Just as CNN didn't blink twice when it described "fiery but mostly peaceful protests" in 2020, the joke of a media outlet is telling Twitter Files readers "don't believe your lying eyes" when it comes to Big Tech-Big Government censorship collusion.
CNN published what amounted to a Big Tech-Big Government press release June 6 headlined: “Twitter’s own lawyers refute Elon Musk’s claim that The ‘Twitter Files’ exposed US government censorship.” CNN’s sources? The lawyers for the censorship-obsessed, pre-Musk Twitter regime in Donald J. Trump v. Twitter, Inc.
Wow, who would have thought that people paid to defend pre-Musk Twitter would do just that! “Twitter’s own lawyers are disputing those claims in a case involving former President Donald Trump — forcefully rejecting any suggestion that the Twitter Files show what Musk and many Republicans assert they contain,” CNN claimed.
Talk about awful timing.
Just a day after CNN’s spin, The Grayzone News host Aaron Maté released a batch of “New Twitter Files” showing that the FBI actively assisted Ukrainian intelligence in censoring Twitter users and journalists accused of spreading so-called “disinformation” and “fear.”
Specifically, per Maté, “In March 2022, an FBI Special Agent sent Twitter a list of accounts on behalf of the SBU, Ukraine’s main intelligence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, ‘are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.’”
Twitter reportedly “agreed to review the accounts but raised concerns about its inclusion of ‘American and Canadian journalists” such as Maté. Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi made it a point of calling the latest batch of Twitter Files released by Maté the "most damning about the FBI, showing that it is willing to help a foreign government try to suppress a prominent Western journalist."
Of all the #TwitterFiles stories, this one is perhaps the most damning about the FBI, showing that it is willing to help a foreign government try to suppress a prominent Western journalist. It's outrageous and provides further evidence the FBI is out of control. https://t.co/iNwgJxYe2O
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 7, 2023
But, as CNN spun, “Twitter’s attorneys contested one of the most central allegations to emerge from the Twitter Files: that regular communications between the FBI and Twitter ahead of the 2020 election amounted to government coercion to censor content or, worse, that Twitter had become an actual arm of the US government.” Oof.
Many media pundits, all of whom also happened to be Russiagate dupes, went to great effort to dismiss the Twitter Files.
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 7, 2023
My prediction is that they will ignore this one: https://t.co/CKglm0wOhx
“As cited in Norwood v. Harrison, ‘It is also axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish,'” said MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris. “Or does CNN suggest that government can accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish — in this case, by government limiting the constitutionally protected speech of Americans by applying pressure to — or working in coordination with — Big Tech companies?”
CNN also cited Big Tech and the FBI’s denials, as if that was strong evidence. For example, the agency reportedly paid Twitter $3.4 million between 2019 and 2021 “for the time spent processing requests from the FBI.” But CNN ridiculously asserted that the payments were simply “routine reimbursements for responding to subpoenas and investigations, not payments for content moderation decisions.” Right, because it couldn’t possibly also be for looking into the lists of hundreds of accounts that the FBI sent Twitter, eh CNN?
CNN accused Twitter owner Elon Musk of “baseless claims that the US government illegally coerced Twitter into censoring a 2020 New York Post article about Hunter Biden.” That’s despite the fact that former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth acknowledged having met weekly with the FBI who knew about the laptop for nearly a year before the New York Post released its report.
Yet, in a statement to the Federal Election Commission, Roth said, “federal law enforcement agencies communicated [to Twitter] that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors” and that such operations “might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.” He later added that the FBI even informed him that the leak was rumored to “involve Hunter Biden.”
CNN simply bypassed all of this by taking the lawyers for the prior Twitter regime’s word for it that the Twitter Files don’t show coercion because they “‘don’t contain a specific government demand to remove content—let alone one backed by the threat of government sanction.”
CNN peddled an excuse for the FBI flagging content to Twitter leadership too. “Even the FBI’s flagging of specific problematic tweets were merely suggestions that they might violate Twitter’s terms of service, not a request that they be removed or an implication of retribution if Twitter failed to take the tweets down, Twitter’s lawyers said.”
But this misses the point. Taibbi even reported that evidence showed that “agencies like the FBI and DHS [were] regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.” As Taibbi noted, “[A] surprisingly high number [of emails] are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact CNN at 404-827-1500 and demand it stop behaving like a shill for Big Tech-Big Government efforts to censor Americans’ constitutionally protected free speech.
