Censorship Industrial Complex
NPR senior editor admits extreme bias in Russia collusion, Hunter Biden laptop, COVID coverage

From LifeSiteNews
‘There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. … one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies … ’
A longtime senior editor at National Public Radio (NPR) published a blistering critique of the government-funded “news” outlet’s extreme liberal bias, citing how NPR willfully “turned a blind eye” to the truth concerning alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the origin of COVID-19.
The Free Press’ explosive 3,500-word op-ed “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” by Uri Berliner confirms what many heartland Americans have known for decades: “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”
“Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America,” wrote Berliner, who has worked at NPR for 25 years. “It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.”
Berliner paints a picture of an organization driven by DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) that almost always “defaulted to ideological story lines,” and is damaged by “the absence of viewpoint diversity.”
“I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans,” Berliner wrote. “None.”
When he presented his findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting, suggesting “we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference.”
Berliner draws attention to three enormous examples of NPR’s blindness regarding enormously important stories, a blindness that likely produced real-world consequences concerning the two most recent U.S. presidential elections and COVID-19 policies.
Russia collusion hoax
“Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting,” Berliner said. “At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.”
“Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse,” he explained. “By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.”
“But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse,” Berliner confessed. “Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.”
“It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story,” Berliner allowed. “What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.”
Hunter Biden’s laptop ignored ‘because it could help Trump’
After the New York Post published a shocking report about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 election, “NPR turned a blind eye.”
NPR’s managing editor dismissed the important story, saying “we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
“But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested,” Berliner wrote. “The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.”
“The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched,” he continued. “During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.”
NPR’s COVID-19 pandemic coverage ‘defaulted to ideological story lines’
Berliner described how NPR’s COVID-19 coverage fervently embraced a one-sided political narrative, promoting the notion that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan while totally disregarding the possibility that it might have escaped from a Wuhan lab.
“The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately, dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory,” Berliner said. “Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
“Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive,” Berliner said. “But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t die.
“Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR, we weren’t about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with which we backed the natural origin story,” Berliner wrote. “We didn’t budge when the Energy Department — the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research — concluded, albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus.”
“Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28, 2023, by asserting confidently that ‘the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.’”
In all three cases, “politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.”
DEI now trumps journalistic principles at NPR
“To truly understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step inside the organization,” explained Berliner, who emphasized that the most damaging development at NPR over the last few years has been the absence of viewpoint diversity.
DEI considerations trumped journalistic principles. “Identity” groups within the organization — including Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR) are now “given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.”
“There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies,” Berliner said. “It’s almost like an assembly line.”
Berliner concluded:
With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising. Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong. News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning. But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.
Censorship Industrial Complex
UK Could Weaken Online Censorship Law To Avoid US Trade Battle

As European leaders scramble to shield their economies from impending US tariffs, the UK’s Labour government appears ready to make significant concessions. Facing the risk of economic fallout, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration has reportedly signaled to Washington that it is open to revising the controversial and dangerous Online Safety Act — legislation critics have described as an aggressive censorship regime.
The Act, which gives UK regulators the power to fine tech companies for failing to remove vaguely defined “harmful content,” has been a major point of contention between the two allies and has become a major threat to free speech online. The Trump administration has been especially vocal in its opposition, viewing the law as an affront to free speech and a potential financial burden on US tech giants.
According to The Telegraph:
“Downing Street is willing to renegotiate elements of the Act in order to strike a trade deal, should it be raised by the US, The Telegraph understands. The law has been heavily criticized by free speech advocates and economists, who argue its broad provisions to tackle harmful online content could lead to excessive censorship and deter investment from American tech giants.”
The Online Safety Act arms UK media regulator Ofcom with sweeping new authority over social media platforms, enabling the imposition of multimillion-pound fines for failing to police content according to government directives. While supporters claim the law is necessary to protect users, critics argue that its vague wording and punitive approach encourage preemptive censorship — where platforms remove lawful content simply to avoid regulatory punishment.
President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has intensified scrutiny of the law. The president, who has been highly critical of social media censorship, has surrounded himself with influential voices in the tech world, including Elon Musk, whose platform, X, is already preparing to challenge Ofcom’s authority.
“Another source close to the Trump’s (sic) administration suggested the act was viewed as ‘Orwellian’ in the US and could become a flashpoint in negotiations. ‘To many people that are currently in power, they feel the United Kingdom has become a dystopian, Orwellian place where people have to keep silent about things that aren’t fashionable,’ they said. ‘The administration hate it [Online Safety Act]. Congress has been saying that [it is a concern] ever since it was enacted. Those in the administration are saying the exact same thing.’”
Musk has publicly condemned the Act, and with Ofcom set to gain new enforcement powers in March, tensions between US tech firms and the UK government are likely to escalate. The entrepreneur recently welcomed Trump’s presidency as a potential counterweight to the UK’s regulatory crackdown.
Free speech advocates on both sides of the Atlantic have long warned that Britain’s approach to online regulation represents a stark departure from the First Amendment protections enjoyed in the US. The Free Speech Union and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argue that the law’s restrictions on “harmful but legal” speech will lead to widespread content suppression, limiting open debate and investigative journalism.
Lord Young of Acton, the founder of the Free Speech Union, underscored the looming confrontation between UK regulators and US tech leaders:
“If that happens, Trump will side with his tech bros and tell Sir Keir that if he wants a trade deal, he’ll call off his dogs.”
Labour has previously doubled down on online regulation, with its election manifesto promising additional measures to “keep everyone safe online.” However, in the face of potential US trade repercussions, the government’s stance appears to be softening.
From Washington’s perspective, the Online Safety Act has become an obstacle to trade negotiations, raising concerns that UK regulatory overreach could deter American investment. Andrew Hale, a trade policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, confirmed that this issue has been a recurring theme in discussions with US officials.
“Every meeting I have to discuss trade policy with people either in the administration or Congress, they always raise that. They say, ‘This is a huge roadblock’.”
With Ofcom’s enforcement powers set to take effect soon, Britain faces a fundamental choice: cling to its stringent online censorship policies or prioritize economic cooperation with the US. The decision could shape the future of free speech in the UK for years to come.
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Censorship Industrial Complex
New House task force seeks to declassify 9/11 files, Epstein client list, JFK assassination, UFOs

From LifeSiteNews
The U.S. House Oversight Committee announced the creation of a “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets” that will seek to declassify 9/11 files, Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, UFOs, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and more.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, on Tuesday appointed Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida to lead the task force, which will also focus on declassifying files related to the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to the origins of COVID-19.
“This will no longer be a task force that makes bold promises only to fade into irrelevance or send strongly worded letters. This will be a relentless pursuit of truth and transparency, and we will not stop until Americans have the answers they deserve,” Luna said Tuesday.
Luna and Comer have already written to various government agencies requesting documents related to the above-mentioned federal secrets. Sources told Fox News that they sent letters to the Department of Defense and the CIA for 9/11 files; to the Justice Department for Epstein files; to the National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA for documents about the JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations; and to the CIA, State Department, and Department of Energy for documents concerning the origins of COVID.
Files pertaining to unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) and USOs (unidentified submerged objects) will also be investigated.
The creation of the task force follows President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the declassification of documents relating to the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK.
“If we are to endure and thrive as a nation, we must restore trust, trust through transparency. The American people must be trusted to think for themselves, to form their own judgments from the truth that they are entitled to know,” Luna said while announcing her role in the task force.
“We’ve been treated like children for too long and left in the dark by those we elected to serve us.”
Sources told Fox News that the task force has been authorized to operate for six months.
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