The Biden administration's 'dizzying' censorship network: Dozens of federal agencies, foreign governments, and Big Tech
Think tank MRC released a report on the "censorship initiatives" from the former government and warned that many of them that sought to "hide career bureaucrats doing censorship" are still part of the state.
File image of demonstrators protesting against censorship.
Watchdog group Media Research Center (MRC) compiled 57 initiatives from the Joe Biden administration that "targeted Americans’ ability to speak their minds." Combined, it claims, they demonstrate "dizzying" coordination among more than 90 agencies and hundreds of officials, with the White House at the center.
After a case-by-case analysis, they assert that Biden "ran the gamut" of possible censorship initiatives against conservative or critical voices, from weaponizing federal departments to "enlisting foreign agents" to colluding with Big Tech and funding outside censorship organizations.
Although the measures had been previously reported by MRC, the press, independent organizations and congressional committees, the novelty of the report "The Biden Administration Waged War on Free Speech" is its concision and systematization, as well as its endeavor to identify in each one all the agencies involved and the "key individuals."
Those named include recent former high-ranking public officials such as Antony Blinken, former secretary of state; Christopher Wray, former FBI director; Merrick Garland, former attorney general; and Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The report even names departments such as the FBI and the TSA, as well as the U.S. Agency for Global Media (and independent media outlets such as The Poynter Institute).
The 'range' of censorship
The conservative organization sorts "censorship initiatives" into four groups:
- Orders to judges, corporations or foreign authorities to silence speech.
- Modifications to laws and regulations ("policy or rulemaking") that pretendend to achieve the "codification of censorship."
- Partnerships with other governments.
- And "lavish" grants to "censorship organizations (which are subject to less scrutiny and less transparency than federal agencies)."
Some of the cases cited achieved wide publicity, such as efforts to silence speech that questioned official actions or recommendations during the pandemic, identified as "Initiative 20." Meta's own CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recently admitted to behind-the-scenes pressure on his company to censor accounts of Americans.
In another similar case ("Initiative 21"), Andy Slavitt, White House senior advisor on COVID-19, pressured Amazon to reduce the visibility of books critical of the government's stance on the pandemic. This pressure was not limited to technology platforms:
"Even Trader Joe’s was expected to uphold the Biden speech code," the report claims on "Initiative 22," bringing up a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling against the supermarket chain for firing an employee for skipping work and shouting in front of customers in protest of the suspension of mandatory facemask wearing.
They also point to the funding of speech monitoring organizations such as Guidehouse ("Initiative 23"), the Global Disinformation Index ("Initiative 11") and NewsGuard (also "Initiative 11"). Those received millions of dollars in public funds through the Air Force, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Also, MRC claims that shortly before leaving office, the previous administration attempted to "hide career bureaucrats doing censorship work in various sub-cabinet agencies" ("Initiative 56").
"This means that while Biden is gone, his censorship initiatives remain," MRC warns. It even goes so far as to speak of a "Shadow Government for Censorship," hidden in places like the embassy in the Ivory Coast or the National Science Foundation.
Access the full report
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