The movement crested this week with a letter from California House Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, written to the CEOs of cable providers like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, and Dish. They demanded to know if those providers are planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN& beyond any contract renewal date and if so, why?
The news comes in advance of Wednesday s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on traditional media s role in promoting disinformation and extremism.
This sequence of events is ominous because a similar matched set of hearings and interrogations back in 2017 when Senators like Mazie Hirono at a Judiciary Committee hearing demanded that platforms like Google and Facebook come up with a mission statement to prevent the foment of discord accelerated the content moderation movement that now sees those same platforms regularly act as de facto political censors.
Sequences like this government requests of speech reduction, made to companies subject to federal regulation make the content moderation decisions of private firms a serious First Amendment issue. Censorship advocates may think this is purely a private affair, in which the only speech rights that matter are those of companies like Twitter and Google, but any honest person should be able to see this for what it is.
