No, The Supreme Court Did Not Just Greenlight Government Censorship (Despite What The Media Says)

In the wake of a Supreme Court case built on grifters peddling nonsense evidence, it’s only fitting that some media reporting is buying into the same fantasy-land narrative at the heart of the case. You would hope that professional journalists would do better, but apparently that’s too difficult.

Earlier this week, we covered the Murthy v. Missouri ruling, in which the Supreme Court saw through all the bullshit and nonsense from the people who filed the lawsuit claiming that the US government was working with social media companies to censor certain speech, and found that there was no standing to bring the case.

While the majority punted on the merits over exactly what the standard is for the important line between persuasion and coercion (though, they tried to address some of that in the earlier Vullo case — which oddly was not even mentioned in this ruling), it overturned the lower court solely on standing. The fact that the underlying facts of the case were basically a conspiracy fever dream bong hit of “trust me bro, the gov’t is, like, totally censoring shit,” basically destroyed the case.

But, of course, the reporting on this case from the start has been ridiculously bad because it’s a somewhat nuanced topic around the First Amendment, and no one’s got time for that. Indeed, many of the reports really seemed to view everything through partisan lenses. I mean, back in March I wrote about how the National Review wrote a whole article, ostensibly about the oral arguments in the case, which claimed, falsely, that the Biden administration defended its right to tell companies what content to delete. Which is not what happened at all. The entire argument was that the administration had not done so. And the only evidence presented was the “trust me, bro” shit discussed earlier.

Indeed, the administration directly admitted to the Supreme Court that if it had actually done what it was being accused of (telling companies what to delete), that would violate the First Amendment.

So, the only thing the Supreme Court was actually saying here was that if you are going to claim that the government is violating the First Amendment by compelling companies to delete your speech through coercion, you have to actually show at least some evidence that the government coerced the companies to delete that speech. And, the plaintiffs failed to do that here.

But, the narrative that this case was about clear, proven censorship is so deeply ingrained in people’s minds that some are interpreting this case as blessing such censorship. The worst offender is the Daily Mail, perhaps not surprisingly, given their journalistic chops. This title is junk: “Supreme Court rules Biden administration can continue censoring conservative social media posts in major free speech case.“

And while the Daily Mail bylines the piece as if it’s off the AP Wire, there’s no way the text of the article is from the AP. Because it’s just blatantly wrong in such a dumb way.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration can keep censoring social media posts on topics like COVID-19 and election security. 

That’s not, at all, what the Supreme Court ruled. It was pretty explicit that actual censorship still violates the First Amendment. All the court said was that the plaintiffs here failed to show anything even remotely resembling censorship, and thus they had no standing to sue.

The article also quotes Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, who had been Attorney General of Missouri when the case was brought under his watch. Schmitt also flat out lies:

Former Missouri Attorney General – and now-Senator Eric Schmitt – reacted to the case saying it ‘wasn’t the outcome we were hoping for,’ but it is a ‘huge win’ because it ‘exposed nearly every part of the Biden Administration’s vast ‘censorship enterprise.’’

It literally did not. Like, literally. The whole point of the Supreme Court ruling was that Missouri and the other plaintiffs failed to expose any damn thing, and that’s why the case got rejected.

And, you can argue that the Daily Mail is not exactly known for unbiased reporting or, you know, journalism skills, but others seemed to get stuff confused as well.

The Guardian, which one might normally think of as the political opposite of the Daily Mail, also got it wrong with this headline: “US supreme court allows government to request removal of misinformation on social media.”

I mean, it’s not quite as egregious as the Mail, but it’s still wrong. The court did not allow the government to request removal of misinformation. It simply said that those who brought that case failed to show any evidence of the government coercively making such demands.

Even in the US, CNN ran a misleading headline: “Supreme Court allows White House to press social media companies to remove disinformation.”

I guess maybe if your interpretation of “press” is “suggest to them content violates their rules” or that they should “consider if their rules are putting people at risk” then it’s sorta accurate? But “press” suggests an element of coercion, and that’s not at all what the Supreme Court allowed.

It stripped the old injunction simply because there was no evidence of such coercion. That doesn’t mean that the White House can coerce. And that’s the case no matter what Matt Taibbi, who pretty much bet what’s left of his reputation on misrepresenting nearly everything related to this case (to an embarrassing degree), falsely claimed this ruling allows “Big Brothering” to “now resume in earnest.”

Except, if that actually happened (or even if it had happened before), then there would be evidence, which could enable actual standing, as it had in the Vullo case.

I guess it’s no surprise that, even after the Supreme Court explained how much of the “evidence” presented in this case was full of bluster and nonsense, the response is to… spread more bluster and nonsense.