Remember how ardently the mainstream media and Big Tech fought against “misinformation”? Let’s take a look at their commitment to “truth” this past week. Every mainstream media outlet in America fell for a Hamas propaganda hoax eight days ago, reporting that Israel had bombed a hospital in Gaza and demolished it, killing over 500 people. Our MSM “misinformation” censors amplified that hoax and sent it around the world before the sun rose in Gaza, touching off riots at US embassies and violent demonstrations here in the US.

Most of these media outlets began retracting the story when the sun rose and the hospital clearly remained standing. The New York Times – the “paper of record”! – still hasn’t yet admitted to being a Hamas repeater station. As of yesterday, the most that the NYT would admit was that Hamas had not yet “made its case” on an Israeli attack, despite ample evidence that the parking lot damage came from a stray rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Meanwhile, the rest of the media seems more interested in circling wagons than in admitting complicity in a hoax that touched off violence around the world. NPR’s David Folkenflik defended the use of Hamas claims today, arguing the media has little choice, although Folkenflik is particularly critical of the NYT in his analysis:

When the fog of war envelopes the pursuit of breaking news, the journalism that follows often suffers.

The stakes cannot be higher. The sources can prove unreliable. Concrete facts are often scant. And yet readers reward publications that push out information instantaneously.

The initial coverage of a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital last week offers a fresh reminder of how hard it can be to get the news right — and what happens when it goes awry. The list of those news organizations that fell short is long and illustrious, including The New York Times, the BBC, Reuters, The Associated Press and more. …

Unlike in some other war zones, such as in Ukraine, it’s nearly impossible for outside reporters to get into Gaza, even from Israel. Most news outlets are either covering it remotely or relying on local journalists whose families are themselves at risk from Israeli strikes.

“The fog of war” doesn’t explain the reporting as fact of Hamas’ claims about the hospital, however. None of the outlets Folkenflik cites even bothered to wait for the sunrise to see if the hospital had been hit. Nor did they bother to retract their claims until long after the damage had been done, and the NYT still hasn’t fully admitted their error, except in an “editors’ note” that they didn’t include in the earlier story.

American media outlets took claims from a terrorist group at face value, reported them as fact without corroboration, and in doing so, stoked the violent reaction Hamas desired. Under the terms of censorship imposed by Big Tech and cheered by mainstream media, this was both “misinformation” and “dangerous,” not to mention expressly anti-Semitic.

If Google treated “misinformation” and “dangerous” media equally, they would demonetize every single outlet that promoted Hamas’ terror claims. Instead, Google has chosen to demonetize our sister site PJ Media, for accurately identifying Harvard students who publicly proclaimed their support for Hamas. Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky reported on it last night for the Daily Signal:

Adams went to each of the organizations’ Harvard Law public webpages to see who the leaders of each organization were who had approved their joining this condemnation of Israel and support for Hamas’ reprehensible attacks.

The biographies of several of the student leaders were publicly posted on these organizations’ web pages. Adams simply republished the biographies verbatim. Moreover, Adams discovered some of the biographies mentioned the law firms that had given those students job offers when they graduate from Harvard Law School.

Adams republished those statements and biographies verbatim, all of which these students had voluntarily and publicly disclosed. His article generated a lot of readership and apparently brought a lot of attention to these law students and where they were going to end up working.

So, how did Google react to this article that contained public information about these students? Google demonetized PJ Media’s coverage. What that means is that Google decoupled the article about the students and their support for Hamas from the advertising revenue stream generated by the article, the revenue stream that helps pay the operating costs of the PJ Media website.

My colleague Paula Bolyard had more on this on Friday:

Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, called on bar associations to thoroughly scrutinize students who signed the letter that “excuses the wholesale slaughter of innocents and literally shifts blame to Israel,” noting that they “exhibit a lack of character and fitness to practice law.” He then went on to highlight the public biographies of the leaders of these groups at Harvard Law.

So what did Google do? It demonetized the article so that we can’t derive any revenue from it. They claim it was “dangerous” and “derogatory” and ensured we would take a financial loss because we still have to pay our writers when they do this to us, which is increasingly common.

Google offers no reasons for its claim that the article was dangerous. They just expect us to shut up and take it — and stop writing about topics that go against The Narrative. (Other topics that often get us demonetized are climate change, COVID-19, and transgenderism — they all end up in the “dangerous” or “disinformation” categories, and we lose money.) Are they demonetizing pro-Hamas sites that are celebrating the attacks on Israel? I’m not going to hold my breath.

And now we have examples of how the mainstream media doesn’t just publish misinformation but deliberate terrorist disinformation, for the purpose of generating violence. Will Google demonetize these platforms? I’m not holding my breath on this either.

Make no mistake. Big Tech and the mainstream media are not on a search for truth. They are trying to control the narrative and are actively kneecapping anyone who exposes its falsity. That’s what they find “dangerous” and “derogatory” – the truth about the Left and about violent, radical movements.

How do we counter this syndicate of suppression? We can support free and independent voices and exercise vigilance against censorship. Many of our readers have joined the fight as part of our VIP and VIP Gold membership, and they have been crucial to our operations as an independent platform and the ability to debate all of the issues honestly. We also produce some great exclusive content for our members:

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We talk about this more often now because we see the coming crisis in media more clearly than ever. This week’s media performance and Big Tech suppression should convince everyone about their plans to control debate and suppress dissent. We hope we can gather as many allies as possible to keep all of these issues in the public square – and indeed to preserve the public square at all.

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