Alternative Media’s Free Speech Rights Under Attack
April 20, 2018
The National Press Club hosted a press conference in Washington,
D.C. on April 10, 2018 that revealed important news about the strategic
attack on free speech and First Amendment rights
directed at alternative media. It’s unlikely many are aware of this important information since the corporate media didn’t show up. Infowars founder and broadcaster Alex Jones focused on what he said were hundreds of frivolous defamation lawsuits intended to drive him and others in the independent press out of business and current censorship tactics being used against the alternative media on social media platforms.
Other speakers were Contributing Editor Roger Stone, Washington Bureau Chief Dr. Jerome Corsi, News Director Rob Dew, and reporters Leeann McAdoo and Millie Weaver, all of Infowars; Jack Posobiec of One America News Network; Gateway Pundit reporter Lucian Wintrich; and Lee Stranahan of Sputnik News.
Attendees were alternative media representatives, some of whom said they are being sued, including Trump Talk US, Crowdsource the Truth, Moms4Trump, Populist Wire, Think Progress, Right Wing Watch, a reporter from George Washington University, the Justice Integrity Project, the Daily Informer, and Cliff Kincaid of America’s Survival TV.
During a later Q & A, LewRockwell.com asked several speakers why President Trump doesn’t give his exclusive interviews and scoops to the alternative, independent press instead of corporate media like CNN which he has labelled fake news. Stone answered, “President Trump virtually never gives interviews to alternative media largely because there is no one working for him in the White House or in his press operation who understands the vital role that alternative media played in his election. Sadly, the president himself placates the mainstream media while ignoring substantial media outlets like Infowars and Breitbart which played a substantial role in his election. Now the question is whether the president will stand by and watch these media outlets be shut down through censorship giving control of our political discourse back to the mainstream media which is so vehemently opposed to his presidency.” Jones and Corsi both said Trump should give alternative media exclusives, with Corsi adding we all just need to be patient, that he will someday, Trump just needs time. Posobiec said Trump is 71 years old and grew up with newspapers like the New York Post and the New York Times giving him a lot of publicity and that he is still impressed by these traditional media outlets.
Jones’ attorney Andrew Grossman announced he filed an anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) motion and a motion to dismiss against a defamation lawsuit filed by Foreign Service Officer Brennan Gilmore and the Civil Rights Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. The suit says Gilmore failed to explain how statements made by Jones were defamatory. SLAPPs are illegal in many states because such lawsuits impede free speech by burdening defendants with legal fees. Jones said Gilmore admitted he was paid by George Soros.
Prominent social media platforms including YouTube, Google and Facebook are “censoring, controlling the search results,” said Jones. Videos challenging the official version of events, for instance, interviews with Parkland school shooting witnesses claiming they saw more than one shooter, have been taken down on YouTube. “Our basic civil rights are under attack. A higher curtain of free speech is here and it’s getting more intense every day. The answer is citizen journalists.” He noted Matt Drudge was the first to expose the planned purge of libertarian, classical liberal and conservative press several years ago.
Jones said the club gave 15-year National Press Club member Corsi some trouble when he was trying to organize the press conference, before allowing the event to move forward. The club removed its plaque on the speaker’s podium as well as the identifying wallpaper with the club name and web site that typically appears behind press conference speakers, leaving an odd, stark looking gray wall as the backdrop. The club did not mention the press conference in the day’s events, on the calendar or anywhere else on its web site.
No corporate media was present, Jones noted, although one attendee later told LRC that CBS News was in attendance. Kobi Libii from Comedy Central’s The Opposition was not allowed in to the event. Outside the club building, he and Jones engaged in a somewhat contentious exchange with Jones calling Libii Chuck E. Cheese the Rat.
“The real story here is that the American left is no longer interested in dialogue or debate,” said Stone. “They can’t win a debate; they don’t want a discussion of the issues. The answer when we raise the facts and issues is ‘Silence them, censor them, close them down.’” Stranahan said Google, FaceBook and Amazon are much bigger than Microsoft was when the government forced it to break up in 2001 and that Silicon Valley techies have been threatened with antitrust suits if they don’t go along with censoring alternative media outlets. Jones said the head of Newscorps, the dying establishment newspapers, and corporate media are all lined up in a perfect storm to end Internet freedom because they can’t compete with the independent press. They are demonizing or branding populist, nationalistic outlets as racist, fake news or Russian-controlled to shut them down.
“There is a global political realignment on a planetary scale and the establishment doesn’t know what to do,” Jones said. Top First Amendment attorneys and scholars have told him “This is totally new in law” where a plaintiff can make defamatory charges in a lawsuit, sue you for defamation, the media repeats the charges as gospel, and the individuals making the false charges are then protected by the court system. “Because mainstream media is not able to argue against the facts we present and because the American people no longer believes their lies, they have now resorted to shutting us down entirely. If we allow the mainstream media to put an end to real reporting, then the future of discourse in America will get lost.”
Infowars reporter Millie Weaver said when she was covering the protests in Charlottesville, both the alt right and Antifa left were violent, but Antifa was far more ferocious. She said both would choose to silence the free speech of their opposition in contrast with the libertarian perspective of respecting the free speech rights of all.
