The Irony Board: The 'Silenced' on FNC

I can't help laughing at all of the folks on the right who are up in arms about social media companies restricting their 'free speech' and complaining that they are being 'silenced' by Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and others. 

Why laugh, you ask? I only know they're complaining about being silenced because they're going on Fox News and telling everyone about it. 

For example, here's California farmer and Medal of Freedom recipient Rep. Devin Nunes, speaking on Sunday Morning Futures, hosted by Maria Bartiromo on Fox News (emphasis added).

But it's more than the just the financial aspect of that. Republicans have no way to communicate. It doesn't even matter if you're Republican or conservative, if you don't want to be regulated by left-wingers that are at Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, where you get shadow-banned and nobody gets to see you and they get to decide what's violent or not violent, it's preposterous.

Yep - this is Devin 'frivolous lawsuit-filer' Nunes, the guy who sued Twitter because a parody account said mean things about him. But censorship is bad... and he gets to decide what's mean or not... Got it. 

And, the part about having no way to communicate? Saying that on a Fox News Channel (FNC) show, on not just the most-watched conservative network, but on the network that "crushed records and delivered the largest total day and primetime audience among total viewers in cable news history" in 2020, according to the Nielsen folks? Some irony there, right? 

And now, we've got this guy, Rep. Tom Kading, a state legislator from North Dakota, who is following in Nunes' footsteps. Speaking on Fox and Friends earlier today, Kading said he had drafted a bill back in December stating that

social media sites would be liable in a civil lawsuit for damages to a North Dakota resident "whose speech is restricted, censored, or suppressed," as long as it is not "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable."

And, since he introduced the bill, "things have only gotten worse," he said.

I'm frankly shocked at what's happening to our country and censoring does not create unity, it does not help the situation of division in our country, and it does not de-escalate the situation. All it really does is make those who have been silenced dig in deeper and be more suspicious of what's going on.

He's right: censoring doesn't create unity, or de-escalate the situation. Neither does tweeting relentlessly and untruthfully about a stolen election, or that the media are the enemy of the people and everything they report that is not to your liking is fake news, or that everything is beautiful and perfect when the entire universe knows it's not, or that the pandemic is under control, or that those who disagree with you is not a real American, or that people who don't do your bidding deserve to be driven out of office, and so on.  

I'd suggest that suing social media companies also doesn't create unity, or de-escalate things -and, Kading notably doesn't offer anything that does do those things. Not only that, but are social media companies or traditional media companies, including FNC in the unity-creating business anyway

Kading also talked about some other risks.

If a website comes out and selectively publishes information or manipulates true information in order to create a certain desired narrative, this restrictive action can essentially amount to defamation.

And, there's the real irony - the selective publishing, the manipulation of the truth, the defamation he mentions. 

Kading, remember, was talking on Sunday Morning Futures, just one of the FNC shows that had to run a tasty disclaimer - excuse me, a 'fact checking story,' correcting each show's lies.

In a three-minute segment aired on three shows that previously played host to some of the more zany election fraud claims coming from Trump’s advocates—Fox Business’ “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” and Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo’s “Sunday Morning Futures” and Jeanine Pirro’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine”—Fox News appeared to retract allegations made against Smartmatic.

Dominion Voting Systems is not done yet, either; the company also warned Fox and others back in December that legal action is coming. 

Dominion Voting Systems, one of the targets of President Donald Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about the election that he lost, has warned Fox News, major Fox personalities, other conservative media outlets, radio host Rush Limbaugh and conservative lawyers that defamation litigation against them is “imminent.”

The voting machine company this week has sent 21 letters to the White House, Fox News, its hosts Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, the news outlets Newsmax, One America News Network, Epoch Times and others demanding they stop making defamatory claims about Dominion and that they preserve any documents they have relating to the firm.

Want even more irony? How about a settlement with the family of someone who was disparaged on the network ?

The Fox News Channel has reached a private settlement with the parents of the slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. The network had baselessly reported in May 2017 that Rich leaked thousands of Democratic party emails to Wikileaks during the height of the 2016 presidential campaign. 

The story, reported by Fox News' Malia Zimmerman and retracted seven days later, also suggested without any evidence that Democrats might have been linked to the killing of the 27-year-old Rich, a crime that has not been solved to this day. In response to NPR's questions, a Fox News spokesperson tells NPR that Zimmerman is no longer with the network. 

"The settlement with Fox News closes another chapter in our efforts to mourn the murder of our beloved Seth, whom we miss every single day," Joel and Mary Rich wrote in their statement. "We are pleased with the settlement of this and sincerely hope that the media will take genuine caution in the future."

I don't know about you, but if I was worried about censorship and divisiveness and a lack of unity, I'd probably find a different network to help share my story than the original - and still the best - home of division and loose facts.