Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell accused President Donald Trump of “government censorship” after she endorsed social media companies cracking down on so-called “misinformation.”
“Amid all the noise, an eerie hush is spreading across America. Companies, scientific researchers and Trump critics are clamming up as the MAGA movement ushers in a new era of government censorship,” Rampell declared at the beginning of her piece Thursday.
Rampell challenged the notion that Trump is a “champion of free speech” after he signed his “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” executive order, writing, “In reality, it was the start of an Orwellian effort to root out wrongthink from government ranks and the private sector.”
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She cited the “blackout” of communication from government health agencies, pointing to the CDC halting its weekly morbidity and mortality data report “for the first time since 1952,” which she said was supposed to have the latest on bird flu transmission.
“These actions, among other measures canceling research grants and public engagements, appear related to efforts to expunge so-called wokeness from government,” Rampell wrote. “Civil servants have been ordered to snitch on colleagues who might secretly harbor support for DEI — or diversity, equity and inclusion — initiatives. An executive order issued on Wednesday says the government will withhold funding from public schools that teach concepts such as ‘unconscious bias.’”
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell accused President Trump of implementing “government censorship” after she expressed support for the social media crackdown on COVID “misinformation.” (Screenshot/CNN)
Rampell went on to accuse Trump allies of engaging in “speech- and thought-policing, the kinds of actions for which they once condemned progressives,” listing the letter 19 Republican state attorney generals penned calling on Costco to end its DEI policies and insisting Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, “obliquely threatened” Apple CEO Tim Cook on social media for not changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” in Apple Maps.
“But as president, Trump doesn’t need new laws or court decisions to chill disfavored discourse. Media and tech companies are already preemptively buckling,” Rampell told readers before citing ABC News and Meta’s recent settlements with Trump as well as Paramount mulling a settlement to his lawsuit against CBS News.
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She also lumped in tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk, pointing to his lawsuit against far-left advocacy group Media Matters.
Notably, Musk signaled suing CNN for defamation earlier this week after Rampell, a CNN commentator, accused him of making a “Sieg Heil” gesture at Trump’s inauguration rally.
Elon Musk signaled filing a defamation lawsuit against CNN following comments Rampell, a CNN commentator, made about him on-air. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Before Rampell took such a staunch position in favor of free speech, she backed efforts by tech giants to censor COVID-related “misinformation.”
“Misinformation has flourished on Facebook and other sites for many years. Unlike truths, lies are unconstrained by reality, which means they can be crafted to be maximally interesting, sexy, terrifying. In other words, they’re optimized to generate traffic, which happens to be good for tech companies’ bottom lines,” Rampell wrote in July 2021. “Whether out of principle or financial self-interest, tech executives initially said they weren’t in the business of taking down content simply because it was false… Intense blowback followed, along with pressure for tech companies to recognize how their tools were being exploited to undermine democracy, stoke violence and generally poison people’s brains; the firms have since ramped up fact-checking and content moderation.”
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Rampell called President Trump’s anti-censorship executive order “the start of an Orwellian effort to root out wrongthink from government ranks and the private sector.” (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Rampell went on to cite Facebook’s removal of “over 18 million instances of COVID-19 misinformation” and “more than 167 million pieces of COVID-19 content debunked by our network of fact-checking partners” that were suppressed on the platform after then-President Biden claimed companies like Facebook were “killing people” since their content fueled vaccine hesitancy.
“On the one hand, yes, social media companies absolutely still can and must do more to scrub misinformation from their platforms,” Rampell wrote. “But on the other hand: Actually doing more to stamp out this misinformation is challenging. Not because these firms lack the workers or technology to identify problematic content; the real obstacle is political.”
“Now, one could argue that these tech firms should step up and impose the moderation policies they think are right, political (and perhaps financial) fallout be damned. Perhaps these companies could more forcefully rebut Republicans’ claims of politically motivated censorship and ‘shadow-banning’ by pointing out that right-wing content still dominates the most popular every day on Facebook. But if even White House officials appear tentative about picking fights with the right-wing industrial complex, it’s not surprising that tech firms would follow suit,” she later added.
Rampell did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
