PrintThe FCC is finally going after big tech censorship
In the halcyon days of the early internet, people who built a better mousetrap...er, website could expect the world to beat a path to their door. Things became even better with social media because a website’s readers could share content with each other, allowing readership and ideas to spread. With traffic, advertising dollars followed, allowing sites to be profitable.
That was American Thinker’s trajectory. That all ended when the Democrats went on the warpath against Donald Trump. Now, though, with Trump heading back to the White House, the FCC may finally have gotten the mojo to return the internet to its original status quo.
In 2016, Americans, having been allowed to break free from the limitations and biases of the drive-by media, helped put Donald Trump in the White House. Then, as Scott Adams presciently warned, the tech world worked to ensure that the same would not happen in 2020.
Image by AI.
The one-two-three punches of the Russia Hoax, COVID, and the 2020 election gave the tech companies the excuse they needed to crack down on ideas with which they disagreed. The magic word was “misinformation.” In addition to embracing it themselves, the tech companies were vulnerable to pressure from the Deep State and the Biden administration. They told the tech companies that it was patriotic to use private corporations to do what the government couldn’t do directly: Censor political speech in America.
Using social media censorship and search engine manipulation to dry up traffic was one way to attack those who opposed the Democrat agenda. However, even with decreased traffic from social media and search engine referrals, sites were still getting by, thanks to the ad revenue from those loyal to them. Something more was needed.
The “something more” was “fact checkers” and “credibility” researchers. In the latter category, the main organization was NewsGuard.
NewsGuard promised that it would apply “nonpartisan journalistic criteria” to internet news and opinion sites. This meant using an alleged “team of expert journalists to rate and review the reliability of news sources....” Armed with this information, corporations, advertisers, and tech companies were assured that they could protect themselves from the taint of being associated with the horrors of misinformation.
However, it soon became apparent, as revenue dried up at conservative sites and not leftist ones, that NewsGuard and similar institutions were simply attacking as misinformation or impermissible bias any verifiable facts and opinions that ran counter to leftist social and political requirements.
We at American Thinker know this firsthand, for we’ve been on the receiving end of NewsGuard’s practices ourselves. I’ve embedded at the end of this email our most recent correspondence with that organization to give you a sense of how the NewsGuard operates.
Once NewsGuard and similar sites swung into operation, our ad revenue dried up, just as happened to every other conservative media site. Rather than receiving the premium ads from big brands that once filled the pages of prestigious conservative sites, we must now rely on a plethora of ads from smaller companies. Unfortunately, it occasionally happens that the embed codes for these ads feed to our site ads that aren’t very nice at all (and we’re always grateful for the readers who let us know).
The only revenue alternative to these ads is reader subscriptions. These are wonderful for us because they’re a reliable source of revenue. We also like to think that they give our subscribers something in return.
Most obviously, subscribers get a blessedly ad-free experience. Subscribers also get a chance to comment on American Thinker essays. Most recently, we’ve instituted a subscriber-only weekly newsletter with unique insights from the American Thinker editorial team: Drew Belsky, JR Dunn, Mike McDaniel, Olivia Murray, Monica Showalter, and me.
Clearly, conservative media have learned how to adapt, but in a country predicated upon free speech, they shouldn’t have been forced to do so.
However, at long last, and perhaps with an eye to the rise of conservativism in America, the FCC is acting. This past week, Brendan Carr, the FCC Commissioner, sent a letter to the CEOs of Alphabet, Inc. (i.e., Google), Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Inc. (i.e., Facebook), and Apple Inc. He opened with a bang:
Over the past few years, Americans have lived through an unprecedented surge in censorship. Your companies played significant roles in this improper conduct. Big Tech companies silenced Americans for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights. They targeted core political, religious, and scientific speech. And they worked—often in concert with so-called “media monitors” and others—to defund, demonetize, and otherwise put out of business news outlets and organizations that dared to deviate from an approved narrative.
From that propitious start, Carr pointed out that investigations have revealed an entire “censorship cartel,” ranging from technology, advertising, marketing, and fact-checking to pressure from the presidential administration. Having expressed confidence that these practices will end, Carr told the organizations that the FCC wants information from them about their “work with one specific organization—the Orwellian named NewsGuard.”
