Kennedy Hosts Censorship Roundtable

Addressing the Censorship Epidemic

On Thursday, August 17, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hosted a Roundtable on Censorship with four other free speech advocates: investigative journalists Sharyl Attkisson and Glenn Greenwald; civil rights attorney, Jenin Younes; and former NJ State lawmaker, Jamel Holley. 

The five discussants expressed dismay at how extensive and insidious censorship has become in the United States—and throughout the free world. Free speech, they said, is the foundational principle of a democracy. Without it, authoritarianism can spread unchecked, and this is precisely what is happening today. As Kennedy noted, we have stumbled into the dystopian future that so many authors, such as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and others, tried to warn us about. An authoritarian regime, said Kennedy,  “always begins with censorship.” He continued, “The number one lesson in a democracy is you never censor people. There is no time in history when we can look back and say it was the good guys who were censoring speech. They were always the bad guys.”  

As the Roundtable participants observed, free speech no longer seems to be valued by many people in society, and some even scorn it. How did we get to this place in history, when down is up and wrong is right? The Roundtable focused on two main questions:  Who is primarily responsible for the censorship?  What can we do about it?  The answers were enlightening. 

Five-time Emmy Award winner, and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting, Sharyl Attkisson, led the discussion. In 2014, after a long and distinguished career, Attkisson resigned from CBS News, saying that her ability to report important stories was being compromised.  

When Attkisson asked the panel who was to blame for the censorship epidemic, participants considered the possible roles of various actors: mainstream media companies, tech companies, journalists, pharmaceutical companies, citizens, and government, among others. 

Although there are many contributing factors, the panel traced the main source of censorship to government officials, who have been pressuring private media companies. Through discovery processes during various investigations, hearings and lawsuits, the public has learned that corporate media and big tech have been colluding with government officials who are directing their censorship policies.  

A number of lawsuits are in process. Attorney Jenin Younes, who is a Senior Special Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, formerly with New Civil Liberties Alliance, spoke about Missouri v. Biden, for which she is representing the plaintiffs. The complaint alleges that the government’s censorship is most blatant in the creation of a “Disinformation Governance Board'' within the Department of Homeland Security. Younes expressed confidence in winning the case, as she believes violation of Constitutional rights is clear. A graver problem, Younes noted, is that the people seem not to understand how important unlimited free speech is to democracy.  

Kennedy, who may have the distinction of being one of the most censored people in the U.S., if not the most censored, has been banned from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms. He is currently involved in six lawsuits, most notably against Google and YouTube, in which he alleges that the tech giants are acting as proxies for the government. 

Kennedy remarked that government coercion can take the form of threats to remove a media company’s US Code Section 230 Immunity, which provides immunity for online platforms with respect to user-generated content. This represents “an existential threat” to media companies which readily comply with government censorship requests.

Kennedy added he felt compelled to request a temporary restraining order barring Google from censoring his speech on YouTube during his 2024 presidential campaign. In response, federal Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins held an emergency hearing on Wednesday to consider the request. Kennedy voiced great optimism about his legal efforts to stop censorship.

But the problem extends outside of U.S. borders. As Kennedy explains in this clip (below), he is also involved in a lawsuit against an organization called the Trusted New Initiative, a collaboration among the BBC and various U.S. and global news outlets. 

Journalist and constitutional lawyer, Glenn Greenwald, who broke the much-censored 2014 story of Edward Snowden’s revelations about pervasive and illegal government surveillance of citizenry, helped found a new media outlet called, The Intercept, so that he could publish that story. But this didn’t guarantee his journalistic freedom for long. In 2020, he resigned when an article he wrote was censored for his criticism of then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Greenwald expressed regret that the “uniquely liberatory“ nature of the Internet of the 1990s has ended. Initially, the Internet had greatly facilitated, he said, the ability of “human beings to communicate with one another and to organize without relying on mediation from centralized state and corporate power…. And that simply became too threatening to establishment powers.”  

Greenwald opined that today journalists are advocating for censorship. He called it “surreal” and “anathema to what the core values and functions of journalism is supposed to be.” He stressed that it is somewhat of a myth that Conservative voices are the main target of censorship, and he noted that the speech of dissidents from the left has also been banned online. Tragically, he concluded, the Internet has now become the greatest tool of propaganda and oppression. 

Attikkson concurred with Greenwald, noting that in 2013, euphemisms for censorship, such as “moderating content” and enforcing “community standards,” were already becoming an acceptable part of public discourse.  

Responding to Attikkson's question about what is to be done about the problem of censorship, former New Jersey Assemblyman, Jamel Holley, who went against his own party to defend the religious exemption for vaccines, declared that the Roundtable itself was a perfect example of effective action. Public awareness is key. 

Holley also noted the degree to which pharmaceutical companies had influenced state legislatures nationwide in lobbying to remove the religious exemption, which is protected, like free speech, by the First Amendment. 

Kennedy explained that the history of the pharmaceutical industry’s increasing influence on the Democratic party began when they were trying to pass Obamacare, which they could not do without offering concessions to the industry:

Many people suspected that the powerful arm of the pharmaceutical industry was in control of censorship during the Covid-19 pandemic. But, as Kennedy noted, the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the state’s intelligence and security apparatus is “seamless”—and that, unfortunately, they now work in concert with one another.   

The entire Roundtable On Censorship is available on Rumble here.