Free Republic

Half a century ago, George Orwell, writing on literary censorship, wrote that “unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.” That dynamic now broadly extends to an opaque network of government agencies and self-proclaimed anti-misinformation groups that have repressed online speech. There’s no official ban on discussing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines or criticizing American involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war, but editors and journalists have realized that writing on such topics can come at a cost. News publishers have been demonetized and shadow-banned for reporting dissenting views and the bureaucratic means...

Leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard is the farthest thing from being the unbiased media referee it purports to be. It is a government-funded operation designed to attack right-leaning media by going after their advertiser funding. There are at least five core reasons why Congress should strip funding from NewsGuard in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) since it received a $750,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Department of Defense. The state funding of a leftist, so-called journalism gatekeeper that deceptively bills itself as “apolitical” is case in point. Such efforts by the government to censor media it does not approve...

Leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard is in no position to be throwing around the “hoax” label when its own CEO tried to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop scandal as a “hoax.” It's a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. NewsGuard released a new self-serving report headlined: “Making YouTube Look Good: Rumble Becomes Hoax Central Ahead of the Midterms.” NewsGuard's primary complaint was that Rumble doesn’t abide by NewsGuard’s leftist ratings system like censorship-obsessed YouTube does: “In search results, Rumble pushes twice as many sites rated untrustworthy by NewsGuard as YouTube,” which is laughable in the face of...

Andrew Kaczynski and the rest of CNN’s so-called KFile unit ought to count their reporting as direct campaign contributions to Democrats.Last year, in falsely accusing Sheriff David Clarke and Monica Crowley of plagiarism when the Trump administration was considering them for positions, CNN omitted the authors’ footnotes, which contained the source attributions. As Steven Brill, the founder of Court TV and lecturer at the Yale English department, told the Yale Daily News in 2007: “Plagiarism is when you steal someone’s words and you don’t attribute it to that person.” He went on to address the case of Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres, who copied large chunks of writing without quote...

I put off reading Steven Brill’s new book, America's Bitter Pill, for much the same reason I procrastinate when it’s time to clean the gutters on my house. I was sure it would be a boring chore that would leave me yearning for a shower. A previous encounter with this writer’s work in a 2013 edition of Time suggested that this tome would contain a catalogue of canards about U.S. health care, a tendentious account of the tawdry political process that produced Obamacare, and some hare-brained theory on how to fix our medical delivery system once and for all. My...

On Sunday evening, CBS’ 60 Minutes did a feature story on Steven Brill’s new book, America’s Bitter Pill, in which Brill complains that Obamacare didn’t do enough to tackle the exorbitantly high price of U.S. hospital care. “Obamacare does zero to change any of that,” says Brill. That’s not exactly right. What Brill—and CBS—don’t tell you—is that Obamacare is driving hospitals to charge you more than they already do. Steven Brill, founder of The American Lawyer and Court TV took a starring role in the health care debate when he published the Time article “Bitter Pill,” describing how hospitals charge...

Only because a friend reminded me did I even recall a hot journalistic project launched by Steven Brill back in the days of the high-tech bubble. Brill called it, with all due modesty, Brill's Content. It was supposed to serve as a "media watchdog," but instead became an attack dog, most famously in its inaugural issue smear of Kenneth Starr. Brill invested millions, his rag went nowhere fast, and some three years later it shut down, unread and unmourned. More interesting was that racy Salon had written it off long before as a "snooze." Now comes a successor of sorts...

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While the establishment press won't touch bombshell allegations that New York Senator Hillary Clinton claims to have counseled 9/11 victim families in meetings that the families themselves say never took place, Newsweek has launched an investigation into the private gambling habits of private citizen Bill Bennett. "More than 40 pages of internal casino documents provided to The Washington Monthly and Newsweek paint a picture of a gambler given the high-roller treatment, including limos and tens of thousands of dollars in complimentary hotel rooms and other amenities," the hit piece, posted to the magazine's Web site, claims. "In one two-month period,...

The long rumored cold war between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Democrat New York colleague Chuck Schumer has erupted into a fall blown civil war, NewsMax has learned. The feud between the pair has been long standing, though quietly talked about among New York political and media insiders. But now, the civil war between the Hillary and Schumer camps has broken out into a full blown civil war. The public war between the two Senators was sparked this past week when Steven Brill, author of the 9/11 tome “After,” claimed that Hillary tried to elbow Schumer out of the...

Author Steven Brill says New York Sen. Hillary Clinton made up stories of meetings with 9/11 victim families -- meetings that never took place -- and a furious Brill is demanding that Hillary release him from a confidentiality agreement so he can make public records of their private conversations that will corroborate his claim. In an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com this weekend, Brill bristled at statements made by Hillary Clinton's office challenging his bombshell allegations, charges he made after the release of his new book, "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era." Brill said he can prove his bombshell...

Is Hillary Lying? The recent dustup over author-publisher-defender of the indefensible Steven Brill and his shocking claim that Sen. Hillary Clinton made up records about how she helped 9/11 families is very interesting. The controversy involves three liberal Democrat sycophants: Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Steven Brill. I have often noted that it is not a question of WHO is right or wrong but WHAT is right or wrong. I still hold true to that axiom despite my unbridled antipathy for all three of the players in this neodrama. Give the devil his due. According to Brill, Hillary Clinton had...

After ignoring the story for five days, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was finally forced to respond Thursday night to an allegation that she fabricated records of meetings with families of 9/11 victims - after Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly broke the mainstream media embargo on what some are calling the most serious charge ever lodged against the scandal-scarred former first lady. In a statement obtained by "The O'Reilly Factor," Sen. Clinton's spokesman Phillipe Reines attacked author-publisher Steven Brill, who alleged on Sunday that Sen. Clinton had lied about her role helping 9/11 families - then had her office generate...

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton had her staff fabricate records of meetings and phone calls to familles of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to burnish her image as New York's leading politician on 9/11 issues, the author of a new book on how U.S. officials dealt with the aftermath of the attacks charged Sunday.

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN APRIL 06, 2003 19:28:31 ET XXXXX HEAT ON BRILL AFTER HOMELAND SECURITY BOOK PRAISES 'SYSTEM THAT'S WORKING' Author Steven Brill is experiencing total friction among his close circle of media associates after releasing a book which claims: Homeland Security under President Bush is working! And why have there been no fresh terror strikes in the United States since the start of the war? Brill says it's the competence of the current leadership. PBS host Charlie Rose shouted and squirmed and called Brill's premise "ridiculous" during a promo for the book "After: How America Confronted...