I’m posting about a particular example of censorship. I thought the general topic of censorship of Covid-19 voices was worth its own space, so gave it a general title so it can reappear if people post other examples in the future.
Usually the justification given for suppressing viewpoints is something to do with safety. In general the level of public support for censorship varies; seemingly, probably partly to do with the perception of what is safe, and largely to do with whether people agree with the viewpoint being suppressed.
This is part of a message from Jeremy R. Hammond, a prolific US activist. (I’ve re-hashed it slightly just to remove the fundraising part of the message as I don’t know if that fits in with board policy).
As banned material goes, it is unusual as it presents mostly medical information, from medical sources. The ban of Hammond and removal of the material can hardly be justified on safety grounds.
Hammond appears to be doing exactly what an activist should do, when challenging what they see as false information - writing in, with their evidence.
However the newspaper deleted his comments and banned him from further comment.
Over to Hammond.
"A local newspaper here in Michigan published a Facebook post linking to an article promoting flu shots [see the link below] on the grounds that vaccination will help reduce the load on hospitals in the context of COVID-19. The post text consisted of a quote from the head of the lockdown regime here, Gretchen Whitmer, urging everyone to get the shot.
I read through the comments and was pleasantly surprised to see that many if not most of them expressed dissenting views. Lots of people said they do not and will not get this vaccine, indicating that they aren’t so gullible as to believe what they are told about it by government officials and the media.
I joined in the discussion by summarizing findings and linking to studies in the medial literature that contradicted the policy being implicitly advocated by the local paper with its uncritical parroting of the recommendation.
My comments were subsequently deleted and I was banned from the page. Here are the full details of this enlightening example of how the media censor science to push flu shots:
Petoskey News-Review Censors Science to Push Flu Shot Policy
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2020/09/03/petoskey-news-review-censors-science-to-push-flu-shot-policy"
The title of Hammond’s message following the ban is Censoring Science to Push Flu Shots. Which does look like fair comment here.
Cheers
