..."it’s hard to square their protestations with the facts."

In American Greatness, Julie Kelly notices the praise for Facebook's censors from organizations like MSNBC and the Washington Post.

Now, that kind of chutzpah requires a heavy dose of magical thinking laced with a stunning lack of self-awareness and doused with a toxic level of hypocrisy. And it would be amusing if it wasn’t so enraging.

Because these reporters hail from the very same news organizations that have intentionally misled the American public about three destructive hoaxes in the past year alone: The Trump-Russian election collusion ruse; the Brett Kavanaugh rape allegations; and the Covington Catholic High School “smirking” myth.

CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and NBC News used every ounce of their considerable influence and reach, including social media, to promote each fraud for one collective purpose: To destroy the presidency of Donald Trump and defame anyone associated with the president including pro-life teenagers.

Further, these journalists and their employers don’t come from the fringe of the internet with far-flung audiences and zero influence in the halls of power. Our ruling class takes their daily cues from contributors to the New York Times and CNN; their bleatings and outbursts, unlike those of Alex Jones, drive policy and public sentiment. These well-connected influencers, unlike Laura Loomer, have the ability to destroy careers, reputations, and lives. And they do just that. Regularly.

The Times and the Post have published thousands of articles speculating that Donald Trump and his campaign team coordinated with the Kremlin to manipulate the 2016 presidential election. Celebrated columnists have suggested that Trump is a Russian agent, a Putin puppet, even a traitor, for his supposed ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Maggie Haberman, a Trump-bashing reporter for the Times who seems to agree with Facebook’s decision to shut down conspiracy theorists, has written more than one hundred articles and made countless television news appearances attempting to legitimize the collusion conspiracy theory.

It would be impossible to calculate how many hours CNN and MSNBC have devoted to breathlessly agitating the Russian collusion narrative. This includes CNN’s Ana Navarro, who has trafficked in every bogus collusion storyline since 2017. As late as March 2019, Navarro claimed that Trump committed multiple crimes while working with the Russians to “hack democratic institutions in the United States and compromise the integrity of the election.”

MSNBC has offered nearly wall-to-wall coverage, from Joe Scarborough in the morning to Rachel Maddow at night, on the Russian collusion story.

But, as we now know, the whole story not only was a scam, it was a set-up by the Obama administration. There was no collusion. And unlike some weird chatter about a D.C. pizza place, this conspiracy theory has inflicted real damage to our body politic, our government, and on innocent people caught up in the scheme. Yet to date, not one journalists or newspaper or cable outlet has been censured by Big Tech for taking part in the collusion conspiracy theory.

Recall that the Washington Post was the first to report on the spurious allegations from Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court justice nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, igniting an unprecedented political war in Washington while stoking rage and discord across the country. Story after story followed in the Post, which kept an ongoing list of sordid and baseless accusations against Kavanaugh. No claim was too far-fetched, no accuser was too sketchy.

...So, while people like Jones and Watson are banished from social media platforms and branded by one of the most powerful corporations in the world as “dangerous individuals” who stoke hate and violence, there is no such censure against insidious, massive news organizations that arguably have inflicted far more serious and irrevocable damage upon innocent people and on our nation at large. All of their inflammatory content still can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

So, how is Rachel Maddow any less dangerous than Paul Watson or Laura Loomer? How are the daily rantings at the Post and the Times about the president of the United States, his family, and his supporters any less malicious than the maniacal postings at InfoWars? How is the hate spewed on CNN toward anyone associated with the political Right less provocative than anything said by Milo Yiannopoulos?

Someone needs to ask these tech titans to explain the difference. Only then will we find out whether their censorship truly has nothing to do with “ideology” and objectively is applied to all users, regardless of politics or power. But at this point, it’s hard to square their protestations with the facts.

Read more here.