Here is a look at the record of Oliver Darcy targeting others to be completely muzzled.
Following the Thursday night actions on Twitter, it is with eye-rolling bemusement that we watch the nation’s media complex meltdown with outrage over what they call a “purge” of journalists. A number of notable names instigated Elon Musk and Twitter management to take this action after provoking a reaction by retweeting links and information over content deemed worthy of suspension. They dared Musk to act, and now claim martyr status.
As many are screeching about the threat to journalism and the danger to our democracy two realities need to be injected into the discussion for the sake of calming the emotional high fevers. First, as claims of censoring the news circulate and melodramatic labels like “Bloody Thursday” are unfurled, we are talking about six individuals. Most if not all of these suspended accounts will be reactivated in a week. They are essentially placed into “time out”; these are not jailed reporters in a hostile government.
The other detail is that we saw no such outrage in 2020 when the New York Post was outwardly silenced. Not lone reporters, an entire outlet was suspended, and on numerous platforms, yet the collective press expressed no level of opposition to those moves like we are hearing right now. It is a selective obliviousness that clearly illustrates the elitism entrenched in the legacy media circles. It is displayed nowhere better than CNN.
As Bonchie covered earlier, they staged a gripe session about the suspension, and Oliver Darcy had the audacity to express concern and deliver dramatics about what it could all mean as a threat to the integrity of our journalism complex. To use some of the hyperbole the press loves to employ, this is a case of “weaponized” delusion, given that Darcy has a lengthy history of promoting the silencing, censoring, and elimination of particular voices and outlets.
Back when Alex Jones at InfoWars was angering its share of figures on the left and in the press, Darcy was part of the cabal of journalists looking to have the site removed from YouTube. He began by targeting affiliated individuals from the site to be banished from “proper” news sites. When the video site followed through and deplatformed InfoWars, that was not enough for Darcy. He was seemingly bothered that Jones still had outlets to push his broadcast and worked to get Twitter to remove the account. He also went to Facebook over the same concerns.
A CNN review of Jones’ accounts show that all of the videos that initially led the other tech companies to take action against Jones were in fact posted to Twitter by Jones or InfoWars. All were still live on Twitter as of the time this article was published.
While Darcy was becoming energized with his new quest to silence targets on the right, he faced the reality that he was a journalist – subsisting on the First Amendment by trade – seeking to restrict the free expression of others. In one report from that period, he was attempting to justify the desire to muzzle Jones and his outlet, and you can see Ollie straining to address the complaints. “CNN has not called for anyone to ban Jones or InfoWars from speaking, but has been reporting on social platforms’ stance towards InfoWars, especially as those platforms claim to be combatting misinformation.” Why does this Oliver Darcy standard not get applied to Thursday’s suspensions? Nobody is keeping Donie O’Sullivan, CNN’s suspended reporter, from speaking, Twitter merely took a stance toward him, correct?
Emboldened by the results back then, Darcy continued, next targeting the President and declaring he was essentially the equivalent of InfoWars, helping promote the justification to have Trump removed entirely from Twitter.
The ultimate removal of Trump from social media platforms creates quite a contrast. Hair is being set on fire in the press today over temporary suspensions of a few reporters on one platform, yet the outright removal of the leader of the country from all social media was regarded with no such concern by these thinkers.
And Darcy has not curtailed his effort. For quite a period of time, he was reaching out to cable providers to address the fact that they were offering nefarious broadcasts from cable channels. He has declared Fox News worthy of being taken down. Also not escaping his accusatory finger-pointing was Newsmax. And his pushing for silence had to contribute to seeing OAN removed from Direct TV channel packages.
It is a tossup whether Darcy fails to see, or chooses to ignore, that his standards for silencing can and should apply to himself and his network. As he said at the time when complaining about Fox, “Yes, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin and others are responsible for the lies they peddle to their audiences. But the TV companies that beam them into millions of homes around the country also bear some responsibility.”
Considering this came from the same man who this week lied that the Twitter Files do not show governmental involvement, despite the blatant proof and also matching previous revelations the government was involved with Facebook makes this all the more pathetic on his part. Now, as he deceives over how a reporter being told to go sit in the corner is worse for journalism than outlets being completely taken down, Oliver and CNN qualify for removal from our televisions.
The harsh reality is that I am not the one calling for this limitation; it is Oliver Darcy who has established that his own prevarications qualify CNN for his brand of stark silencing methods.
