Big Tech Still Silencing Conservatives on Social Media plus NPR New CEO Questions 1st Amendment

Summary

The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

Episode: Big Tech Still Silencing Conservatives on Social Media plus NPR New CEO Questions 1st Amendment
Release Date: May 10, 2024
Host: Ben Ferguson
Featuring: Senator Ted Cruz
Publisher: Premiere Networks

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Introduction and Background

In this episode of The 47 Morning Update, host Ben Ferguson delves into two pressing issues affecting the political landscape in the United States: the ongoing suppression of conservative voices by Big Tech companies and the concerning stance of NPR’s new CEO, Kathryn Marr, on the First Amendment.

Big Tech’s Influence and Suppression of Conservative Voices

Ben Ferguson opens the discussion by highlighting the pervasive influence of Big Tech on shaping public opinion, particularly emphasizing how conservative narratives are being marginalized. He shares a personal anecdote, stating, “I spoke out again against Big Tech a few years ago at a CPAC convention and before I landed home, after I spoke out about Big Tech, specifically Facebook, my accounts were shut down” (00:01). This experience underscores a broader trend where conservative figures face diminishing reach and engagement on major social media platforms.

Senator Ted Cruz’s Investigation and Report

Senator Ted Cruz joins the conversation to elaborate on his recent report titled "Weaponizing Terms of Service: How Online Service Providers Use Broad Policies to Silence Conservatives." As the ranking member on the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Cruz has been actively investigating the alleged abuse of power by Big Tech.

Notable Points from Senator Cruz:

• Examples of Silencing:

  • Twitter and Facebook suppressing stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election.
  • YouTube removing videos critical of the Biden administration and blocking episodes of Ferguson’s podcast.
  • Direct TV discontinuing services to conservative networks like One America News Network and Newsmax under pressure from Democratic leaders.
  • Intuit and JP Morgan Chase denying services to organizations like the National Committee of Religious Freedom.
  • GoFundMe blocking $10 million in donations to the Canadian Truckers Freedom Convoy (04:04).

• Impact on Elections: Cruz emphasizes that these actions can significantly alter election dynamics by disproportionately affecting conservative outreach during critical periods.

• ADL’s "Bad Gateway" Report: Cruz references the Anti-Defamation League’s findings on deplatforming, noting that:

  1. Popularity rankings of extremist websites decrease immediately after deplatforming.
  2. It takes users a long time to return to these websites, if at all.
  3. Unexpected deplatforming prolongs the recovery of website popularity.
  4. Replicating platform services externally presents challenges like higher costs and smaller audiences (10:09).

Mechanisms of Deplatforming

Senator Cruz details how companies like Slack and Eventbrite are using their terms of service to effectively silence conservative organizations without transparent explanations:

• Slack: Terminated the workspace of "Libs of TikTok" due to posts about gender affirming hysterectomies and all-age drag shows, citing policy violations aimed more at the conservative audience than actual content issues (12:34).
• Eventbrite: Removed event pages for conservative events related to Matt Walsh’s documentary "What Is a Woman?" and speaker Riley Gaines based on vague policy breaches, disrupting the organizations' outreach efforts (15:31).

The Double Standards in Content Moderation

Ferguson and Cruz discuss the apparent hypocrisy in how Big Tech handles different types of content:

• Selective Enforcement: While Eventbrite flagged and removed conservative events, it allowed inflammatory events supporting violent protests, such as Black Lives Matter rallies that led to violence, to remain active without similar repercussions (22:37).
• Impact on Infrastructure: The removal of essential services for conservative groups not only limits their communication capabilities but also hinders their operational effectiveness, creating an uneven playing field in public discourse.

NPR’s New CEO and First Amendment Concerns

Transitioning to the second major topic, Ferguson shifts focus to NPR’s newly appointed CEO, Kathryn Marr, whose public statements have raised red flags about NPR’s commitment to unbiased journalism.

Key Concerns Raised:

• Bias and Partisanship: Marr has openly criticized figures like former President Donald Trump, labeling him a “deranged, racist sociopath” and stating her support for censoring opposing views.
• Impact on NPR’s Integrity: The shift in NPR’s audience demographics from 26% conservative in 2011 to 11% in 2023, alongside Marr’s provocative comments, suggests a significant leftward bias (25:12).
• Freedom of Speech: Marr has described the First Amendment as a challenge, indicating a preference for regulating content to align with her ideological stance rather than upholding free speech principles (33:31).

