Mendacious New York Times' warning about Censorship

The paper of record has clearly become The Ministry of Truth

Guest Editorial

The New York Times, a bastion of censorship and corruption, warns the world that “America Has a Free Speech Problem.”

By Tony Lyons, President, Skyhorse Publishing

In a bold but clearly disingenuous statement from its famed Editorial Board, “a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate, and certain longstanding values,” the New York Times issued a cautionary statement:

“For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.”

The Editorial Board pounded the point home:

“People should be able to put forward viewpoints, ask questions and make mistakes, and take unpopular but good-faith positions on issues that society is still working through—all without fearing cancellation…Freedom of speech requires not just a commitment to openness and tolerance in the abstract. It demands conscientiousness…We believe it isn’t enough for Americans to just believe in the rights of others to speak freely; they should also find ways to actively support and protect those rights.”

Of course, the New York Times should be teaching by example. In fact, it has not supported free speech, protected the First Amendment, or allowed honest debate. It has not allowed competing perspectives about the most important issues of the day. It has been a mouthpiece for greedy corporations and corrupt government officials.

In support of their interests, and at the expense of those of American citizens, it censored The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in every conceivable way. It ranked the book #7 on its non-fiction bestseller list even though Kennedy’s book outsold any other book in America that week by thousands of copies. Then it refused to allow Skyhorse Publishing to place an advertisement for the book because it’s censorship division, ironically called “Standards Management,” decided that the book itself constituted misinformation, despite their stated policy that “Standards” only looks into whether an ad itself is “non-defamatory and accurate.”

The New York Times followed up with a scathing hit piece targeting Kennedy as “a leading voice in the campaign to discredit coronavirus vaccines and other measures being advanced by the Biden White House to battle a pandemic that was…killing close to 1,900 people a day.” It accused him of circulating “false information,” without indicating what that information is or explaining why it’s false, and of comparing the government pandemic response to the Holocaust, even though he clearly didn’t do that.

Finally, they refused to review The Real Anthony Fauci or so much as comment on its historic grassroots success, even though it’s become a cult classic, selling over 1,000,000 copies, and launching a worldwide movement against government corruption and corporate greed.

“Despite all the lying, or maybe in reaction to it,” Tucker Carlson wrote, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is becoming a legitimate folk hero.”

He is a folk hero because he stood up, grabbed a bullhorn, and spoke truth to power. He’s risked everything and lost a lot. He’s realized that you either care about justice or you care about personal consequences. And for him there have been many.

After suppressing freedom of speech for two years, after defending a specific, myopic and harmful narrative, the Editorial Board of the New York Times decided it was the perfect time to take a strong stance against censorship and cancel culture.

The irony of the most powerful and impactful violator of First Amendment rights lamenting the lack of free speech and offering up ideas to protect the rights of Americans was palpable, inescapable, and despicable.

Like Captain Renault in the movie Casablanca, when he closes Rick’s Café Americain and proclaims: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here”, the New York Times gladly accepted it’s winnings. Their profitability has soared during the worst and most pervasive period of censorship in recent American history. They have done absolutely nothing to protect the free speech rights of hundreds, if not thousands, of doctors, nurses, scientists, and concerned citizens who have tried to discuss views, make arguments, and analyze scientific studies that challenge the prevailing Covid narrative. They have silenced debate, worked tirelessly to chastise, vilify, and discredit those whose positions they disagree with, and failed to investigate serious claims of government corruption.

Nevertheless, they claim to lament that “when public discourse in America is narrowed, it becomes harder to answer…the urgent questions we face as a society.”

What could be more important, more urgent, than the truth about corruption at the highest levels of government, about a pandemic response that led to more serious illness and death than was necessary, about the most powerful public health official in the country being more concerned with helping Big Pharma maximize return on investment and mitigate risk, than protecting people?

As the NYT wrote, the worst kind of censorship is cancel culture and the worst kind of cancel culture is the “piling on” kind. Why then, one might ask, did the NYT run a hit piece about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that covered essentially the same subject matter as a dozen other hit pieces against Kennedy? Why now? Why this target? His family thinks he’s wrong about vaccines, the Times noted. His friends think he’s wrong about vaccines. Dr. Fauci thinks he’s wrong about vaccines. Ever heard that before? Any analysis about vaccine safety? Any facts? Any citations? Any discussion of Dr. Fauci’s despicable corruption as described in The Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy’s recent and epic takedown of Fauci. No, no, no, no, and no. What was the New York Times doing when the whole world was attacking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?