Carr reminded the letter’s recipients that NewsGuard does not operate in good faith. He noted everything from the fact that “reports indicate that NewsGuard has consistently rated official propaganda from the Communist Party of China as more credible than American publications” to the fact that its rating system is punitive and unevenly applied. Then, Carr spelled out what the tech companies must provide to the FCC, which is information about their dealings with NewsGuard, and how it affected their operations and advertising.
Here is Carr’s entire letter, which deserves to be read word for word:
Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel.
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) November 15, 2024
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
You can’t make it up. NewsGuard says it provides apolitical guidance on "misinformation.”
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) November 16, 2024
Yet one of its own Advisory Board members signed the infamous Oct 2020 former intel officials letter falsely suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
American Thinker has been hurt badly by censorship and ad boycotts. We are grateful to all of you who have remained loyal to and supported us over the past painful years.
We also hope that a public interest law firm or a conservative outlet with deeper pockets than ours initiates a class action lawsuit against all the entities complicit in depriving us of revenue we would have earned but for their unlawful practices. (And for any lawyers reading this essay who are involved in such litigation, I’ve suggested that the Civil Rights Act might be one more arrow in the quiver.)
**********
American Thinker Correspondence with NewsGuard
May 29, 2024, Email from Andie Slomka of NewGuard to American Thinker:
Hello,
My name is Andie Slomka, and I’m a reporter with NewsGuard. I believe one of my colleagues has been in contact with you before regarding AmericanThinker.com, but I am reaching out to you today because I am currently updating NewsGuard’s review of the site.
I have a few questions about the site that I was hoping someone could help me with:
1) Is there a reason Thomas Lifson is not identified on the site as its owner?
2) Many articles on the site name the writer but do not provide contact or biographical information about them. Lifson told NewsGuard in an October 2018 email: “Some authors prefer to keep their identifying characteristics private. As you may have heard or read, conservatives are unpopular or persecuted in many circumstances in this country. We are happy to identify those writers who are willing to share.” Is this still the reason the site does not provide this information about its writers?
3) The site does not appear to disclose a particular perspective, yet many articles appear to advance a conservative perspective. The site also frequently publishes opinionated content that is not labeled as opinion alongside news content. Is there a reason the site does not disclose its perspective or label its opinion content as such?
4) I was able to find one correction published by the site over the past year on an article, from April 2024. However, are there more corrections I may have missed that someone could send me?
5) A March 2024 article titled “Study: EVs release 1,850x more particle pollution than gas-powered cars” quoted a March 2024 New York Post article, which stated that a study “found that brakes and tires on EVs release 1,850 times more particle pollution compared to modern tailpipes, which have ‘efficient’ exhaust filters, bringing gas-powered vehicles’ emissions to new lows.” The American Thinker article added: “A particle-pollution rate almost 2,000 times worse than traditional cars? Of course that’s not even factoring in the environmental impact of mining the materials, the manufacturing process, and the disposal of these things.”
However, the May 2022 analysis published by independent U.K. research group Emission Analytics cited in the articles did not directly compare electric and gas-powered vehicles, or even test any electric vehicles.
Additionally, while the analysis did cite a figure of “1,850,” it was in the context of a finding that car tires created 1,850 times more particulate matter than tailpipes. The study did not find that electric vehicles pollute 1,850 times more than gas-powered ones.
A January 2024 article titled “Ilhan Omar makes clear her allegiance, and it’s not to America UPDATED” stated that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar “identified not as an American but as part of a community that is ‘Somalians first, Muslims second.’ In addition, she insisted that, thanks to her presence in Congress, American foreign policy must bow to her demands:.” The article then quoted what it said was an English translation of Omar’s Jan. 27, 2024, remarks in Somali to a Somali American audience in Minneapolis. The translation cited in the article stated: “the US government will only do what the Somalians in the US tell them to do. They will do what we want and nothing else. They must follow our orders, and that is how we will safeguard the interest of Somalia.”
The translation cited in the article is a mistranslation of Omar’s remarks.
Omar never said she and her Somali American audience were “Somalians first, Muslims second.” Translations by a certified court interpreter consulted by MinnesotaReformer.com and a Somali language instructor consulted by PolitiFact both show that she had actually said, “We are people who know that they are Somali and Muslim,” when talking about the unity of the Somali American community.