Notable Quotes:

• Senator Cruz on NPR’s Shift: “By 2023, those numbers had shifted dramatically. It was now instead of 37% liberal, it was 67% liberal. And instead of 26% conservative, it was only 11% conservative.”
• Kathryn Marr on Truth: “Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done” (37:00).

Calls for Oversight and Accountability

Ferguson and Cruz argue that NPR, funded by taxpayers, should uphold nonpartisan journalism standards. They call for Congressional oversight to address what they perceive as blatant partisanship and censorship under Marr’s leadership.

Senator Cruz’s Position:

• Immediate Action: “If NPR cares at all about journalistic integrity, if they care at all about continuing to receive taxpayer funds, they should terminate Catherine Maher immediately.”
• Accountability Measures: Stressing the need for rigorous scrutiny of headless NPR to prevent the propagation of biased propaganda using taxpayer money.

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a strong stance against both Big Tech's suppression of conservative voices and NPR’s perceived shift towards partisan bias under its new CEO. Ben Ferguson emphasizes the importance of awareness and accountability in safeguarding free speech and unbiased journalism.

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Key Takeaways:

• Big Tech’s Role in Political Discourse: A significant concern is the selective suppression of conservative voices by major online platforms, potentially swaying public opinion and electoral outcomes.
• NPR’s Editorial Direction: The appointment of Kathryn Marr as NPR’s CEO has sparked fears of increased bias and censorship, challenging the organization's commitment to impartial journalism.
• Call to Action: Ferguson and Cruz advocate for legislative oversight and accountability to ensure that both Big Tech and public media entities uphold principles of free speech and unbiased reporting.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Ferguson: “Big Tech is obviously had a massive influence over public opinion in this country.” (00:01)
• Senator Ted Cruz: “What we know about is it using web-based products and services, online service providers to ban conservative organizations from using their technology.” (07:35)
• Senator Ted Cruz on NPR Bias: “They would amplify stories like the Russia collusion story, even if they were not supported by the facts.” (26:27)
• Kathryn Marr on Truth: “What the truth actually is... we all have different truths based on where we come from.” (36:50)

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the critical discussions from the episode, providing insights into the challenges posed by Big Tech’s influence on political discourse and the implications of leadership changes at NPR on media impartiality. Notable quotes are included with timestamps to highlight key moments in the conversation, offering a clear understanding for those who haven’t listened to the episode.

Transcript

[Ben Ferguson]

Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And you guys know if you listen to show regularly that the center and I do this show around his Senate schedule, especially when it comes to his official duties. Well, if you are looking at my clock right now, it's about 2 in the morning and the senator's flight, which was obviously extremely late, meant that at this point we still couldn't do the show. Now here's the good news. We have two conversations that Senator Cruz and I had that deal with Big Tech and also silencing of conservatives that I'm gonna play for you. But this is the part I love about doing this show. We do this show all times, day and night and then sometimes the fights just don't cooperate, even in the early a.m. hours. So now you understand what's going on. Don't worry. We'll have your weekend review for you tomorrow as well. But these are two important topics that I want you to hear about. And there are a lot going on in D.C. specifically around the issue of Big Tech and what they're doing to silence conservatives. But first, there are so many Verdict listeners have been asking how can you get involved and how can you help the people in Israel? Well, I want you to know about ifcj. IFCJ is helping on the ground in Israel right now. Since October 7, the attacks on Israel have increased with Iran and its proxies that launched an attack of hundreds of drones and missiles. And Israelis are living with the harsh reality of terror. Every single day. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is on the ground addressing all of the urgent needs. And that's why I want you to work with them. They are doing incredible work because they're helping the people there with literal bomb shelters, emergency bomb shelter kits that are being delivered immediately to those in desperate need. Your life saving donation today will help assemble and place these kits with enough food and life saving emergency supplies for 20 people huddled in a bomb shelter. Now the cost to put together and distribute these kits is $290 each and your gift will help save lives. And thanks to a matching challenge gift from a generous IFC J supporter, your gift will double in impact to help provide twice the support needed on the ground. So if you want to help the people of Israel, all you have to do is call this number to make your gift. 888488 IFCJ. That's 888488 if CJ or you can go online to supportifcj.org to give that's one word support ifcj.org to give now center. Big Tech is obviously had a massive influence over public opinion in this country. We saw a recent report that came out just on Tick Tock, for example, where they were 45 to 1 stories that were pro Palestinian, pro Hamas over Israel. That's one example of how they've really been able to shape public opinion, especially with young people and the riots and the chaos we're witnessing on college campuses right now. But there's also something else that's happened with Big Tech. I've been a victim of it. I spoke out again against Big Tech a few years ago at a CPAC convention and before I landed home, after I spoke out about Big Tech, specifically Facebook, my accounts were shut down. They have never worked the same way as they did before. The reach has disappeared. I've witnessed it and many other conservative leaders out there are going through the same things. And it always seems to happen, Senator, Right. During a big election cycle where the Democrats get a free flow of information out and conservatives get hammered and silenced.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, that's exactly right. So I started last year as the ranking member on the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science and Transportation. And from that position as the ranking member, which means the senior Republican on that committee, I launched an investigation into the abuse of power from Big Tech. And this past week we put out a major report. The report is entitled Weaponizing Terms of Service How Online Service Providers Use Broad Policies to Silence Conservatives. Now, there are a lot of instances that, that we know about that get a lot of publicity. We know, for example, that Twitter, before Elon Musk purchased them, suspended the account of the Babylon Be for making a joke about a Biden administration official. We know that both Facebook and Twitter suppressed stories about Hunter Biden's laptop before the 2020 election. We know that Facebook removed posts suggesting that COVID 19 originated in a Wuhan Wuhan lab, something we talked about at length on this podcast and a theory that has now been confirmed both by the federal Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We know that YouTube took down a March 2021 video of a panel discussion with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis during which he disputed claims that children needed to wear face masks. We know that YouTube also, which is owned by Google, blocked access to a November 2023 episode of this podcast verdict because we were criticizing the corporate media's favorable coverage of Hamas and and YouTube deemed, okay, you must be an adult to see what is on the network news. We also know in 2022, Direct TV dropped one America News Network at less than a year after Democrat leaders in Congress sent a letter to the CEO calling on them to stop carrying the network. We also know they did the same thing to Newsmax. Now I lit direct TV up and they ended up bringing Newsmax back. We also know that Intuit, at the direction of its banking partners, refused to provide payment processing and payroll services to gun manufacturers and sellers. And we know that JP Morgan Chase closed the account of the National Committee of Religious Freedom, which was created by former State Department Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom and former U.S. senator Sam Brownback. We know that GoFundMe blocked the release of $10 million of donations to the Canadian Truckers Freedom Convoy. We've seen that happen over and over and over again. Well, what this report does is it lays out an entirely new area of discrimination. And it is using web based products and services, online service providers to ban conservative organizations from using their technology. And it's going after the infrastructure that is needed to communicate. And in fact, this, this investigation reveals that online service providers are following a playbook for silencing conservatives. That leftist organizations including the Southern Poverty Law center, which is wildly left wing and hates conservatives, and the Anti Defamation League, the adl, they together put together this strategy, this playbook to quote, remove infrastructure services that conservative organizations need to operate. And so I'm going to describe that playbook and what they're doing in particular.

[Ben Ferguson]

When you look at their playbook and this, this amount of influence, I mean, this can change and alter certainly an election cycle. It can certainly, I would argue, change a presidential election as well. And that's the reason why they're doing this. When you think about, you know, you've got millions of people that follow you Facebook, I've got, you know, over a million. But if you turn off and throttle either one of us, then the reach that we have compared to the left, it just disappears. It's the, it's the old saying, right? If a big tree falls in the forest and no one's around, did it make a sound? And that's exactly what they did. But it wasn't just to one or two people. They were doing this to hundreds of top conservative voices that, that people look to for their opinions, specifically when it comes to election year issues.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

So that's exactly right. And what this report focuses on is it uses a couple of key examples. It uses, number one, Slack's removal of libs of TikTok's workspace. It focuses on event rights, removal of event pages for events related to Matt Walsh's what Is a Woman? Documentary as well as an event where Riley Gaines was scheduled to speak. And it focuses on Bonterra's termination of its relationship with Independent Women's Forum, which deprived that organization of major nonprofit technology service provider services. And all of this follows. There was a report that was put out by the Anti Defamation League and it is called Bad Gateway. How Deplatforming Affects Extremist Websites and here's what the ADL recommended. It says, quote De platforming websites removing infrastructure services they need to operate, such as website hosting, can reduce the spread and reach of extremism and hate online. But when does deplatforming succeed? And here's what ADL explained. Quote this report shows that deep platforming can decrease the popularity of extremist websites, especially when done without warning. And they go through we learned four important lessons about how de platforming affects extremist websites by which they mean anything right of center. Number one, it can cause popularity rankings to decrease immediately. Number two, it may take users a long time to return to the website. Sometimes the website never regains its previous popularity.

