A fan favorite to head the Federal Communications Commission put Big Tech on notice as he asserted, “The censorship cartel must be dismantled.”
At the same time that corporate media outlets like MSNBC and CNN were experiencing post-election ratings collapses, Elon Musk had reported an all-time high in usage on X while major brands previously boycotting the social media platform returned.
The new paradigm that had users relying on social media sources over cable and network talking heads increased the importance of First Amendment protections and found FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr calling out CEOs and “fact checking” organizations like NewsGuard for promoting “one-sided narratives.”
“Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel,” Carr captioned a letter to CEOs Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Google parent company Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai shared on X. “The Orwellian named NewsGuard along with ‘fact checking’ groups & ad agencies helped enforce one-sided narratives. The censorship cartel must be dismantled.”
Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel.
The Orwellian named NewsGuard along with “fact checking” groups & ad agencies helped enforce one-sided narratives.
The censorship cartel must be dismantled. pic.twitter.com/Xf0sEYOUfv
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) November 15, 2024
Within the letter, the commissioner many hoped would chair the FCC under President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration, noted how their platforms “worked — often in concert with so-called ‘media monitors’ and others — to defund, demonitize, and otherwise put out of business news outlets and organizations that dared to deviate from an approved narrative.”
“The censorship cartel is an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled. Americans must be able to reclaim their right to free speech. Indeed, our democracy depends on freedom of expression,” wrote Carr.
Calling attention to exposure from the Twitter Files, he focused on NewsGuard, which “bills itself as the Internet’s arbiter of truth” and noted how “by leveraging its partnership with advertising agencies” it was able to censor outlets or, as the U.S. House Committee on Small Business had put it in a 2024 report, “select winners and losers in the news media space.”
“But NewsGuard’s own track record raises questions about whether relying on the organization’s products would constitute ‘good faith’ actions within the meaning of Section 230. For one, reports indicate that NewsGuard has consistently rated official propaganda from the Communist Party of China as more credible than American publications. For another, NewsGuard aggressively fact checked and penalized websites that reported on the COVID-19 lab leak theory. For still another, the Small Business Committee and multiple Media Research Center studies detail numerous instances where NewsGuard apparently does not apply its own rating system in an even-handed manner.”
Adding to concerns, the commissioner noted at least one member of the Advisory Board signed the letter of 51 former intelligence experts who’d claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
In order to address censorship concerns calling out Big Tech companies for “improper conduct” that “targeted core political, religious, and scientific speech,” Carr sought a list of every product and service that relied on NewsGuard or any other fact-checking service as well as any third party advertising or marketing agencies the companies partnered with by December 10.