See the entire press conference here:
directed at alternative media. It’s unlikely many are aware of this important information since the corporate media didn’t show up. Infowars founder and broadcaster Alex Jones focused on what he said were hundreds of frivolous defamation lawsuits intended to drive him and others in the independent press out of business and current censorship tactics being used against the alternative media on social media platforms.
Other speakers were Contributing Editor Roger Stone, Washington Bureau Chief Dr. Jerome Corsi, News Director Rob Dew, and reporters Leeann McAdoo and Millie Weaver, all of Infowars; Jack Posobiec of One America News Network; Gateway Pundit reporter Lucian Wintrich; and Lee Stranahan of Sputnik News.
Attendees were alternative media representatives, some of whom said they are being sued, including Trump Talk US, Crowdsource the Truth, Moms4Trump, Populist Wire, Think Progress, Right Wing Watch, a reporter from George Washington University, the Justice Integrity Project, the Daily Informer, and Cliff Kincaid of America’s Survival TV.
During a later Q & A, LewRockwell.com asked several speakers why President Trump doesn’t give his exclusive interviews and scoops to the alternative, independent press instead of corporate media like CNN which he has labelled fake news. Stone answered, “President Trump virtually never gives interviews to alternative media largely because there is no one working for him in the White House or in his press operation who understands the vital role that alternative media played in his election. Sadly, the president himself placates the mainstream media while ignoring substantial media outlets like Infowars and Breitbart which played a substantial role in his election. Now the question is whether the president will stand by and watch these media outlets be shut down through censorship giving control of our political discourse back to the mainstream media which is so vehemently opposed to his presidency.” Jones and Corsi both said Trump should give alternative media exclusives, with Corsi adding we all just need to be patient, that he will someday, Trump just needs time. Posobiec said Trump is 71 years old and grew up with newspapers like the New York Post and the New York Times giving him a lot of publicity and that he is still impressed by these traditional media outlets.
Jones’ attorney Andrew Grossman announced he filed an anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) motion and a motion to dismiss against a defamation lawsuit filed by Foreign Service Officer Brennan Gilmore and the Civil Rights Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. The suit says Gilmore failed to explain how statements made by Jones were defamatory. SLAPPs are illegal in many states because such lawsuits impede free speech by burdening defendants with legal fees. Jones said Gilmore admitted he was paid by George Soros.
Prominent social media platforms including YouTube, Google and Facebook are “censoring, controlling the search results,” said Jones. Videos challenging the official version of events, for instance, interviews with Parkland school shooting witnesses claiming they saw more than one shooter, have been taken down on YouTube. “Our basic civil rights are under attack. A higher curtain of free speech is here and it’s getting more intense every day. The answer is citizen journalists.” He noted Matt Drudge was the first to expose the planned purge of libertarian, classical liberal and conservative press several years ago.
Jones said the club gave 15-year National Press Club member Corsi some trouble when he was trying to organize the press conference, before allowing the event to move forward. The club removed its plaque on the speaker’s podium as well as the identifying wallpaper with the club name and web site that typically appears behind press conference speakers, leaving an odd, stark looking gray wall as the backdrop. The club did not mention the press conference in the day’s events, on the calendar or anywhere else on its web site.
No corporate media was present, Jones noted, although one attendee later told LRC that CBS News was in attendance. Kobi Libii from Comedy Central’s The Opposition was not allowed in to the event. Outside the club building, he and Jones engaged in a somewhat contentious exchange with Jones calling Libii Chuck E. Cheese the Rat.
“The real story here is that the American left is no longer interested in dialogue or debate,” said Stone. “They can’t win a debate; they don’t want a discussion of the issues. The answer when we raise the facts and issues is ‘Silence them, censor them, close them down.’” Stranahan said Google, FaceBook and Amazon are much bigger than Microsoft was when the government forced it to break up in 2001 and that Silicon Valley techies have been threatened with antitrust suits if they don’t go along with censoring alternative media outlets. Jones said the head of Newscorps, the dying establishment newspapers, and corporate media are all lined up in a perfect storm to end Internet freedom because they can’t compete with the independent press. They are demonizing or branding populist, nationalistic outlets as racist, fake news or Russian-controlled to shut them down.
“There is a global political realignment on a planetary scale and the establishment doesn’t know what to do,” Jones said. Top First Amendment attorneys and scholars have told him “This is totally new in law” where a plaintiff can make defamatory charges in a lawsuit, sue you for defamation, the media repeats the charges as gospel, and the individuals making the false charges are then protected by the court system. “Because mainstream media is not able to argue against the facts we present and because the American people no longer believes their lies, they have now resorted to shutting us down entirely. If we allow the mainstream media to put an end to real reporting, then the future of discourse in America will get lost.”
Infowars reporter Millie Weaver said when she was covering the protests in Charlottesville, both the alt right and Antifa left were violent, but Antifa was far more ferocious. She said both would choose to silence the free speech of their opposition in contrast with the libertarian perspective of respecting the free speech rights of all.
See the entire press conference here:
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