Facebook censors RT: the information war has begun

For a long time, people have feared the worst in respect to Facebook censoring real news outlets, whose editorial line broadly goes against the neo-liberal status quo of the western fake stream media.

Today, RT confirmed that a Facebook ‘bot’ sent RT’s Facebook page admins a message saying that they will not be allowed to post, “photos, video or shared content”.

This essentially takes RT ‘off air’ for Facebook users. The ban is set to expire Saturday morning, Moscow time, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The intention is clear, Facebook does not want RT to report on the run-up to the inauguration, nor do they want RT’s 4 million+ Facebook followers to have easy access to RT’s inauguration coverage.

Is this the last gasp of contempt from the old elite against real media, young media and fresh media? Is this one last censorship drive before the fake streamers fade away? A lot of this depends on Donald Trump.

Yes, the President of the United States does not legally control Facebook, which is technically a private entity, but it is well known that Facebook often cooperates with government and indeed deep state forces to push an agenda.

Now, one of the most popular alternative media sources in the world has been censored from the world’s most popular social media platform. The information war has officially been declared.

If Barack Obama’s administration and his deep state allies could allow such a climate to develop in the country whose Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees free speech, it is now up to Donald Trump to reverse this trend.

There are positive signs. Trump’s White House Director of Communications, Sean Spicer, has said that he intends to invite alternative media outlets to future press conferences, and spoke of the move in overwhelmingly positive terms.

Trump himself has accrued support from outlets such as InfoWars and Breitbart. Trump gave an interview to famed American journalist Larry King who hosts several shows on RT, a move which caused outrage from the baying mob who don’t respect RT’s right to exist.

The people who pompously lecture on the values of free journalism seem to think that this freedom is a privilege and not a right. None of RT’s critics can seriously accuse RT of false reportage nor of reporting anything but the facts.

What they’re truly upset about is that a media organisation with growing popularity has an editorial policy which differs from that of fake news outlets like CNN, whose editorial policy has earned it the name ‘The Clinton News Network’.

RT, by contrast, is not pro-Trump. During the election, RT ran anti-Trump stories and anti-Clinton stories and unlike almost every other major outlet, gave air time to the platforms of Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. RT continues to broadcast interviews with anti-Trump analysis. This is called balance.

But the fact is, even if RT was pro-Trump, this too is perfectly ethical. CNN has the right to be a Clinton mouthpiece, but they simply ought to declare this openly, rather than pretend they are producing balanced programming. That is, of course, a matter of ethics, not of free speech which I believe both CNN and RT have the right to exercise.

I suspect that like most anti-RT measures – from a state-owned British bank shutting down RT’s accounts,  to the US intelligence agencies slandering RT, and Facebook censoring RT – will ultimately backfire. It will only increase RT’s profile and viewership. Most crucially it will awaken many people who will begin to ‘question more’.

In the meantime, I sincerely encourage you to go directly to RT at https://www.rt.com/. and/or download their mobile app. That’s what I’ll be doing this week and beyond.

I have said this before and I shall say it again. I am frequently on RT and no one has told me what to say nor how to say it. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wonder if I could say the same of CNN? This is probably why I’ve never been invited and it’s also why I wouldn’t go even if I was.