[Ben Ferguson]

Bingo.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Number three, unexpected and unexpected is key. Unexpected deplatforming makes it take longer for the website to regain its previous popularity levels. And number four, replicating DE platform services such as discussion forums or live streaming video products on a standalone website presents significant challenges, including higher costs and smaller audiences. Now I want to go into a little bit more. This is what the ADL report. It has an entire section that says what is deplatforming? And by the way, the corporate media insists when we talk about deplatforming that we're making it up. Well, if you actually read the blueprint, they are very explicit. The left is explicit. They want to silence you. So let me read from this ADL report. Quote There are three main categories of infrastructure that keep websites running domain registrars, web hosting companies, and security protection companies. Number one, the website must be able to register and keep a domain name. A domain name such as google.com or adl.org is how visitors find a site. If a website is removed from domain name services, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to find. Number two, web hosting companies and content distribution networks provide digital storage space for all the files, pictures, videos and software that make up the content of a website. When a website loses its hosting provider, the site's content disappears. Losing a cdn, a content distribution network, can cause slow service for high traffic sites. And number three, a third category of infrastructure provider includes companies that protect Websites from external security risks such as distributed denial of service. DDoS attacks, DDoS attacks flood a website with fake traffic to overwhelm it, rendering it unable to answer normal user requests. If an infrastructure company, such as a network security firm Cloudflare, refuses to provide DDoS protection to a vulnerable website, it is vulnerable to being flooded with traffic, rendering it inaccessible.

[Ben Ferguson]

So you look at what this, what we found out and what you just went through. The question is how is it that these companies, and I'm specifically referring to big tech, are allowed to get away with this and do this to many people that, that they're in business with? I use myself as the example again because I've, I've experienced this when you went into business and I felt like I was in business with Facebook, they said, advertise with us, right? Share, advertise your show, advertise your content, boost your content, spend money with us and we're going to help you grow an audience and it'll be good for everyone. And then all of a sudden they just shut you down and they were able to walk away and just say, oh, well, you, you violated our terms of service or you did this, or you posted too many things that liberals posted as saying they were factually incorrect. The fact checkers came out, right? The liberals on the left, they were fact checking and putting dings against conservatives. So they lose their reach, lose their ability to boost posts, lose their ability to advertise. And it was all being done to clearly influence public opinion and yet they've gotten away with it. So what's next?

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, what this report focuses on many of the deep platforming steps by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. They're very public. What this report focuses on is the ones that are not public, which is the back office infrastructure. So let's take for example, Slack, which is used for communication for many online organizations and companies. Slack canceled libs of TikTok workspace for violating its terms of service. And the terms of service prohibit users from, quote, engaging in activity that incites or encourages violence or hatred towards against individuals or groups. Slack determined that libs of TikTok violated this policy based on three social media posts concerning, quote, gender affirming hysterectomies and all age drag shows. Now here's the interesting thing. Slack shut down libs of TikTok's workspace without any warning, without any explanation as to how it is violated Slack's policy. And Slack's action caused libs of TikTok to effectively lose its use of Slack's Communications and forced it to rely entirely on cell phones to run its business. Now listen to this quote, which is fascinating. Slack told the commerce committee told my investigation, quote, what makes Libs of TikTok's posts problematic is that Libs of TikTok has a specific audience and they are taking this information and posting it to that specific audience so that everyone in that audience sees it at the same time. In other words, they didn't even find objections with what libs of TikTok was posting. What they were mad at is conservatives were reading it. And that was enough reason to deplatform libs of TikTok.

[Ben Ferguson]

So when you shut down a business, in essence the way they did, is there any real and instant relief for libs of TikTok or others? Or is this one of those, they're too big to fail, right? These companies are too big, they're protected. And, and you're the minion and just deal with it. And if you're, and who cares if your life work is destroyed in 30 seconds because they shut it off?

