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Contempt for Press Freedoms: U S Officials Bar Tucker Carlson from Interviewing Putin


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2023 Oct 6, 7:34pm   580 views  11 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (61)   💰tip   ignore  

https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Galen_Carpenter/2023/10/02/contempt-for-press-freedoms-u-s-officials-bar-tucker-carlson-from-interviewing-putin/


by Ted Galen Carpenter
October 03, 2023

Tucker Carlson reports that the U.S. government prevented him from interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Carlson told the Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche that he had sought to arrange an interview with Putin, but U.S. officials blocked him. “I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, but the U.S. government prevented me from doing so. Think about [the implications],” Carlson told the newspaper on September 24. Worse, according to Carlson, no one in the U.S. news media supported his right as a journalist to report on the Russian leader’s views regarding the Ukraine conflict.

Such obstructionism reflects a growing contempt on the part of officials in the United States and other supposedly liberal democratic countries for freedom of the press. It is merely the latest episode in a lengthening parade of restrictions, ranging from petty to truly alarming. The highest priority targets are critics who dare condemn or even dispute the accounts that Western leaders put forth regarding key foreign policy objectives

European Union governments have been even more brazen than Washington in their efforts to impede critics. Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the EU banned the two most prominent Russian outlets, RT and Sputnik. The official rationale was that those organizations were Kremlin controlled and were disseminating “disinformation” regarding the war in Ukraine. EU officials even ordered the removal of RT and Sputnik material from search engines.

More than 300 million inhabitants of EU countries were thus deprived from accessing Russia’s views about the war or its causes. Conversely, EU authorities did not impose the slightest restrictions on the tsunami of propaganda coming out of Kyiv regarding the war. Such gross imbalance has been a transparent effort to rig public opinion on a major international issue.

U.S. officials have been somewhat more subtle in their efforts to squelch dissenting views, especially on Russia, but they have been bad enough. The FBI, the CIA, and other agencies have engaged in a two-front assault on freedom of the press. One method is to emulate the EU and take direct action against alternative news outlets and other dissenters. The other strategy, which has become increasingly pervasive over the past decade is to pressure or collude with social media platforms to harass, marginalize, or eliminate sources that Washington dislikes. Such censorship by proxy is both insidious and dangerous.

The FBI took a major step toward implementing the first approach in October 2017. FBI leaders created a new Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) in the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division. The FBI subsequently considered any effort by states designated by the Department of Defense as major adversaries (Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea) to influence American public opinion as a threat to U.S. national security. Targets for suppression were not confined to publications and outlets that were indisputably under the control of one of those hostile powers.

However, censorship by proxy has become by far the U.S. national security state’s preferred method. The U.S. national security apparatus has even actively assisted Volodymr Zelensky’s Ukrainian regime to undermine the constitutional rights of Americans. CNN noted a worrisome revelations in a July 2023 report from the House Judiciary Committee. “The committee says SBU [Ukraine’s top security agency] sent the FBI lists of social media accounts that allegedly ‘spread Russian disinformation,’ and that the FBI then ‘routinely relayed these lists to the relevant social media platforms, which distributed the information internally to their employees in charge of content moderation and enforcement.’”

In other words, the FBI served as a willing conduit and facilitator for Kyiv’s overseas censorship efforts. Moreover, U.S. officials did not make even a minimal effort to vet Kyiv’s allegations before pressuring social media companies to shut down the accounts of targeted organizations and individuals.

Revelations from the so-called Twitter files, confirm the extent of such ideological collusion between federal agencies and social media companies. Among other unhealthy aspects was that the FBI had paid Twitter $3.4 million. In a so-called fact-check, USA Today conceded that “the FBI flagged Twitter accounts the agency believed violated Twitter’s terms of service. Second, another document shows the FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million for Twitter’s processing of information requests the FBI made through the Stored Communications Act.” However, “fact-checker” Molly Stelino concluded that the FBI was not using Twitter for censorship purposes, insisting that “the $3.4 million is unrelated to the FBI flagging accounts.” Such an argument deserves an award for gullibility.