Omar also never said that “the US government will only do what the Somalians in the US tell them to do.” A Somali speaking reporter for Minnesota’s StarTribune.com found that Omar said in the speech: “When I heard that people who call themselves Somalis signed an agreement with Ethiopia, many people reached out to me and said I needed to talk to the U.S. government. They asked, ‘What would the U.S. government do?’ My answer was that the U.S. government will do what we tell the U.S. government to do. We as Somalis should have that confidence in ourselves. We live in this country. We pay taxes in this country. It’s a country where one of your own sits in Congress. As long as I’m in Congress no one will take Somalia’s sea. And the United States will not support other people to rob us.”
Translations provided by MinnesotaReformer.com and Politifact were essentially identical.
An April 2024 article titled “Illegals fly free--and secretly” advanced the claim that the Biden Administration secretly flew 320,000 undocumented migrants from Latin America to the U.S. throughout 2023. The article stated: “That’s 320,000 in 2023 alone to which they’ll admit. The flights, carrying numbers unknown, continue. The information was obtained only by way of FOIA because these flights, usually in unmarked aircraft, are kept strictly secret and land only at night.”
However, the Biden administration has not flown in hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants on secret flights to the U.S. Although a temporary asylum-seeking program has allowed some immigrants to enter the U.S. from Latin American countries, they were not “secretly” flown to the U.S. in flights operated by the Biden administration.
Up to 30,000 residents of Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela may be granted parole each month under a government program called The Humanitarian Parole Program if they meet several criteria, including having a sponsor lawfully in the United States who files the parole application on behalf of the migrant, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. If the application is approved, the parole seeker can apply for a travel authorization to enter the U.S. via plane within 90 days.
However, the flights are not chartered by the Biden administration, nor are they secret. In fact, the migrants are in charge of booking and paying for their travel on commercial flights. The USCIS website states, “If the beneficiary [of the parole] has been authorized to travel to the United States, they must arrange and fund their own travel.”
The article also cited a March 5 X post by Elon Musk, who stated that the migrants were “imported” by the Biden administration to earn more votes in the country’s November 2024 presidential election. However, the paroled migrants who enter the U.S. as part of the Humanitarian Parole program cannot vote in any federal election, such as the November 2024 U.S. general elections.
Given the context, does the site stand by the claims made in these articles? Do you think the articles could warrant corrections?
Is someone available to discuss these topics with me over email or phone?
As a heads up, we incorporate quotes from our correspondences into our published reviews, so this conversation should be considered on the record.
Thank you,
--
Andie Slomka
Journalist
May 29, 2024, Email from Andrea Widburg to Andie Slomka
Please see my responses, which I’ve written below your questions.
Sincerely,
Andrea Widburg
American Thinker
On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 11:05 AM Andie Slomka wrote:
Hello,
My name is Andie Slomka, and I’m a reporter with NewsGuard. I believe one of my colleagues has been in contact with you before regarding AmericanThinker.com, but I am reaching out to you today because I am currently updating NewsGuard’s review of the site.
I have a few questions about the site that I was hoping someone could help me with:
1) Is there a reason Thomas Lifson is not identified on the site as its owner?
Why is this significant? Is there a legal duty to do so?
After all, your website remains silent about the fact that you have partnered with corporations, organizations, and government agencies that are extremely hostile to conservative policies. These partners include Microsoft, Pfizer, the Department of Defense, and the hard-left-to-the-point-of-socialism American Federation of Teachers. Don’t you think people who rely on you—such as individual readers and advertisers—should be privy to that information? It seems as if you’re hiding your agenda.
2) Many articles on the site name the writer but do not provide contact or biographical information about them. Lifson told NewsGuard in an October 2018 email: “Some authors prefer to keep their identifying characteristics private. As you may have heard or read, conservatives are unpopular or persecuted in many circumstances in this country. We are happy to identify those writers who are willing to share.” Is this still the reason the site does not provide this information about its writers?
Yes.
3) The site does not appear to disclose a particular perspective, yet many articles appear to advance a conservative perspective. The site also frequently publishes opinionated content that is not labeled as opinion alongside news content. Is there a reason the site does not disclose its perspective or label its opinion content as such?