[Senator Ted Cruz]

So right now there, there is not immediate relief. You could presumably file a breach of contract case. The, the biggest relief and the reason I did this report is just sunshine. They're doing this in the dark. They're doing this without scrutiny. There is right now no federal law that this is prohibited. I'll give you another example. Eventbrite, which we focuses on. Eventbrite canceled pages for events hosted by College Republican clubs concerning Matt Walsh's what is a woman? Film. And it also canceled pages for an event featuring swimmer Riley Gaines for violating its terms of service. Now, critically, no one involved in the decision, this is what they told the committee watched the movie what is a. What is a woman? So they never saw it. Uh, and, and they couldn't identify anything objectionable in the trailer, so they just didn't like the topic. So they decided to take it down. Uh, they relied instead on Matt Walsh's statements about, quote, gender affirming surgeries, pronouns, and his Johnny the Walrus children's book to reach the conclusion. Likewise, Eventbrite determined that Riley Gaines's event violated its policy based on her social media post about biological men competing in women's sports. They shut down the event page without any warning, without any explanation as to how they violated this policy, without any way to fix it. And their actions ruined advertisements that included QR codes for the event pages. So, you know, a lot had been done to put out the codes to say, hey, come to this event. And they forced the event organizers to quickly pivot to a new method of providing tickets. And the committee asked Eventbrite whether Gaines's statement on October 10, 2023, she posted on on Twitter, quote, real women lack a Y chromosome. And we asked whether that violates Eventbrite's policy. Eventbrite responded that, quote, the post speaks for itself. So they, they needn't answer that. How dare you say that someone with a Y chromosome is not a woman. We don't even need to dispute it. We have the power to shut it down.

[Ben Ferguson]

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[Senator Ted Cruz]

So let me ask you, Ben, have you seen this on cnn?

[Ben Ferguson]

No.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Have you seen it on abc, NBC, cbs, msnbc?

[Ben Ferguson]

Nowhere.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Have you read it in the Washington Post? You read it in the New York Times? No. No. The corporate media will not cover it. I'll give you another example. So Bonterra, which provides nonprofit management services, so it's back office, but it's incredibly important, and there are very few providers of this. They denied those services to Independent Women's Forum, which is a conservative organization that is focused on advancing women's rights. And Bonterra concluded that it violated its policies, which require customers to agree to refrain from advocacy, denying, quote, LGBTQ rights or denying a woman's right to reproductive choice, or denying racial justice or denying climate change. And. And their policies also prohibit customers from, quote, promoting, encouraging, or facilitating hate speech, violence, discrimination based on race, color, sexual orientation, marital status, gender, or identity expression. Bontera notified Independent Women's Forum of its decision not to renew their contract without any explanation of how the organization violated this policy. As a result, Independent Women's Forum had to quickly move off Bontera's platform and obtain a replacement services provider. Bontera told the committee that Independent Women's Forum violated its terms of service because the organization, quote, works to restrict the rights of the LGBTQ community. Bonterra could not explain exactly how the group was working to restrict LGBTQ rights, but generic generally pointed to Independent Women forums advocacy on issues like protecting women's sports and women's spaces. So if you actually think that girls should compete in girls sports, that is a view that that is not acceptable and you will be denied online basic infrastructure from monopoly and near monopoly providers.

[Ben Ferguson]

The amount of arrogance that we see now from these companies, you've witnessed it now firsthand, tells you they feel like they are protected by the current regime. Am I wrong?

[Senator Ted Cruz]

You are exactly right. And if you look at Eventbrite, for example, let's go back to Riley Gaines. So Riley Gaines, they shut her down because they disagreed about not her event, but about some posts that she had put out. What they did not object to was an event that we identified entitled Gaza and the Struggle for Palestine. Now, that event was flagged by event rights Algorithm and it was reviewed by its trust and safety team, but it determined that that event did not violate its hateful events policy. Uh, in an October 9, 2023 statement. So, two days off after October 7, here's what the event sponsor, the Palestinian American organization Networks, said it called the October 7th attack, quote, self defense measures and said that, quote, Israel bears the full responsibility for those attacks and declared that, quote, the Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves and to fight the occupation with all means available. We salute the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and its resistance. So understand, saluting the mass murder of 1200 people, the raping of women and girls, that does not violate their hateful speech policy. But saying that girls exist, that does. Saying that men should not compete against women in women's sports, that does. That is the utter hypocrisy and double standards that that allows. By the way, Eventbrite has also allowed numerous, quote, stop Cop City events which support violent protesters who oppose the building of a police and firefighter training facility. Uh, likewise, Eventbrite created a map, a Black Lives Matter protest, many of which turned violent to help users find them. So in other words, actual events that produce violence, that end up killing people, that burn shops, that firebomb cars, those are not deemed hateful and violent. But if you say that women exists, you must be deplatformed.

