory try to respond to similar attacks by coming back with facts, only to have those facts distorted, twisted, and turned right back around to accuse them of even worse things. Crovitz and NewsGuard seem likely to go through the same nonsense ringer.
Because the whole point of this is that facts no longer matter to the modern GOP. If you bring facts that conflict with their feelings, they’re going to blame you for it and attack you.
Here, all that NewsGuard has done is add their opinions about news sources. Some people trust them. Others don’t. That’s the marketplace of ideas in action.
And that’s what Comer is trying to suppress.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, fact checking, free speech, gordon crovitz, james comer, news rating, opnion, steven brill
Companies: newsguard
Comments on “GOP Really Committed To The Bit That Speech They Don’t Like Is Censorship”
You are being too kind to Mr. Comer. It’s not their news rating service that he objects to. It’s identifying the influences of his Russian benefactors. That’s why he’s doing this.
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Right wingnut loses shit, yells at military contractor of all things. Government guy harassing outfit over speech because he thinks government suppresses speech.
Vibes is right. Vibes they can forget when they shout things completely contrary to what they said five minutes ago. It’s like everyone has dementia.
Also from Comer…
https://www.thefire.org/news/house-oversight-committee-continues-chilling-investigation-student-groups-and-nonprofits
“GOP Really Committed To The Bit That Speech They Don’t Like Is Censorship”
Seems whenever someone points to the GOP bullshit and calls it out for what it is, the GOP screams censorship. Well, afaik, that falls short of the definition for the word censorship.
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‘Censorship’ is like ‘woke’ to republicans/conservatives in that all it really means is ‘something I don’t like’.
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Funny how many words they have, and seem to need, for that category.
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Not too surprising really, they’re too cowardly and/or not honest enough to just own their positions so they have to constantly come up with dogwhistle terms so they never have to openly admit to what they actually mean.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
For those who think this is hyperbole.
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I know you quoted from the article you linked to, but you still should have censored the N-word just for all those who will see that word and flag your comment without seeing the context. Toom1275 is one example.
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I’m going to maintain a modicum of faith in the TD community, thanks.
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The GOP is just tired of things happening like what happened with the Hunter Biden laptop story. It was just labeled Russian disinformation and the New York Post was even locked out of twitter account for bringing the story to light.
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There has still yet to be an actual story identified there and that has very little to do with what this site is getting hassled for. Comer is an idiot.
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“The GOP is just tired of things happening ”
Yes, they do seem to be hell bent on stopping things from happening. Once everything has stopped, then what?
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The Talking Heads ‘Heaven’
“oh heaven /
heaven is the place /
a place where nothing /
nothing ever happens”
…Huh. About conservativism. Didn’t realize it ’til just now. Stand athwart history yelling stop indeed.
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Nothing, if the government would stop pressuring social media to censor and cover up the truth, and fact checking sites actually stated the facts, there wouldn’t be a problem
Re: Re: Re:2
ProTip: When nothing happens, you no longer get a happy meal.
Re: Re: Re:2
Not a thing that’s happening.
Just because you don’t like things that challenge your worldview doesn’t mean they’re not facts.
Yeah coz if there’s one thing conservatives are know for it’s ever thinking that nothing is a problem for them.
War is peace.
Slavery is freedom.
More speech is censorship.
Truly the modern GOP have learned from the best in their field.
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That Orwellian definition of freedom is literally how they define “freedom” or “liberty”. Don’t believe me? How do you explain a group like “Moms for Liberty”?
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Moms for Misogyny
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Literacy levels and argument culture in red states. They actually meant “Moms for Liberace” and doubled down when getting ridiculed.
On a note entirely unrelated to censorship, I’m really appreciating the new moderation efforts. I wasn’t sure you were going to be able to thread the needle.
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yea there’s still trolls defeatist violence advocate trolls the trolls that use slurs trolls that act as one side but is actually the other troll
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but there’s less of them now
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You’re even tolerable without the Nazis infesting the comments.
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i just sometimes have difficulty socializing correctly so i might get framed as a troll
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Personally, I never doubted for a moment that you were being authentic to whom you are.
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i just want people to not give up but sadly some are and when i tell them to not give up i either get hidden or deleted for some reason
Re: Re: Re:5
I mean, I guess to follow your own advice, you have to never give up trying to keep people from giving up. Don’t resist the fractals.
Re: Re: Re:6
yea
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btw there’s a violence advocate troll claiming there not doing when they are and is also impersonating me as well so could you help get rid of the sockpuppet accounts
It’s almost like being in a position of power doesn’t make any words that come out of their mouths automatically true.
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Just means you need to increase the power. The Supreme Court is on it.
Now you are exaggerating
Oh come on. They may not resemble the Lincolnian branch of abolitionists, but if you bother to read up on the original Whig Party on Wikipedia like I did, you may be equally enfuriated that I got such a perfect tee-up ruined by facts.
