Freedom activists take on totalitarian media junta in high-profile lawsuit

A small group of freedom activist leaders Tuesday filed an anti-trust lawsuit against several mainstream media companies and the Trusted News Initiative, a confederacy of media corporations and social media platforms who decide what information the public receives. 

The complaint was filed by Children’s Health Defense’s Robert Kennedy, Jr, The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft and other independent news organizations who have been banished by the Trusted News Initiative from providing information to the public at large. In addition to being an anti-trust lawsuit, the complaint also aims to “defend the freedom of speech and of the press.” 

The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is a coalition of the world’s largest news publishers and social media networks who together form a supreme court of truth which adjudicates on what information gets passed to the public and what is withheld. The words used by former BBC Director-General Tony Hall when he formed the junta in 2019 was “to tackle the rise of misinformation.” 

“Last month I convened, behind closed doors, a Trusted News Summit at the BBC, which brought together global tech platforms and publishers,” Hall announced. “The goal was to arrive at a practical set of actions we can take together, right now, to tackle the rise of misinformation.” 

Current members of the TNI include The Washington Post, ABC News, Associated Press, AFP, The Financial Times, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, European Broadcasting Union, Reuters, Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Google/YouTube and Microsoft. 

By 2020, TNI had a system set up in which the corporations would alert each other to unapproved information, which would immediately be scoured from the mainstream internet. 

BBC World Service Group Director Jamie Angus said in October 2020, “Our Trusted News Initiative is [an] international partnership initiative convened by the BBC, which links media organisations and social-media platforms. The group has developed a shared early-warning system to alert partners about Disinformation.” 

As the complaint mentions, it was the TNI that decided to sideline or ban any reporting that COVID may have originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, that the COVID vaccines do not prevent infection, that vaccinated people can transmit COVID to others, and that compromising emails and videos were found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. 

In one example, Google notified human rights group America’s Frontline Doctors last year that its website, AFLDS.org, would be downranked in search results because of their professional medical opinions, which clashed with federal science on COVID-19.  

But not only were publishers who reported such information exiled from the information highway — sites that simply reported that such claims were being made by potentially credible sources were also sidelined. 

BBC’s Jessica Cecil, who founded and led the TNI until 2021, made several statements about the “fast alert” system set up between TNI members.  

“We don’t fact check; but once we learn from a partner that something is unreliable, that’s when we alert each other. . . . [A]ll participants signed up to a clear set of expectations of how to act,” said Cecil in 2021. 

Cecil was openly proud of the TNI’s efforts to find “practical ways to choke off” certain information and not “in any way muzzl[e] our own journalism.” 

The complaint then lists 23 examples of legitimate claims — several of which have so far been confirmed as fact — for which news publishers were censored, shadow-banned, throttled, de-monetized, and deplatformed by the TNI. Some of these claims include the inefficacy of physical distancing, mask mandates, vaccines, or that the number of COVID deaths are lower than official figures. 

The TNI also influenced even non-members to ostracize publishers of what the complaint calls Prohibited Claims. When Children’s Health Defense was de-platformed by YouTube in 2021, for example, PayPal terminated the organization’s account without explanation just weeks later. 

The complaint details the censorship of each defendant, including Children’s Health Defense, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, TrialSiteNews, Creative Destruction Media, Erin Elizabith Finn, Jim Hoft, Dr. Ben Tapper, Ben Swann, Dr. Joseph Mercola, Ty Bollinger and Charlene Bollinger. 

The censorship timeline of Children’s Health Defense illustrates how the members of TNI work in perfect lockstep: 

1. On or around January 11, 2021, Twitter took action to throttle or shadow-ban CHD’s [Children's Health Defense] account, resulting in a sudden loss of followers. 
2. One week later, on January 18, 2021, Google began censoring and removing COVID-related content from CHD’s YouTube channel. 
3. On February 10, 2021, CHD’s chairman and chief spokesman, Plaintiff Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was deplatformed from Instagram. 
4. The very next day, February 11, 2021 Google terminated CHD’s ability to monetize or make use of Google Ads. 
5. On February 19, 2021, Facebook notified CHD that it was at risk of being “unpublished,” causing CHD to engage in substantial self-censorship. 
6. Five days later, on February 24, Twitter restricted CHD’s account for twenty-four hours without explanation.  
7. On March 18, 2021, Twitter locked CHD’s account for seven days. 
8. About a week later, on March 25-27, 2021, Google repeatedly censored, restricted, and removed content from CHD’s YouTube account. 
9. On September 14, 2021, Mr. Kennedy’s Twitter account was suspended for 12 hours. 
10. Two or three weeks later, in late September or early October, 2021, YouTube deplatformed CHD, terminating its channel completely. 
11. Five days later, on October 4, 2021, Facebook temporarily shut down CHD’s accounts. 
12. On August 17, 2022, Facebook de-platformed CHD. 
13. In addition, the TNI’s Big Tech Members have throughout this period threatened, censored, suspended, or deplatformed third-party users who repost CHD content to their social media sites. 

The defendants are claiming a total of nearly $90,000,000 in damages.