COVID-Narrative Dissenters File Antitrust Action Against Legacy Media Over Coordinated Censorship

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A coalition of outspoken critics and skeptics of the mainstream narratives on COVID-19 has brought an antitrust lawsuit against some of the worldโ€™s largest news organizations, accusing them of working in collaboration to suppress dissenting voices surrounding the pandemic.

The lawsuit (pdf), filed on Tuesday in a federal court in Texas, targets The Washington Post, the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC), The Associated Press (AP), and Reutersโ€”all of which are members of the โ€œTrusted News Initiative (TNI),โ€ a self-described โ€œindustry partnershipโ€ formed in 2020 among legacy media giants and big tech companies.

โ€œBy their own admission, members of the TNI have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the worldโ€™s dominant internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI membersโ€™ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics,โ€ the complaint reads.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of the Biden administrationโ€™s COVID-19 vaccination policies, led the lawsuit. He is joined by Creative Destruction Media, Trial Site News, Truth About Vaccines founders Ty and Charlene Bollinger, independent journalist Ben Swann, Health Nut News publisher Erin Elizabeth Finn, Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft, Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ben Tapper, a chiropractor.

The plaintiffs, the lawsuit alleges, are among the many victims of the TNIโ€™s โ€œgroup boycottโ€ tactic, defined as a coordinated effort to facilitate monopoly by cutting off the competitorsโ€™ access to supplies and necessities.

In this case, the TNI members are accused of engaging in group boycottโ€”in concert with their big tech partnersโ€”against small, independent news publishers by denying them access to internet platforms they need to compete and even survive in the online news market.

โ€œAs a result of the TNIโ€™s group boycott, [the plaintiffs] have been censored, de-monetized, demoted, throttled, shadow-banned, and/or excluded entirely from platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Linked-In,โ€ the lawsuit states.

Byย Bill Pan

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