My Statement to Congress - Opening remarks on John Kerry, European speech law, and USAID before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, February 12th, 2025

Racket News ^ | 12 Feb, 2025 | Matt Taibbi

[MtnClimber]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Two years ago, when Michael and I first testified before your Weaponization of Government Subcommittee, Democratic members called us “so-called journalists,” suggested we were bought-off “scribes,” and questioned our ethics and loyalties. When we tried to answer, we were told to shut up, take off our tinfoil hats, and remember two things: one, there is no digital censorship, two, if there is digital censorship, it’s for our own good.

I was shocked. I thought the whole thing had to be a mistake. No way the party I gave votes to all my life was now pro-censorship. Then last year I listened to John Kerry, whom I voted for, talk to the World Economic Forum. Speaking about disinformation, he said “our First Amendment stands as a major block” to our ability to “hammer it out of existence.”

He complained that “it’s really hard to govern” because “people self-select where they go for their news,” which makes it “much harder to build consensus…”

I defended Kerry when people said he “looks French,” but Marie Antoinette would have been embarrassed by this speech. He was essentially complaining that the peasants are “self-selecting” their own media. What’s next, letting them make up their own minds?

“Building consensus” may be a politician’s job, but it’s not mine as a citizen or as a journalist. In fact, making it hard to govern is exactly the media’s job. The failure to understand this is why we have a censorship problem.

This is an Alamo moment for the First Amendment. Most of America’s closest allies have already adopted draconian speech laws. We’re surrounded. The EU’s new Digital Services Act is the most comprehensive censorship law ever instituted in a democratic society.

Ranking member Raskin, you don’t have to go as far as Russia or China to find people jailed for speech. Our allies in England now have an Online Safety Act that empowers the government to jail people for nebulous offenses like “false communication” or causing “psychological harm.” Germany, France, Australia, Canada, and other nations have implemented similar ideas.

These laws are totally incompatible with our system. Our own citizens have been arrested in some of these countries, but our government hasn’t stood up for them. Why? Because many of our bureaucrats believe in these laws.

Take USAID. Many Americans are in an uproar now because they learned about over $400 million going to an organization called Internews, whose chief Jeanne Bourgault boasted to Congress about training “hundreds of thousands of people” in journalism. Her views are almost identical to Kerry’s.

She gave a talk about “building trust and combatting misinformation” in India during the pandemic. She said that after months of a “really beautifully unified Covid-19 message,” vaccine enthusiasm rose to 87%, but when “mixed information on vaccine efficacy” got out, hesitancy ensued.

We’re paying this person to train journalists, and she doesn’t know the press doesn’t exist to promote “unity” or political goals like vaccine enthusiasm. That’s propaganda, not journalism.

Bourgault also once said that to fight “bad content,” we need to “work really hard on exclusion lists or inclusion lists” and “really try to focus our ad dollars” toward “the good news.”

Again, if you don’t know the fastest way to erode “trust” in media is by having government sponsor “exclusion lists,” you shouldn’t be getting a dollar in taxpayer money, let alone $476 million. And USAID is just a tiny piece of a censorship machine Michael and I saw across a long list of agencies. Collectively they’ve bought up every part of the news production line: sources, think-tanks, research, “fact-checking,” “anti-disinformation,” commercial media scoring, and when all else fails, censorship.

It’s a giant closed messaging loop, whose purpose is to transform the free press into a consensus machine. There’s no way to remove the rot surgically. The whole mechanism has to go.

Is there “right-wing misinformation”? Hell yes. It exists in every direction. But I grew up a Democrat and don’t remember being afraid of it. At the time, we didn’t need censorship because we figured we had the better argument.

Obviously, some of you lack that same confidence. You took billions from taxpayers and blew it on programs whose entire purpose was to tell them they’re wrong about things they can see with their own eyes.

You sold us out, and until these “rather tiresome” questions are answered, this problem is not fixed. Thank you.

Editor’s note: details to come.

