America First Legal Foundation (AFL) has asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General to investigate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) collusion with big tech social media companies, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, to covertly and illegally push COVID-19 propaganda.
The request was based on information disclosed in response to an AFL Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request after the White House admitted the Biden Administration colluded with its corporate allies to censor what it deemed COVID-19 “misinformation” and “disinformation,” on July 15, 2021.
The administration initially refused to respond to the FOIA request, triggering a lawsuit by AFL demanding the production of the public records. The CDC complied on July 17, 2021, turning over 286 pages of records.
“These records are damning,” stated AFL in a press release on August 3, 2022. “They prove that the Biden Administration and Big Tech knowingly and intentionally combined to mislead the public about the origin of COVID-19 information on social media; censor social media users who dissented from the government’s approved talking points; and conceal the government’s role in writing and publishing masking and vaccination talking points.”
Willing Accomplices
The CDC records show Twitter, Facebook, and Google regularly colluded with the CDC to stifle information contrary to the CDC’s official positions regarding such topics as treatment, vaccine safety, and vaccine “shedding”—the tendency of new contagions to arise in and spread from vaccine recipients to other persons.
One document AFL obtained includes a letter to the CDC from Facebook offering the agency $15 million in advertising credits.
“This gift will be used by CDC’s COVID-19 response to support the agency’s messages on Facebook, and extend the reach of COVID-19-related Facebook content, including messages on vaccines, social distancing, travel, and other priority communication messages,” states the letter.
AFL says this could be a violation of limits on gifts in the federal Antideficiency Act.
Google’s Trusted Media Summit
An email exchange between a CDC official who spoke at Google’s 2020 “Trusted Media Summit” and one of Google’s conference organizers shows the CDC is sensitive to public image concerns: the official turned down a request to post her comments on YouTube, saying she was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic.
The same email chain reveals a Google staffer proposing to a senior CDC official that the search engine giant promote a World Health Organization initiative “addressing the COVID-19 infodemic and strengthen community resilience against misinformation,” and offering to introduce the CDC official to a Google colleague who was “working on programs to counter immunization misinfo.”
Twitter appears to be more aggressive. Records show CDC officials provided Twitter with a list of 13 tweets it deemed to be “misinfo.” The accounts of seven of the Twitter users were suspended. The involvement of the CDC in the decision was not revealed previously.
‘Profoundly Disturbing’
The documents show big social media corporations colluded with big government to stifle speech, says Jeffrey A. Tucker, founder, and president of the Brownstone Institute.
“The FOIA request revealed deep cooperation between Big Tech and the government, to the point that it is impossible to know which is the hand and which is the glove,” said Tucker. “This is profoundly disturbing. The government claims it is the one source of truth. No such claims are admissible in a free society. The current practice pretends as if the First Amendment does not exist. This is an attack on our founding principles. I see no solution here but to disable the administrative state. Any technical solution limiting interactions seems destined to fail with too many loopholes.”
The danger is not just control of information by the government, but the health risks of denying citizens the right to make informed medical decisions during a health crisis says, Tucker.
“Much of what the government and Big Tech claimed to be fake news turned out to be true,” said Tucker. “Meanwhile, the public was relatively less informed, and government had a freer hand than it otherwise would have. This is precisely why we have a First Amendment, to prevent that from happening.”
Some of the information flagged as misinformation turned out to be accurate. Deborah Birx, M.D., the COVID-19 response coordinator under former President Trump, has admitted she knew the COVID-19 shots would not prevent infection. Now there is evidence mRNA from the vaccines can be incorporated into the DNA of recipients via reverse transcription.
‘Paid Off for Both’
The Biden administration needs to come clean on its collusion with private industry to control information, says Matt Dean, a senior fellow for Health Care Policy Outreach at The Heartland Institute, which co-publishes Health Care News.
“Very clearly, Big Tech had good reason to want to please the administration by shutting down any opposition to the Biden COVID-19 response,” said Dean. “Both Biden and Big Tech had a lot at risk. If they inappropriately colluded, it paid off for both in the short term.”
“Tech companies experienced record growth during the pandemic, and President Biden’s party consolidated power over both houses of Congress while muting opposition through censorship,” said Dean. (See related article, opposite page)
Censorship is a form of propaganda, says Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University, in a webcast on the subject of propaganda sponsored by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, on August 25, 2022.
“We naturally believe something if it is the only thing we hear,” said Miller.
Kevin Stone (kevin.s.stone@gmail.com) writes from Arlington, Texas.
Internet info:
“The Pandemic of Propaganda,” Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, August 25, 2022: https://rumble.com/v1hdf31-full-episode-44-the-pandemic-of-propaganda.html
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