Post #10550

A U.S. congressional judiciary committee has accused the European Commission and Ireland’s media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, of collaborating with politically biased fact-checkers and NGOs in what it describes as a campaign of election interference ahead of the last two Irish elections. The committee alleges that the Irish media regulator sought “to censor true information and political speech” on polarizing topics such as the Covid-19 pandemic, mass migration, and transgender issues. These claims are detailed in a report titled 'The Foreign Censorship Threat, Part II: Europe’s Decade-Long Campaign to Censor the Global Internet and How It Harms American Speech in the United States'. The document was released while Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Helen McEntee, is in Washington this week for political meetings. The report emphasizes that most major technology companies have their European headquarters in Dublin, making Irish electoral outcomes particularly consequential for the European Commission’s digital policy agenda and the enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA). It adds: “For the same reason, Ireland’s media regulator, the Coimisiún na Meán, is one of the most powerful in the world.” Similarly, the report accuses the European Commission of activating a censorship apparatus known as a “rapid response system” ahead of several recent European elections under the auspices of the Disinformation Code and the DSA Election Guidelines: "European Commission-approved fact-checkers are given the ability to make priority censorship requests in the weeks before and after major elections." "These so-called fact-checkers are invariably leftwing and pro-censorship—anything but politically neutral. Moreover, the requirement that these fact-checkers be approved by the European Commission creates a clear structural incentive for the participants to censor Euroskeptic opinion and content that undermines the Commission’s preferred political narratives." 🔗archive.ph