The extent of the government’s collusion campaign was even more apparent because Yoel Roth, the Twitter executive in charge of content moderation and members of his staff met weekly with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It is a safe bet that those meetings were not to discuss the weather. Such meetings also cast even more doubt on the allegedly benign nature of the FBI’s $3.4 million payment to Twitter for processing “information requests.” Yet even Roth apparently balked at some of the FBI’s more far-reaching demands. Roth contended that the list of alleged Russian disinformation offenders even included “‘a few accounts of American and Canadian journalists (e.g. [Grayzone’s] Aaron Mate),’ and said that Twitter would focus on rule violations and inauthentic behavior (i.e., bots).”

One interaction between the FBI and Facebook was as alarming as the collusion with Twitter. The FBI worked to discredit the New York Post’s blockbuster story on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg later reported that FBI officials had approached him with a warning that Russia was conducting a concerted disinformation campaign during the 2020 U.S. election cycle, just as the Kremlin did in 2016. It was hard to miss the government’s implication that the laptop probably was part of the latest disinformation effort, and that Facebook should take down posts or algorithmically throttle accounts contending that revelations contained in the files were genuine. Yet there was no evidence at the time or subsequently that the laptop involved Russian disinformation. The allegation further poisoned relations with Russia, though, as well as stifled debate on a crucial issue.

In an early September 2023 ruling, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Biden administration’s meetings with social media companies had violated the First Amendment. That is an encouraging development in the battle against censorship by proxy, but it is unlikely that agencies in the national security apparatus will abandon their efforts to curb dissent, especially on controversial issues related to Washington’s role in the world. Freedom of the press clearly is under siege even in supposedly liberal, democratic countries.


How is it not a gross violation of the First Amendment for the government to prohibit Tucker from interviewing Putin?

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1   Patrick   2023 Oct 6, 7:39pm  

https://weltwoche.ch/daily/the-u-s-government-stopped-me-from-interviewing-vladimir-putin-media-mega-star-tucker-carlson-criticizes-the-defunct-american-democracy-in-his-interview-with-weltwoche-2/


"The U.S. government stopped me” from interviewing Vladimir Putin: Media mega star Tucker Carlson criticizes the defunct American democracy in his interview with Weltwoche

“I tried to interview Vladimir Putin”, says Tucker Carlson in an exclusive interview with the Swiss weekly Weltwoche. But: “the US government stopped me”.

No media outlet, no politician, no public figure came to his defence, Carlson adds. Nobody said: “Wait a second. I may not like this guy, but he has a right to interview anyone he wants, and we have a right to hear what Putin says.”

Are we not allowed to hear his voice? “Because why?”, asks veteran newscaster, who scores record viewer ratings in the US.

Actually, it is the "job of the news media" to report from all perspectives about this war, that is a potential nuclear conflict between superpowers. But journalists “do exactly the opposite.”

Read the full interview with Tucker Carlson on the mainstream media’s manipulation machine, the disturbing state of the Biden family and his Post-Fox News Order – in the latest edition of Die Weltwoche.


https://weltwoche.ch/daily/theyre-all-afraid/


I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the US government stopped me. So, think about that for a minute. By the way, nobody defended me. I don't think there was anybody in the news media who said, “Wait a second. I may not like this guy, but he has a right to interview anyone he wants, and we have a right to hear what Putin says.” You're not allowed to hear Putin's voice. Because why? There was no vote on it. No one asked me. I'm 54 years old. I've paid my taxes and followed the law.
3   PeopleUnited   2023 Oct 6, 7:49pm  

Patrick says


I'm 54 years old. I've paid my taxes and followed the law.

Silly Tucker, paying taxes and following the law doesn’t give you the right to act on your conscience. Only God can give that right. But Satan, and his minions on this earth have been seeking to take your rights since they rebelled against God and fell under the curse. They even succeeded in getting all of human kind under the curse of sin as well. Thankfully Jesus provides a redemption. That’s what we should be focusing on, the rest of it, all of it: is a side show.
4   richwicks   2023 Oct 6, 8:19pm  

Hasn't anybody seen Oliver Stone's The Putin Interviews?

Putin has been extensively interviewed. Why is it important that Tucker Carlson do it? The information is already there. There's tons of speeches from Putin.

Remember, Putin is a politician, take anything he says with a grain of salt.
5   Patrick   2023 Oct 6, 10:09pm  

I don't care whether it's Tucker in particular, but I do care that the US government is blatantly violating the first amendment by forbidding him to do it.
6   richwicks   2023 Oct 6, 10:35pm  

Patrick says


I don't care whether it's Tucker in particular, but I do care that the US government is blatantly violating the first amendment by forbidding him to do it.


