Democrat Congressmen Pressure Cable Providers to Censor Conservative News Networks
Democrat Congressmen Pressure Cable Providers to Censor Conservative News Networks
By Daniel Greenfield
After the Democrat state of permanent emergency, I predicted that they would move from targeting conservative sites to also going after talk radio and cable news.
Now House Democrats are doing it.
A pair of House Democrats asked television providers including AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast on Monday whether they would consider dropping Fox News, Newsmax and One America News from its cable offerings.
In advance of the Wednesday hearing, called “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media,” members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter on Monday to Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice, asking about their role in “the spread of dangerous misinformation.”
The committee members also sent the letter to Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu, digital companies that distribute cable programming.
“To our knowledge, the cable, satellite and over-the-top companies that disseminate these media outlets to American viewers have done nothing in response to the misinformation aired by these outlets,” two Democratic representatives from California, Anna G. Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times.
Remind me of how President Trump was the threat to the First Amendment. Or how the censorship of conservatives is a private action by private companies.
Here you have members of Congress openly pressuring cable providers to drop news networks associated with the political opposition. If AT&T goes with it, there’s nothing “private” about that action.
It’s government censorship especially since Eshoo and McNerney are now part of the ruling party that controls the entire government.
“Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date?” the letter continues. “If so, why?”
Nothing subtle about that.
The Democrat letter specifically lists the three conservative cable news channels and obviously makes no mention of MSNBC or CNN which aired false lefty misinformation about the 2016 election on a near-constant basis.
Blair Levin, who served as the F.C.C.’s chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, said a hearing could be a first step toward meaningful action. “You have to establish a factual record that on both the election and Covid, tens of millions of Americans believe things that are just factually not true, and then try to figure out: ‘What are the appropriate roles for the government in changing that dynamic?’” Mr. Levin said.
Same one as practiced by Russia, China, and Cuba… countries that the Democrats seem to want to emulate.
The question is what are Republicans and conservatives going to do about it.
First, let’s stop pretending that censorship is merely a private action. It’s not. It’s a coordinated effort by Democrat government officials, by the media and by major corporations, all of whom do business with the government.
That makes it government censorship.
Second, protecting freedom of association and expression is the biggest civil rights crisis of the era. If we don’t fight that fight, the country will go down a very dark path.