by Whitney Webb, Childrens Health Defense:
Thankfully, for government agencies seeking to “weaponize” the truth and stamp out dissent, the truth is not as easily manipulated and distorted as they may think.
Editor’s Note: Below is the text of a speech delivered Oct. 24 by journalist Whitney Webb at the Children’s Health Defense inaugural conference in Knoxville, Tennessee.
With each passing day, it seems that journalism is becoming less of a profession and more of a war zone. Indeed the difference between journalism and “information warfare” is becoming increasingly difficult to pinpoint.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Whereas journalism continues to be defined as “writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation” — in practice, it has become a battlefield where the most powerful media outlets — that is, those closest to the centers of power — deliberately manipulate or omit facts to craft narratives that expressly benefit the powerful while also colluding to censor their more truthful competition.
These media outlets act as mercenaries, with little or no regard for how their actions negatively impact our society and distort reality. Their allegiances lie not with the public, but with those with the deepest pockets.
In doing so, in many cases, these media mercenaries actively work to suppress the facts and malign those in journalism who do strive to champion the truth above all else.
Instead of holding the powerful to account, many so-called journalists today act more as accessories to the crimes committed by the powerful against the public.
Objective presentation of the facts, as far as the bulk of mainstream media is concerned, is dead and has been dead for some time. As a consequence, public trust in these media outlets has completely cratered.
Yet, even the ostensible challenge to mainstream media, so-called independent or alternative media, is often troubled by similar issues, as the quest for clicks and fame can often supersede objective, factual reporting even outside the bounds of mainstream media.
As a result, navigating the world of journalism has never been more difficult or more precarious than it is right now.
But if some get their way, navigating the media landscape in search of truth will soon become impossible. There are major efforts, years in the making, to censor dissenting opinions under the guise of censoring “misinformation.”
As many here are undoubtedly aware, what was last year’s “misinformation” with respect to COVID-19 injections has only recently undergone a dramatic change into “breaking news.”
Yet, many of us who were right all along and were censored when factual information that is now recognized as true was erroneously labeled “misinformation” have received no apologies or our lost income. In many cases, our old platforms have not been returned to us.
The censorship hammer has not been wielded with incompetence. Instead, it has been — and is being — intentionally used to squeeze out those of us who would dare to speak the truth, no matter how inconvenient it may be at the time.
As the online censorship onslaught continues it is becoming increasingly normalized as growing restrictions, deplatforming and its other manifestations have become so pervasive that many have simply come to accept it as a “new normal.”
This “new normal” for free speech is as insidious as it has been gradual, as we are being trained to accept unconstitutional limitations on what we can express on the websites that dominate online socialization.
The argument that is often deployed to dismiss concerns regarding online censorship is the claim that the dominant social media companies are private, not public, entities.
However, in reality, the Big Tech firms that dominate our online lives, particularly Google and Facebook, were either created with some involvement of the U.S. national security state or have become major U.S. government and/or military contractors over the past two decades.
When it comes to censoring and deplatforming individuals for claims that run counter to U.S. government narratives, it should be clear that Google-owned YouTube, and other tech platforms owned by contractors to the U.S. military and intelligence communities, have a major conflict of interest in their stifling of speech.
The line between “private” Silicon Valley and the public sector has become increasingly blurred and it is now a matter of record that these companies have illegally passed information onto intelligence services, like the NSA [National Security Agency], for blatantly unconstitutional surveillance programs aimed at American civilians.
All indications point to the military-industrial complex having now expanded into the military-technology-industrial complex.
These days, one need only look at important government commissions — such as the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which was headed by former Google/Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt — to see how this de facto public-private partnership between Silicon Valley and the national security state functions, and its outsized role in setting important tech-related policies for both the private and public sectors.
For example, that commission, largely comprised of representatives of the military, intelligence community and Big Tech, has helped set policy on “countering disinformation” online.
More specifically, it has recommended weaponizing artificial intelligence (AI) for the express purpose of identifying online accounts to deplatform and speech to censor, framing this recommendation as essential to U.S. national security as it relates to “information warfare.”
There are already several companies competing to market an AI-powered censorship engine to the national security state as well as the private sector, for use against journalists and non-journalists alike.
One of these companies is Primer AI, a “machine intelligence” company that “builds software machines that read and write in English, Russian, and Chinese to automatically unearth trends and patterns across large volumes of data.”
The company publicly states that its work “supports the mission of the intelligence community and broader DOD [U.S. Department of Defense] by automating reading and research tasks to enhance the speed and quality of decision-making.”
Primer AI’s roster of clients includes not just the U.S. military and the U.S. intelligence community, but major American companies like Walmart and private “philanthropic” organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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