Lawsuit: Big Media and Big Tech conspired to block COVID news

by DONNA KING at carolinajournal.com

An antitrust lawsuit was filed this week against legacy media giants and Big Tech companies that alleges they had a collusive agreement to shut down anti-vaccine coverage during the height of the COVID pandemic.

Antitrust? Yes.

Plaintiffs allege that a partnership called the Trusted News Initiative, formed by the Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, Washington Post, Meta, Microsoft, and Google, censored coverage questioning the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines. They argue that censorship amounted to a “group boycott” of smaller publishers and eliminated their ability to compete in the news business.

Interestingly, the attorney filing this antitrust suit is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known, well-connected Democrat and son of the late attorney general. Kennedy is working with the group Children’s Health Defense in leading the case. CHD has spent the last two years pushing back on U.S. government vaccine mandates and other pandemic responses from the government.

Just the media group’s name, Trusted News Initiative, smacks of communism and gives me chills. The suit filing points out that TNI members collectively control 90% of the overall social media market, have an 85% market share of the online social media news market, and over 90% of the search engine market. Search engine dominance is key to their case. By including search engines in the TNI group, these large news organizations could push competing coverage, and stories running against their agreed upon narrative, down in your search results.

“By their own admission, members of the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ (‘TNI’) agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics,” the complaint reads.

Much of what TNI had suppressed as “misinformation” is now believed to be true, or at least highly plausible, by those same mainstream sources.