RFK Jr. vs WaPo marks first round in Trump's vow for a showdown with legacy media, censorship

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Posted on 11/23/2024 6:17:36 AM PST by bitt

Many news outlets have published Robert F. Kennedy Jr. profiles in the past 18 months, but The Washington Post’s in June was the only one to warrant a 20-page response from the Trump HHS nominee

(This story is the first in a four-part series this month by Just the News on self-described watchdogs who push for censorship.)

“If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country,” President-elect Donald Trump said in a video posted to social media just day after winning reelection on Nov. 5. “Today, I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime.”

Not mentioned by name, though alluded to, are the various non-profit and for-profit groups that have sprung up to battle “fake news” but typically target outlets that lean right of center. Those group include the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), Media Matters for America (MMFA), the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and NewsGuard.

“When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large,” Trump also announced.

With his bold pronouncements in mind, the following is Part 1 of a four-part series – a deep dive into some of the organizations to which he was likely referring. Critics of their work say it leads to censorship and loss of advertising for the media outlets that dare challenge the legacy media’s approved narrative.

Trusted News Initiative

Multiple outlets have published profiles of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the past 18 months, though only The Washington Post’s in June warranted a 20-page response from Kennedy that includes 78 footnotes. The letter, reviewed by Just the News, includes the expected complaints: The writer referred to Kennedy’s claims as “conspiracy theories” or as having been “debunked,” though he says they hadn’t been.

Too many journalists do not “speak truth to power,” Kennedy wrote, but instead “serve as propagandists pouring concrete on official orthodoxies, and attacking dissent.” The Washington Post did not respond to a request for comment.

Peppered throughout the letter are references to something called the Trusted News Initiative, a global consortium of members founded in 2019 by the BBC that also includes the Associated Press, Reuters, Microsoft, Google, YouTube and The Washington Post. Its goal: combat disinformation.

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1 posted on 11/23/2024 6:17:36 AM PST by bitt

To: null and void; aragorn; EnigmaticAnomaly; kalee; Kale; AZ .44 MAG; Baynative; bgill; bitt; ...

2 posted on 11/23/2024 6:17:49 AM PST by bitt (<img src=' 'width=30%>)

To: bitt

3 posted on 11/23/2024 6:25:54 AM PST by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are not longer being issued, but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere)

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