But for the current GOP, history is what you want to be feeling good about. We all know that they are good people on both sides of good and evil.
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And people are easily manipulated.
Just ask how much Russia paid all those Republicans. And Trump.
Rather than committing to a bit...
They are just gone full blown fascists. They are aware what censorship is and the fact that no private company can ever be guilty of it because under the constitution only the government is forbidden from engaging in censorship.
That they chose to engage dishonestly as they very much are engaging in blatant censorship and persecuting companies for their speech would be ironic if it wasn’t so clearly done in bad faith.
Republicans have gone off the deep end. They are no longer a legitimate political party as they have fully become an enemy of the people, democracy and the constitution operating within our borders with impunity.
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The Democrats are the enemy of the people. They’re letting every country in the world invade our borders,rob, rape, and kill our people. For the first time in my lifetime, on the 4th of July, you see more people waving Palestinian flags than American flags. They’re weaponizing the government against their political opponents. For a party that acts like they hate Russia so much, they sure do try awful hard to act like them
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First off, Fascist…
Yes, the Dems are the willing patsies of Wall Street and the Line. That’s a problem that was created by capitalism. While they aren’t for the people, can you say the same about your side?
I mean, the Republican Party has declared WAR on America, for Putin.
Secondly, realizing that backing a genocidal, racist regime that continues to weaponize the atrocity that created said regime and demanding to give the oppressed their rights IS part of that celebration of liberalism that is the US of A. And realizing that the other side (Hamas) is a pile of rubbish (ideologically speaking) is also congruent with said celebration.
Thirdly, wasn’t it a “conservative” court that gave Biden the power to order assassinations at will? Because they want Trump to murder their critics?
Lastly, and I will repeat this, which party belongs to Russia? Oh, right, not the Dems.
It’s the one that wants Trump.
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Man, if this is the caliber of comments we can expect from you…
you’re gonna have a bad time
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Name a single country that is invading our borders. And no, people immigrating here illegally is not a country invading us. These are two very different things. (Not that Dems are “allowing” illegal immigration; just that that would be a completely different claim.)
No, I don’t. Nor would that make them an enemy of the people of America.
No, no they aren’t. Many of the cases against Trump that aren’t private lawsuits were instigated by conservatives.
Pure projection there. Also, when has Russia ever “let[] every country in the world invade [their] borders”, or had more people wave other countries’ flags than their own?
Re: Almost right
FTFY. YW.
Almost right
FTFY. YW.
You are being too kind to Mr. Comer. It’s not their news rating service that he objects to. It’s identifying the influences of his Russian benefactors. That’s why he’s doing this.
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I don’t blame the GOP at all for going after some of these websites for what they’re doing, especially the so called “Fact Checker websites”. They call things Russian disinformation that have nothing to do with Russia just like the Hunter Biden laptop story. Social media along with these fact checkers censored the truth and pushed the lies and any news site that doesn’t lean left, they label it as fake news and that causes social media sites to take down content that’s true from their websites and ban people.
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“Fact Checker websites”
I’m guessing you may think the earth is flat, is this correct?
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Translation: “The GOP is going after websites that have speech I dislike, so it’s okay if the GOP censors those websites.”
Deeper Implication: “I don’t think the leopards would eat my face if I gave them the opportunity to eat everyone else’s faces.”
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There’s only ONE academic I know of that could reasonably be called a Marxist.
He has a lot less power than, I dunno, the Heritage Foundation, the fascist thinktank who were responsible for Project 2025.
And they’ve all but admitted they would LOVE to murder Americans to reinstate the Confederate States of America.
At least own up to your murderous tendencies and that you want countries to statrt murdering people who do not suck off Trump.
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This article claims that people don’t want the truth and instead want confirmation bias times. I’d disagree with that. Everyone I’ve spoken to would just like the truth no matter what it is. Telling people what they want to hear whether it’s true or not is one of the reasons the country is so divided.
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The truth as dictated to the people via either the state, Russia or China, you mean.
No one is fooled by your Russian backers.
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Just read TruthSocial, it has all the news you need son.
/s
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Donald Trump was convicted in a court of law of 34 felonies related to a cover-up for a payoff to a porn star who he had (very briefly) fucked that was meant to keep her story of a sexual affair with Trump out of the news and therefore keep that story from influencing the 2016 election.
Donald Trump was directly linked to infamous pedophile/human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (who didn’t kill himself), in the sense that—thanks to the release of a certain set of grand jury documents—we know Trump’s name is on Epstein’s message logs and flight logs, which prove that he knew Epstein beyond being a mere acquiantaince (as Trump has claimed).