In American Thinker’s “about” section, we explain,
American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. Contributors are accomplished in fields beyond journalism and animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.
There is no limit to the topics appearing on American Thinker. National security in all its dimensions -- strategic, economic, diplomatic, and military -- is emphasized. The right to exist and the survival of the State of Israel are of great importance to us. Business, science, technology, medicine, management, and economics in their practical and ethical dimensions are also emphasized, as is the state of American culture.
We trust our readers to determine for themselves what the site’s orientation is. Likewise, when we offer commentary about news stories and the world situation while also offering original content from informed writers, we trust our readers’ intelligence when it comes to determining what they’re reading. Nothing is ambiguous.
4) I was able to find one correction published by the site over the past year on an article, from April 2024. However, are there more corrections I may have missed that someone could send me?
When errors occur, we correct them. When we correct typos, we don’t feel obligated to inform readers. When we correct substantive errors germane to the specific post and essay, we do leave notes at the end informing readers of the correction. And no, I do not have the time to provide examples. You can take my word for it or look more carefully yourself.
5) A March 2024 article titled “Study: EVs release 1,850x more particle pollution than gas-powered cars” quoted a March 2024 New York Post article, which stated that a study “found that brakes and tires on EVs release 1,850 times more particle pollution compared to modern tailpipes, which have ‘efficient’ exhaust filters, bringing gas-powered vehicles’ emissions to new lows.” The American Thinker article added: “A particle-pollution rate almost 2,000 times worse than traditional cars? Of course that’s not even factoring in the environmental impact of mining the materials, the manufacturing process, and the disposal of these things.”
However, the May 2022 analysis published by independent U.K. research group Emission Analytics cited in the articles did not directly compare electric and gas-powered vehicles, or even test any electric vehicles.
Additionally, while the analysis did cite a figure of “1,850,” it was in the context of a finding that car tires created 1,850 times more particulate matter than tailpipes. The study did not find that electric vehicles pollute 1,850 times more than gas-powered ones.
Ms. Murray did not pretend to comment on the original May 2022 study. As she made perfectly clear, she was responding to the New York Post summation, to which she cited, and which explicitly used the phrase “particle pollution.” If you have a problem, please take it up with the New York Post.
A January 2024 article titled “Ilhan Omar makes clear her allegiance, and it’s not to America UPDATED” stated that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar “identified not as an American but as part of a community that is ‘Somalians first, Muslims second.’ In addition, she insisted that, thanks to her presence in Congress, American foreign policy must bow to her demands:.” The article then quoted what it said was an English translation of Omar’s Jan. 27, 2024, remarks in Somali to a Somali American audience in Minneapolis. The translation cited in the article stated: “the US government will only do what the Somalians in the US tell them to do. They will do what we want and nothing else. They must follow our orders, and that is how we will safeguard the interest of Somalia.”
The translation cited in the article is a mistranslation of Omar’s remarks.
Omar never said she and her Somali American audience were “Somalians first, Muslims second.” Translations by a certified court interpreter consulted by MinnesotaReformer.com and a Somali language instructor consulted by PolitiFact both show that she had actually said, “We are people who know that they are Somali and Muslim,” when talking about the unity of the Somali American community.
Omar also never said that “the US government will only do what the Somalians in the US tell them to do.” A Somali speaking reporter for Minnesota’s StarTribune.com found that Omar said in the speech: “When I heard that people who call themselves Somalis signed an agreement with Ethiopia, many people reached out to me and said I needed to talk to the U.S. government. They asked, ‘What would the U.S. government do?’ My answer was that the U.S. government will do what we tell the U.S. government to do. We as Somalis should have that confidence in ourselves. We live in this country. We pay taxes in this country. It’s a country where one of your own sits in Congress. As long as I’m in Congress no one will take Somalia’s sea. And the United States will not support other people to rob us.”
Translations provided by MinnesotaReformer.com and Politifact were essentially identical.
Interestingly, you haven’t provided any links to your sources, so I cannot address them directly. However, am I correct in understanding that you’re saying that translations from Politifact, a reporter for Minnesota’s Star Tribune, and the Minnesota Reformer are more reliable than those from the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Republic of Somaliland? I’m curious as to what point you’re making.
