I am so grateful!
You’ve come through for us – fighting through blacklists, the cancel culture, the lies about WND and incredibly slanted media, donating emergency tax-deductible funds last month to allow us to continue our mission.
Apparently, you still love us!
And we love all of you – whether you could afford some extra money at this time or not. Your prayers continue to be just as important to us. God and this audience understand what’s at stake for the independent media as well as America in the battle with Big Tech.
Yes, you raised just over $100,000 for the WND News Center keeping us just short of insolvency for the time being.
What a blessing!
I speak for our great, loyal and deeply committed editorial staff in expressing appreciation for these gifts. Of course, ongoing donations to WND remain welcome.
Just this past Monday here’s what the Wall Street Journal had to say about this Big Tech crisis. It doesn’t just affect WND and other independent media. It affects ALL of us, every American and our long tradition of honoring the First Amendment.
“Does the Constitution require Americans to accept Big Tech censorship?” the paper said on its editorial page. “The claim is counterintuitive but the logic is clear: If you submit a letter to this newspaper, the editors have no legal obligation to publish it, and a statute requiring them to do so would be struck down as a violation of the Journal’s First Amendment rights. Facebook and Twitter, the argument goes, have the same right not to provide a platform to views they find objectionable.
“Big Tech censorship has provoked interest in new civil-rights statutes – state laws that would bar the companies from viewpoint discrimination on their platforms and services. The First Amendment defense of this private censorship arose in a recent federal district court opinion expressing skepticism about a Florida anticensorship statute. It will come up again when other states, such as Texas, consider civil-rights statutes that focus more tightly on viewpoint discrimination. With the possibility of multiple state statutes barring Big Tech viewpoint discrimination, it will be essential to understand the extent of the tech companies’ freedom of speech. For this, it is important to consider whether they are common carriers.
“A statute limiting the ability of a Big Tech company to express its own views would almost certainly be unconstitutional. What about a law limiting viewpoint discrimination where the companies serve as a publicly accessible conduit for the speech of others?”
It began with some arcane language in federal law in 1996 – before Big Tech really began.
We’re taking about the inclusion of Section 230(c)(1) of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which distinguishes between information provided by an interactive computer service and “information provided by another information content provider.”
The law never considered the reasonable distinction between a company’s own speech and the speech of others for which it provides a conduit. In addition, we have to decide as a country whether these companies – Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – are akin to “common carriers” for the government.
Even Donald J. Trump has seen his viewpoints banned from these companies’ platforms!
“When a company offers its services to the public, it can qualify as a common carrier in one of two ways. It can serve a public function, so that even a small bus company can be treated as a common carrier,” the Journal opined. “Or it can enjoy market dominance – when the services of one or a few companies are so prevalent as to leave the public with little alternative.”
In conclusion, the authors rightly conclude: “The time has come to subject the Big Tech services and platforms to at least statutory barriers against viewpoint discrimination. They serve the function of common carriers or public squares and enjoy profound dominance. They achieved this dominance with substantial government privileges, including privileges they sought for serving as a conduit for information. So they can be regulated as common carriers, including with state antidiscrimination provisions. And this surely is just, for they have used their government-established dominance and privileges to enforce congressionally privatized censorship.”
Censorship has become a reality in America. We cannot afford to allow it to be accepted. If we do, America will no longer be a beacon of truth.
Right now, that beacon is growing faint.
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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