Those are facts. Tell them to any Trump fan and they’ll punch you in the face (or worse). They can’t abide actual evidence because accepting it would mean entering a shared reality, which means they (or their chosen leaders) don’t control what is and isn’t real. Trumpists are the extremist endgame of anti-empiricist conservatives who would rather believe in a fantasy controlled by either one man or a small group of men (but always men) than believe in a reality where they might have to think. Like so many conservatives, Trumpists are anti-science, anti-evidence, and anti-knowledge. Knowing that, one shouldn’t be surprised that Trumpists are authoritarians—after all, anti-empiricism is the cornerstone of fascism.
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And to add to this.
A good chunk of the Trump administration have been convicted of collaborating with the Russians.
Tell that to the 94 million who will murder on Trump’s command and there’s a good chance you might end up maimed or dead.
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i know you made a made up number of trumpers
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The people who are registered as Republican voters isn’t made up.
It may have dropped or increased since 2020, but the number stated is the population in the red states.
I do not have any hopes that they would vote otherwise.
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yea about that
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There was no coverup. You’re just making stuff up now. He was falsely convicted for labeling a payment to his lawyer a legal expense. That’s gotta be one of the dumbest cases in history, which is why it’ll get overturned eventually. The people that tell you this garbage is the same people that tell you Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, and the Hunter Biden laptop story is Russian disinformation
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Donald Trump authorized a payment to Stormy Daniels in exchange for the rights to her story about a(n incredibly brief) affair with Trump, which was subsequently kept under wraps until after the 2016 election. In that sense, there were two cover-ups: The catch-and-kill of the Stormy Daniels story and the labelling of the payoff as something other than what it was.
The payment wasn’t a legal expense. His conviction for fraud in a court of law is legitimate until an appeals court says otherwise.
And yet, Trump was found unanimously guilty on all counts.
We shall see.
Donald Trump is little better than Biden at this point. We have enough videotape evidence on both men to prove as much. But the press will never say shit about Trump’s obvious mental decline because they’re too busy tearing down Biden to give a shit about a fascist and his allies preparing to wage “a second American Revolution” by heavily implying they are Americans who want to kill Americans that stand against said “revolution” because “some folks need killing”.
Re: Re: Re:2 Doesn't matter how bad Option A is if B is exponentially worse
Donald Trump is little better than Biden at this point. We have enough videotape evidence on both men to prove as much. But the press will never say shit about Trump’s obvious mental decline because they’re too busy tearing down Biden to give a shit about a fascist and his allies preparing to wage “a second American Revolution” by heavily implying they are Americans who want to kill Americans that stand against said “revolution” because “some folks need killing”.
And therein lies the fatal flaw in any ‘But what about Biden’s mental abilities?!’ argument against the man: Even if he had full blown alzheimers and couldn’t remember his own name 99% of the time he would still be the better option because at least he isn’t the head of the party that has made clear they will either rule the country or burn the pillars that are rights and laws that make it worth a damn to the ground.
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The funniest thing?
FDR had polio. JFK had been diagnosed with Addickson’s Disease. (And JFK was a fucking WAR HERO.)
So one can’t really claim illness as being unfit to be President.
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No, it was labeling it as a business expense. Not to mention it was a reimbursement for paying off a porn star, which would not be a legal expense.
Re: Must not be talking to any republicans then
Everyone I’ve spoken to would just like the truth no matter what it is.
‘Trump lost the 2020 election not due to fraud, or cheating, but because for the second time in a row his opponent in the election got several million more votes than him and this time the EC wasn’t enough to save him’ is the truth, yet at this point there are likely millions if not tens of millions of people in the US who would vehemently if not violently deny that.
Telling people what they want to hear whether it’s true or not is one of the reasons the country is so divided.
Having an entire political party so divorced from reality that they coined the term ‘alternative facts’ certainly isn’t helping, no.
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Countless interviews with Trump rally attendees prove that is definitely not the case.
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You know that meme where the wife/gf asks for the truth about how they always look, then get mad when they are given an honest response? Setting aside how accurate that depiction is for women in general, that’s kinda the same thing here. People will often say they value the truth, but everything else they say or do suggests otherwise.
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The Democrats are the enemy of the people. They’re letting every country in the world invade our borders,rob, rape, and kill our people. For the first time in my lifetime, on the 4th of July, you see more people waving Palestinian flags than American flags. They’re weaponizing the government against their political opponents. For a party that acts like they hate Russia so much, they sure do try awful hard to act like them
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flagged imagine spamming trumper troll
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What are you blathering about? None of that is even passingly true. Didn’t you claim above that people want to hear the truth then why are you continuing to parrot extremely partisan lies?
And stop yammering about the laptop. The story wasn’t buried. There’s just no actual story there. If there had been, your boy Giuliani fucked that up before the story even went public.
Trump’s conviction, however, is completely valid and was a long time coming. If anything, it’s far less than he should be seeing.
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million dollar bounty on james comer
half million dead, full million for kidnapped alive
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oh look who just showed up