An April 2024 article titled “Illegals fly free--and secretly” advanced the claim that the Biden Administration secretly flew 320,000 undocumented migrants from Latin America to the U.S. throughout 2023. The article stated: “That’s 320,000 in 2023 alone to which they’ll admit. The flights, carrying numbers unknown, continue. The information was obtained only by way of FOIA because these flights, usually in unmarked aircraft, are kept strictly secret and land only at night.”
However, the Biden administration has not flown in hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants on secret flights to the U.S. Although a temporary asylum-seeking program has allowed some immigrants to enter the U.S. from Latin American countries, they were not “secretly” flown to the U.S. in flights operated by the Biden administration.
Up to 30,000 residents of Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela may be granted parole each month under a government program called The Humanitarian Parole Program if they meet several criteria, including having a sponsor lawfully in the United States who files the parole application on behalf of the migrant, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. If the application is approved, the parole seeker can apply for a travel authorization to enter the U.S. via plane within 90 days.
However, the flights are not chartered by the Biden administration, nor are they secret. In fact, the migrants are in charge of booking and paying for their travel on commercial flights. The USCIS website states, “If the beneficiary [of the parole] has been authorized to travel to the United States, they must arrange and fund their own travel.”
The article also cited a March 5 X post by Elon Musk, who stated that the migrants were “imported” by the Biden administration to earn more votes in the country’s November 2024 presidential election. However, the paroled migrants who enter the U.S. as part of the Humanitarian Parole program cannot vote in any federal election, such as the November 2024 U.S. general elections.
First, please provide sources for every factual statement you’ve made. Second, please explain to me why you believe that the government is reliably stating the facts. Third, please explain why you are ignoring data showing that illegal aliens frequently register to vote in elections.
Given the context, does the site stand by the claims made in these articles? Do you think the articles could warrant corrections?
Is someone available to discuss these topics with me over email or phone?
When it comes to the first article about particle pollution, I have no comment other than the fact that you are being wilfully obtuse. When it comes to the second and third articles, you make myriad factual assertions without providing any citations to authority. There is no reason for me to rely on what you say.
Now, let me ask you a question:
Why is it that you assign good ratings only to outlets that have a decidedly left-leaning political identification? As we’ve seen over the years, these outlets have been consistently wrong about everything from President Trump allegedly conspiring with the Russians to win the 2016 election (a myth destroyed by the Mueller report), about the efficacy of lockdowns and masks, about the safety of vaccinations, about the defamatory claim that President Trump called KKK members “very fine people,” and much more.
Your manifest bias suggests that you’re not interested in the truth but are, instead, interested solely in defaming conservative sites in order to dissuade advertisers from supporting them and readers from viewing them. That’s both unethical and sleazy. It’s also quite possibly a fraud on the public. Please explain.
As a heads up, we incorporate quotes from our correspondences into our published reviews, so this conversation should be considered on the record.
I have discussed these topics with you. If you choose to publish anything I have written, please publish everything I have written. If you cherry-pick, I will publish everything at American Thinker.
May 29, 2024, Email from Andie Slomka to American Thinker
Hi Ms. Widburg,
Here are the source links for the information I provided in the previous email.
For the article: “Ilhan Omar makes clear her allegiance, and it’s not to America UPDATED”:
https://twitter.com/AnalystSomalia/status/1752061355530571978
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1751719238316724330
https://www.facebook.com/DeputyMinisterofFinanceSomaliland/
For the article: “Illegals fly free--and secretly”:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-releases-january-2024-monthly-update
https://twitter.com/AFernandezH46/status/1765490927705935975
https://popular.info/p/did-biden-commit-treason-dissecting
Best,
Andie
May 29, 2024, Email from Andrea Widburg to Andie Slomka
Thanks, Andie.
I’ve updated both articles. In the future, next time you believe we need to update or correct an essay, spare us these period[ic] interrogations and just shoot us an email with the new information. Were you to do that, you’d appear more like an institution dedicated to information integrity and less like a “gotcha” organization that exists to destroy conservative outlets by denying them ad revenue. After all, NewsGuard might want to guard its own integrity along with policing everyone else.
Andrea
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