[Ben Ferguson]

We talked about the media giving them cover. I expect some in the media to be liberal hacks. Right? But this brings up a big issue that we need to talk about with npr. The new CEO of NPR is someone that is paid by US taxpayers and someone who has described the First Amendment as the number one challenge she faces. Our tax dollars are going to a CEO who's running npr, National Public Radio saying the First Amendment really seems to get in her way. Really? That's where our money is going?

[Kathryn Marr]

Well, unfortunately, NPR has been profoundly corrupted and it's been made worse by hiring a CEO who is a brazen, blatant, unapologetic, radical leftist. And she doesn't pretend to be unbiased at all. Now, we discussed in a previous podcast a couple of weeks ago, the bombshell report from Yuri Berliner. Yuri Berliner was a 25 year NPR employee and was the former business editor of NPR. And he wrote an April 9th essay in the Free Press which resulted in NPR suspending him for publishing. How's that for free speech?

[Senator Ted Cruz]

If you criticize us, you're out of here.

[Kathryn Marr]

And ultimately led to his resignation. So he's gone. This essay cost him his job. But he laid out the incredible bias at NPR and the shift in NPR. So, for example, he laid out in 2011, which was not that long ago, NPR's audience was 26% conservative, 23% middle of the road, and 37% liberal. So it leaned left, but not dramatically. So by 2023, those numbers had shifted dramatically. It was now instead of 37% liberal, it was 67% liberal. And instead of 26% conservative, it was only 11% conservative. And Mr. Berliner laid out details of how they would stifle stories that were inconvenient to liberals. They would amplify stories like the Russia collusion story, even if they were not supported by the facts. He outlined at great length how NPR had no interest in being impartial, being unbiased. And then you take in the wake of this, in the wake of what should be real concern of, hey, we're National Public Radio. We're supposed to be nonpartisan, we're supposed to be down the middle. Now look, I for one have, have serious doubts why the taxpayer should fund any radio station. I think there are plenty of for profit radio stations. I don't know why the government should coercively tax you to pay for yet another radio station. But I'll tell you what, even if there's an argument they should do so for generic news, that, that somehow there's not a market demand for. There is no argument I know of that they should do so only for left wing propaganda. And the newly appointed CEO, Katherine Marr, has been a hard partisan her whole life. So for example, in 2020, Mar referred to President Donald Trump as a, quote, deranged, racist sociopath. Well, then I'm confident her coverage of, of Donald Trump will be fair. As long as she introduces him as a deranged, racist sociopath, he's covered.

[Ben Ferguson]

How do you even get that job? And I'm being serious. If you're National Public Radio, how does that automatically disqualify you from that position as soon as they see that quote?

[Kathryn Marr]

Yeah, and by the way, that's not an outlier. In 2021, she celebrated Trump's banishment from social media, referring to him as a fascist. So she loves censorship. Okay. The former President of the United States elected by the American people. I'm thrilled that he's being silenced because I dislike his politics and I think he's a fascist. In May of 2020, right in the middle of the George Floyd riots, Mars suggested that looting represented a form of reparative justice for historic wrongs. And she remarked how white silence is tantamount to complicity and violence. She's also posted repeatedly in support of Democrat politicians including Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Now listen, as a private citizen, she has a right to be an angry left wing radical and a hard Democrat partisan. But explain to me why on earth the American taxpayers should fund her partisan propaganda.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah. And yet that's exactly why she probably got the job because they're like, oh perfect, you're going to keep pushing this propaganda out there full speed ahead. Want to ask all of you listening right now to do me a favor real quick. I want you to place your hand over your heart if you can. Can you feel that it's your heartbeat telling you that you are alive. It's the same for a preborn baby. Their heart begins to form at conception and at just three weeks it is already beating. At five weeks a baby's heartbeat can be heard on an ultrasound. And that is why I am proud to say that I am partnering with Preborn because we need to help those precious babies every day. Preborn's network of clinic rescues 200 babies from abortion. Why? Because when a mother with an unplanned pregnancy meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their baby's heartbeat, it is a divine encounter that doubles a baby's chance at life. By 6 weeks eyes are forming. By 10 weeks a baby is able to suck his or her own thumb. And for just $28 you can be the difference between life or death of that child. It is incredible because what preborn does is they give give the chance for a mother to hear the baby's heartbeat. Now all gifts are tax deductible. You can donate and you can donate easily. Just dial pound250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound250 and say the keyword baby. You can donate [e-mail] verdict as well. That's preborn.com verdict. Senator, if you are at NPR, can you imagine if you are lefty, a lefty, how much freedom I think it would make you feel like you had to then go out there and continue to push propaganda on the American people. If this is your CEO, I mean it's a license to basically go all in on liberal propaganda at the taxpayers expense.

