Editors at National Review Online explain why a recent controversy involving a competing conservative publication and Google should cause concern.
So, Google was demonetizing the Federalist, and then it wasn’t. NBC News has the story, or it doesn’t.
On Tuesday, NBC News published a story claiming that Google had “banned” the Federalist, a right-wing news and commentary site, from its advertising platform. The Federalist, according to NBC News, was being “demonetized.” Google shortly thereafter asserted that no such thing had happened with the Federalist; Google took issue with some of the content in the Federalist’s comments section and worked with the publication to resolve the issue.
This was all generally related to criticism of the recent protests originating in Minneapolis and Black Lives Matter, an organization of which the Left intends to permit no criticism.
NBC News did what looks like some bad reporting. But NBC News also was at the heart of the story: A complaint from NBC News is what started off Google’s review process to begin with, at least according to a report from NBC News, which, apparently, is not to be trusted here.
The Federalist may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but NBC’s campaign against the publication looks like the new rabid normal in journalism. Adele-Momoko Fraser, the NBC journalist at the center of the story, festooned her tweeting gloating about the Federalist’s fictional demonetization with the Black Lives Matter activist hashtag and described her work as “collaboration” with left-wing activists.
Collaboration, yes. Journalism? No. …
… The Left will try to shut down the Federalist, just as it has tried to cancel Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh. We expect that National Review will be targeted in the same way in turn. We have been sounding the alarm about the authoritarianism and illiberalism of the Left for years, and the current nadir is surprising even to us.