Where was the New York Times when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Judy Mikovits, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Paul Marik, Dr. Ryan Cole … and so many other impressive voices were being stifled? Here’s an easy answer: they were “piling on.”

The NYT has stated that it won’t “publish ad hominem attacks,” but it does publish hit pieces that any rational person understands are meant to discredit a book that they don’t mention and obviously haven’t read. They protect corrupt government officials against the unsuspecting public by forwarding policy statements or official memos that they have not thoroughly vetted, investigated, or corroborated. They are the worst kind of co-conspirators: the kind that claim to be protecting their victims.

The New York Times writes that:

“At the individual level, human beings cannot flourish without the confidence to take risks, to pursue ideas and express thoughts that others might reject…When speech is stifled or when dissenters are shut out of the public discourse, a society also loses its ability to resolve conflict, and it faces the risk of political violence.”

That’s where we are in America today. There is no debate, no public discourse, and we have lost the ability to resolve conflict. We have separated the country into two America’s, at least partially because of the policies and practices of the New York Times.

The New York Post has pointed out that the New York Times “published lies to serve a biased narrative.” They accused the Times of “malicious misreporting” and cite a book called “The Grey Lady Winked” by Ashley Rindsberg.

Rindsberg is quoted as calling the New York Times “a truth-producing machine.” He believes that the “fabrications and distortions” they’ve peddled since the 1920s were a system of twisting facts to manipulate public opinion about everything from “Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia to Vietnam and the Iraq War.” The “reporting” is designed to “support a narrative aligned with the corporate whims, economic needs and political preferences” of the New York Times. He believes that they have consistently created “false narratives.”

The New York Post says the Times has the resources to do it: “With close to $2 billion in annual revenue, the Times has the money, prestige, experience and stature to set the narratives that other news outlets invariably follow.”

Rindsberg alleges that a former Times bureau chief in Berlin was a Nazi collaborator and that another star reporter for the New York Times parroted Soviet propaganda to defend Stalin.

The NYT coverage in the lead up to the Vietnam and Iraq wars seemed like government disinformation designed to support going to war. More recently Rindsberg points to the stories that the New York Times published about Russia putting a bounty on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, which the Biden administration later conceded was misinformation, and the story about Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick being “murdered by rampaging Trump supporters,” though it was later proven that he had died of a stroke.

Similarly, Glenn Greenwald accused the New York Times of participating in “one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern electoral history.” The Times, which before the 2020 election dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian Disinformation, later conceded that it was authentic.

It seems likely the New York Times coverage of the Covid Pandemic isn’t any different than its coverage of Hitler, Stalin, Vietnam, the Iraq War, January 6th, the Russian bounty on American soldiers, or the Hunter Biden laptop. Like most of the major big tech platforms, they appear to have worked closely with Dr. Fauci and others, as representatives of the U.S. Government, to control and propagate a specific narrative and to do what the government can’t legally do itself—censor ideas that it disagrees with or narratives that might be harmful to its corporate partners.

As discussed above, the New York Times actively suppressed Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s book and his allegations of corruption against Dr. Anthony Fauci. It defended Dr. Fauci without any investigation, without a full, free and fair discussion of what is clearly the most important book of the decade. By ignoring Kennedy’s book, by refusing to review it, by not allowing advertisements, by misrepresenting its success on its bestseller list, it clearly did everything in its power to avoid any debate whatsoever about the real science behind the origins of Covid or the best practices for controlling the virus and protecting the public. The New York Times has shown a total disregard for the scientific process, individual due process rights, or for any real search for truth.

And, once again, it did all this while lecturing us about the importance of free speech.

We have arrived at Orwell’s 1984. Doublespeak is the universal language. The paper of record floods the world with disinformation, claims to be working tirelessly to protect the American people, and has clearly become The Ministry of Truth.

Reading Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci—the book Big Pharma, Dr. Fauci, the U.S. Government and the New York Times will do absolutely anything to prevent you from reading—has become an act of rebellion, a blow to fascism, and a clear message that censorship in America just doesn’t work.

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About the Author:

Tony Lyons, President and Publisher at Skyhorse, and an attorney, was Publisher at The Lyons Press between 1997 and 2004. He founded Skyhorse in 2006 and has been involved with every aspect of the book publishing process. Starting with a small team of people, some of whom still work for Skyhorse, Tony has steadily built the company from a start-up to an increasingly prominent mid-sized publisher.

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“Lies my Gov’t Told Me and the Better Future Coming” is Available for pre-order (click here for the link).