[Kathryn Marr]

Now that is exactly right. And I've got to say, listen, as you know, I'm the ranking member on the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science and Transportation and part of my responsibility in that role. We've got jurisdiction over about 40% of the U.S. economy. And part of my responsibility is oversight. And I can tell you that I am actively engaging in oversight right now, calling on NPR to explain, to explain why they're willing to put in place a hard left wing activist, not a neutral journalist, but someone who is biased, who is an active supporter of censorship, to violence, to silence the views she disagrees with. YNPR believes that that is an appropriate leader for their institution.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah, that's a really great point.

[Kathryn Marr]

And listen, don't necessarily take our word for it. I want you to listen to Kathryn Marr in her own words because it's going to show just how radical she is. And I want to play a couple clips. Let's start with her explaining that in her view, the number one challenge that she faces is the First Amendment of the Constitution. Let's play that clip.

[Unnamed Speaker]

The number one challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly robust protection of rights. And that is a protection of rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very important, that platforms have those rights to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites. But it also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from and sort of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.

[Ben Ferguson]

I mean, it's amazing. Senator, this is the woman running npr. And I guess this is almost like the best thing you can put on your resume, right? You're like, hey, I think the First Amendment's a real problem. It's like putting perfect, we'd love to hire you at npr.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Yeah. And she actually says, well, the First.

[Kathryn Marr]

Amendment is really important for platforms.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

But then what she describes as their.

[Kathryn Marr]

First Amendment right is for their ability to censor and silence things they disagree with. So to her mind, what she cares about is the ability if there's a view that is right of center. As far as she's concerned, the First Amendment is all about silencing those views. There can be no dissent. All right, I want you to listen to another clip. This is a TED Talk where she's discussing truth when she was at Wikipedia, and somehow she has a different view of truth than I think you and I might have. Give a listen the hard things, the.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Places where we are prone to disagreement, say politics and religion. Well, as it turns out, not only does Wikipedia's model work there, it actually works really well because in our normal lives, these contentious conversations tend to erupt or a disagreement about what the truth actually is. But the people who write these articles, they're not focused on the truth. They're focused on something else, which is the best of what we can know right now. And after seven years of working with these brilliant folks, I've come to believe that they are onto something that perhaps for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done. Now, that is not to say that the truth doesn't exist, nor is it to say that the truth isn't important. Clearly, the search for the truth has led us to do great things, to learn great things. But I think if I were to really ask you to think about this, one of the things that we could all acknowledge is that part of the reason we have such glorious chronicles to the human experience and all forms of culture is because we acknowledge there are many different truths. And so, in the spirit of that, I'm certain that the truth exists for you and probably for the person sitting next to you. But this may not be the same truth. This is because the truth of the matter is very often for many people. What happens when we merge facts about the world with our beliefs about the world.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

The world.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So we all have different truths. They're based on things like where we come from, how we were raised, and how other people perceive us.