[MtnClimber]

The left has been telling lies and censoring for longer than the author would like to admit.

[SaveFerris]

WOW!

[Lake Living]

It’s worth listening to the whole proceedings (though hard to sit through the hypocrisy of the left). Excellent info!
https://www.youtube.com/live/Nv-KacweHNQ?si=p2fC6hxvk-_67cgc

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

A number of media individuals on the supposed Left have gotten mugged by their Left of late, and learned the old adage. A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.

It is time to abandon the far-too-simple construct of "Left-Right" as a highly manipulated model. My bride and I tend these days to speaks of simple commonsense versus idiocy. Today's Democrats -- as they postured during questioning of Gabbard and RFK Jr -- reveal zero interest in commonsense and great dedication to idiocy, as long as the well-connected corruption feathers their financial nests.

[griswold3]

Good work, Matt. Keep it up!

[FreedomPoster]

Uniparty or Populist also works.

[PGalt]

...”this problem is not fixed.” Until...

THANK YOU.

[marktwain]

But I grew up a Democrat and don’t remember being afraid of it. At the time, we didn’t need censorship because we figured we had the better argument.

---

Democrats (Progressives) were all for freedom of speech and empowering the press when they controlled 95% of “the press” (actually the old dominant media).

When new forms of media developed, giving people a choice, they became all in on censorship.

[BobL]

“...Michael and I saw across a long list of agencies. Collectively they’ve bought up every part of the news production line: sources, think-tanks, research, “fact-checking,” “anti-disinformation,” commercial media scoring, and when all else fails, censorship.”

For people who can’t understand how the Western media still exists at previous levels, when newspaper circulation is next to zero and people watching their news is very low - your answer is right there above - they found new people who would pay for their work...TAXPAYERS.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

Yes. Color me unimpressed. This author was probably for the “Fairness Doctrine”.

[GOPJ]

Freedom lovers vs totalitarians also works...

[SaveFerris]

(Then last year I listened to John Kerry,
whom I voted for, talk to the World Economic Forum)

DON'T vote Democrat Matt.

After the Godless United Nations
the World Economic Forum is probably
Satan's premier Globalist entity

(the World Enslavement Forum)

Well it IS interesting that the ONLY place where the Earth 🌎🌍 intersects the letters 🔤 in their name is where it could make 3 odd 6s with the top one being the most distinctive - a foreshadowing is my guess

-Klaus Schwab was born March 30, 1938 Ravensburg, Germany. Right in the belly of the beast.

Seems like many governments follow Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum

[iontheball]

WOW!
___________________________
Wow is right. What a nicely written and delivered statement on 1st Amendment rights. It is also scary how far the demagogic tropes on 1st Amendment censorship has progressed in today’s world. Thank God for our Founders who saw fit to enshrine free speech as the number one individual right of basic freedoms.

[Karliner]

Yellow Journalism and worse was coined a long, long time ago.

[SaveFerris]

That’s why I’m so pushy (LOL 🤣)
with tiny bits of the Word of God.

The Godless Reprobate Globalists
HATE actual FREEDOM and LOVE TYRANNY.

(TYRANNY: see COVID-19(84) lockdowns)

Christians and Orthodox Jews will be
their #1 targets during the End Times.

The world 🌎🌍 HATES the Word of God.

I don’t know how much time we have to preach.

Shoot, they hate anyone, even a Democrat
like Matt Taibbi if he tells some TRUTH.

[marktwain]

Yes. Color me unimpressed. This author was probably for the “Fairness Doctrine”.

---

Many, if not most people in the Media from 1965 - 1994, believed they were being fair and honest. Only a few realized how much control over the narrative was being exercised by a few at the top.

They were taken by surprise in the Republican revolution in 1994

[macrahanish #1]

I listen intently to anything Taibbi, Schellenberger, or Greenwald say. All leftists who have endured the wrath of our weaponized government.

[RummyChick]

Dems in Congress want to be the ones to fix USAID.

I laughed out loud

[SaveFerris]

👍👍👍