{"id":74046,"date":"2021-07-16T07:34:07","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T11:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=74046"},"modified":"2021-07-16T07:35:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T11:35:07","slug":"biden-administration-goes-full-bore-censoring-covid-vaccine-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=74046","title":{"rendered":"Biden Administration Goes Full Bore Censoring Covid Vaccine Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><strong>White House \u2018flagging\u2019 posts for Facebook to censor over COVID \u2018misinformation\u2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><!--more-->By Steven Nelson<br \/>\nNew York Post<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/players.brightcove.net\/4137224153001\/6aIMRO3kiI_default\/index.html?videoId=6263842245001\" width=\"618\" height=\"348\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"entry-content entry-content-read-more\">\n<p>White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday the Biden administration is identifying \u201cproblematic\u201d posts for Facebook to censor because they contain \u201cmisinformation\u201d about COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>Psaki disclosed the government\u2019s role in policing social media during her daily press briefing after Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on companies to purge more pandemic posts.<\/p>\n<p>The demand for censorship \u2014 and Psaki\u2019s admission of government involvement \u2014 follows a series of flip-flops from health officials who contradicted themselves throughout the pandemic on issues such as mask efficacy, as well as censorship of claims that later gained credibility, such as the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team \u2014 given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue, of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic,\u201d Psaki said.<\/p>\n<p>She added: \u201cWe\u2019ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General\u2019s Office. We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Psaki added, \u201cit\u2019s important to take faster action against harmful posts \u2026 and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful violative posts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Psaki and Murthy, who also spoke at the press briefing, specifically said they are concerned about \u201cmisinformation\u201d about COVID-19 vaccines. About 68 percent of US adults have had at least one vaccine shot,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#vaccinations\">according to CDC data<\/a>, dramatically lowering infection rates in most parts of the country.<\/p>\n<p>Murthy said \u201cwe\u2019re asking [social media companies] to consistently take action against misinformation superspreaders on their platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-related alignright\">\n<div id=\"more-on\" class=\"module--see-also box module inline related desktop\">\n<div class=\"module-title inline\">\n<h4><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cMisinformation takes away our freedom to make informed decisions about our health and the health of our loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health misinformation has led people to resist wearing masks in high-risk settings. It\u2019s led them to turn down proven treatments and to choose not to get vaccinated. This has led to avoidable illnesses and deaths,\u201d Murthy said.<\/p>\n<p>Psaki and Murthy would not answer a shouted question about the fact that Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden\u2019s chief medical adviser and the government\u2019s top infectious diseases expert, has himself\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/06\/03\/fauci-emails-show-his-flip-flopping-on-wearing-masks-to-fight-covid\/\">vacillated on COVID-19 information<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Fauci did not promote\u00a0mask-wearing in February, March and early April 2020 as the respiratory virus spread in the US, despite the historical use of\u00a0masks\u00a0to counter airborne viruses and their successful early adoption in East Asia. But\u00a0Fauci\u00a0later pushed even wearing\u00a0two\u00a0masks\u00a0at a time.<\/p>\n<p>Other US health officials initially discouraged wearing masks. Surgeon General Jerome Adams asserted in a now-deleted tweet that masks were\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2020\/02\/29\/health\/face-masks-coronavirus-surgeon-general-trnd\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cNOT effective\u201d<\/a>\u00a0at protecting people from COVID-19 before later saying that they were effective.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook this year stopped censoring posts that claimed COVID-19 may have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/05\/27\/facebook-and-its-censorious-fact-checkers-have-utterly-discredited-themselves\/\">due to \u201cevolving\u201d information<\/a> that bolstered the theory.<\/p>\n<p>Biden in May\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/05\/26\/biden-orders-90-day-review-of-covid-origins-lab-leak-theory\/?preview_id=18348627\">ordered a 90-day spy agency review<\/a>\u00a0of the lab leak theory. At least one spy agency was leaning toward that explanation, according to a statement released by the US intelligence community.<\/p>\n<p>Social media networks have censored other posts\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/03\/25\/dorsey-says-blocking-posts-hunter-biden-story-was-total-mistake\/\">before backtracking<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 notably including Facebook and Twitter\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/10\/14\/facebook-twitter-block-the-post-from-posting\/\">censoring The Post\u2019s reporting<\/a>\u00a0in October on documents from a laptop formerly belonging to Hunter Biden that appeared to link his father to business pursuits in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/10\/15\/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden-tried-to-cash-in-big-with-chinese-firm\/\">China<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/10\/14\/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad\/\">Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Former President Donald Trump filed lawsuits last week against\u00a0Facebook, Twitter and YouTube,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/07\/07\/donald-trump-to-sue-mark-zuckerberg-jack-dorsey-report\/\">arguing that they are illegally squelching free speech rights<\/a>\u00a0on behalf of the government. Trump was banned from the platforms after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese companies have been co-opted, coerced and weaponized by government actors to become the enforcers of illegal, unconstitutional censorship,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n<p>Trump lawyer John Coale said the suits would prove that the tech companies \u201care government actors\u201d and that \u201ctherefore, the First Amendment does apply\u201d to their actions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/07\/15\/white-house-flagging-posts-for-facebook-to-censor-due-to-covid-19-misinformation\/\">https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/07\/15\/white-house-flagging-posts-for-facebook-to-censor-due-to-covid-19-misinformation\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>White House \u2018flagging\u2019 posts for Facebook to censor over COVID \u2018misinformation\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}