[Kathryn Marr]

What utter garbage. Like every word of that. You want an indictment of the modern left? You want an indictment of the idiocy of media? You want an indictment of the academic world? You want an indictment of big tech? Good God, what utter garbage. Truth doesn't exist. George Orwell is spinning in his grave and laughing at the same time. Two plus two doesn't equal four. It equals five because we say it is. There is no truth. Listen to that quote. Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done. But don't worry, this is only for things that don't matter. The contentious issues. What does she identify? Politics and religion. When it comes to politics and religion, look, Jesus Christ said, I am the way, the truth and the life. But no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't have reverence for truth. We're not interested in that. We are interested in set aside a truth that can be your truth, my truth, everyone has a truth. Maybe for you, two plus two is five. What utter garbage. You know what? A journalist is supposed to be interested in the truth. Now, do you have perfect truth? No. Do you have perfect knowledge? No, but you should get damn close to it. You should be trying to get to the truth. Remember what journalists used to learn? Who, what, when, where, how, why? Like what happened? What are the facts? Well, no, no, no, not according to her. According to her, there are no facts, There is no truth. It's your truth, it's my truth. And my truth from Katherine Mars perspective is as a left wing partisan, whatever the orthodoxy is. And we will silence views that disagree. And the first amendment is a pesky, pesky barrier. All right, I want to play one more clip. Yeah, one more clip where she's describing what she did at Wikipedia. Listen to this third clip.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I started by talking about the idea of free and open as some of our founding principles, sort of free and open source, coming from the idea of the open source community. Well, I have come to the opinion and the perspective that free and open was a way of looking at the world that was inherently limited relative to what we were trying to achieve. Free and open has the best of intentionality. But in the end, what free and open often ended up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics that exist offline prior to the advent of the Internet. And so what we ended up seeing was Wikipedia really rebuilt this idea of knowledge as a whole around what the Western canon, you see the exclusion of communities of languages because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based on reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition and something that is particular to many. I mean, not, sorry, the idea of a written tradition which is particular to some cultures and not to others. The ways in which we ascribe notability often really comes from sort of this white male, Westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is elevated and whose voices. And so some of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really did not end up with the intention, really did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.

[Ben Ferguson]

I mean, that. That just is brilliant right there.

[Kathryn Marr]

God bless. So look, she's explaining at Wikipedia they deliberately abandoned a, quote, free and open approach. By the way, she's telling you what she's going to do at npr. NPR is not going to be free and open, according to her, because she doesn't believe in free and open.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Why?

[Kathryn Marr]

Because free and open, number one, she says, well, that advantages cultures that believe in the written word because you know what Good.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Is book learning ever done anyone? Well, heck, you're forgetting those cultures that.

[Kathryn Marr]

Don'T believe in that fancy learning stuff. Like what utter garbage. I'm sorry, I thought actually a journalistic outfit should actually reflect celebrate the best of education, of learning, of what we know. But she says no, no, no, no. If it's actually free and open, it will recapitulate a white male westernized construct. Let me ask you something, Ben. What the hell does that mean?

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Seriously?

[Kathryn Marr]

Those are the words Marxists use and typically the more syllables they use when they get polysyllabic, the less they're making any sense. So explain to me the phrase recapitulate a white male westernized construction that does not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can mean. Those words have no content other than I want the power to silence things I don't like. Am I wrong?

[Ben Ferguson]

No, you're right. And my question goes back to this for you. It used to be at NPR and others, they would at least fake it, like their bias. Now it's just flat out open and they're doing it with our tax dollars. Is there ever going to be a day of reckoning where NPR finds out, hey, good luck, do your own thing, because we're not gonna pay for this propaganda anymore.

[Kathryn Marr]

Look, if NPR cares at all about journalistic integrity, if they care at all about continuing to receive taxpayer funds, they should terminate Catherine Maher immediately. Her job should be done. They should not have a rabid left wing partisan who hates the First Amendment, who views it as an inconvenience, who wants to censor conservatives, who is actively, explicitly and unabashedly opposed to free and open communication, who doesn't believe in truth, who believes truth is an impediment to what she's doing, that is not a journalist in any way. She ought to go and join Emily's list. She ought to go and join the dnc. She ought to go run for Congress and become a henchman to Nancy Pelosi. She should not actually be running a news organization, especially not a news organization funded by the taxpayers. And if we have to be honest, if you had a Democrat who had a shred of integrity, they would say, of course this is not appropriate for her to run npr. The chances of that happening are zero. But I can tell you I'm going to be pushing for accountability and I'm going to be pushing for oversight of NPR because it is brazenly shameless for them to put someone so wildly unqualified in that position.

[Ben Ferguson]

Don't forget we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday and a Week in Review on Saturdays. Hit that subscribe Follow our Auto Download button wherever you're listening this podcast so you do not miss a episode. Also, on those in between days, download my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast and I will keep you updated on the latest breaking news that is happening on those in between days. And the Senator and I will see you back here on Saturday for a Week in Review.