The government has been blatantly violating the first amendment for over 10 years within YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Look at the shit I write here, do you think I can write any of this on the "main platforms" without being censored? I've not been able to do it since 2010. I get shadowbanned. I used to post to Disqus and have my posts end up in "moderation", which never left it - but the site allowed to post pictures, so I would screen grab my browser, post it to some image site, and point out to the person I was talking with demonstrating that I broke no rules. They were all perplexed and surprised, to know we had political censorship.

The freakouts when they realized political censorship was a real thing, hilarious and it was going years before that. People don't believe it, we have a Constitution after all, RIGHT? Well, it's a goddamned piece of paper to wipe your ass with. It's not enforced. Getting people to recognize this is a real hurdle because to do it, you have to demonstrate there is censorship on a censored site. Took me a while to figure images could be displayed.

Most sites are totally shutdown - if you can't post pictures or links, kind of a lost cause. You can check if your message shows up in Tor on Brave. If you are VERY GENTLE in pointing out government lies, you can get away with it.
7   Ingrid   2023 Oct 7, 4:43am  

It already amazed me, that he could visit and interview the president of Hungary a while ago. Orban is considered an outsider in Europe. But his interview proved the Hungarian president to be well spoken and seemingly with good ideas for his country. Hungary and Croatia are the only European countries to question what is going on, all the rest sheep along with the globalists. There are a few govt people like Anderson in Germany who stand up but all the rest must be bribed to the nines. I have no other explanation for it (except of course, that all royalty is related and groomed by the WEF and that almost all governments have at least one but some several high-ups in the boat. Belgium royalty, prime minister, vice pr min, Netherlands royalty, prime minister, UK royalty, prime min, scandinavia same thing) I sure do hope he can get to interview Putin. Yes there is a lot of footage but Tucker is different.
8   DOGEWontAmountToShit   2023 Dec 8, 4:37pm  

Ingrid says

It already amazed me, that he could visit and interview the president of Hungary a while ago.


Why? Hungary is a NATO member.
9   WookieMan   2023 Dec 11, 4:52am  

Patrick says

I don't care whether it's Tucker in particular, but I do care that the US government is blatantly violating the first amendment by forbidding him to do it.

I don't follow Tucker, just know of him, but seems like a publicity stunt. You can go to Russia if they allow you in. The US government cannot stop you and has nothing to do with the situation. Once there you can interview whoever you want. I know people that have been in the last year. This is no different than people believing you were restricted from traveling during covid. You weren't. You just believed you were.

He could easily fly into Latvia or Lithuania and drive to Moscow to do an interview. The US would have zero control over that. Hence why I think it's a click bait stunt now that he's lost the guaranteed Fox money. He wants to build subs quickly and monetize his new solo career quickly. I don't blame him, but I don't think he's genuine by any measure. He likes money.

We all know translated interviews are legit (eye roll)... said no one ever. It would be a waste of time. He knows that and is playing it off like he's banned from going. That's a load of shit. He seems solid, but I call it as I see it. This is trying to get subscribers and ad revenue and pretend like he's a real journalist. He's not. He's a personality.
10   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2023 Dec 11, 5:27am  

WookieMan says

This is no different than people believing you were restricted from traveling during covid.

Could the unvaccinated enter countries that required proof of vax?
11   WookieMan   2023 Dec 11, 5:56am  

Al_Sharpton_for_President says

WookieMan says


This is no different than people believing you were restricted from traveling during covid.

Could the unvaccinated enter countries that required proof of vax?

I had no issues. Went to Mexico and the Dominican without the vax. USVI and PR though those are US territories. Sure I got tested. But I also got Covid in Mexico and came back home with no issues. There was a lot of misinformation which is why I trust little to nothing anymore.

People aren't willing to push boundaries and just believe the "rules" that are put out there. We just booked trips because they were mega cheap and just went. No issues. People need jobs. Life can't just stop. For some it did and that was sad they listened. I could get into Russia by the end of the week if I wanted. I don't think Putin would take an interview from me, but I could get there. Tucker is full of it on this in my opinion. And the little I've watched of him I like him. This is a stunt.

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