The legacy media seem to have ho-hummed their way past a landmark Senate hearing on Biden administration censorship – what Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt calls “one of the biggest scandals in American history.”

“You wouldn’t know that by watching NBC Nightly News, that’s for sure,” Schmitt tells The Heartlander in an exclusive interview.

It’s an odd shrug of the shoulders from a news media that draws all of its nourishment from the First Amendment.

Schmitt’s opening remarks at the March 26 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, which he chairs, was appointment TV.

Indeed, Schmitt told the hearing Biden’s online censorship of conservative Americans was bigger than first thought – calling it “an even larger and more formidable censorship-industrial complex that spans from our nation across the Western world.

“The issue we are here to discuss extends far beyond the borders of the United States. It is a crisis that implicates all of Western civilization — a crisis that threatens to plunge much of what we once called the “free world” into darkness.

“Over the past decade, an alliance of activists, academics, journalists, Big Tech Companies, and federal bureaucrats designed a system to suppress and silence their critics. They did so in unprecedented ways, using novel tools and technologies of the 21st century. What they built was, in effect, a second state — a faceless system of power, not bound by the limits and liberties of our Constitution. …

“The victims of this assault were countless innocent Americans— from concerned parents at school board meetings, to traditional Catholics, to pro-life activists, to President Trump himself. …

“The faceless adversary in American politics today is the sprawling labyrinth of left-wing NGOs, nonprofits, foundations and activist groups — a shadow state that operates with collective purpose, even as its power is dispersed across a vast constellation of groups.”

Schmitt alleged in the hearing that those far-left groups promulgating mass censorship are the same ones perpetrating “mass migration, cultural Marxism, political riots [and] the criminal violence that consumes our inner cities.”

So, media, nothing to see here?

What gives?

‘A frightening alignment’ of leftists

“Well, they’re all on the same team,” Schmitt says. “You’ve got a frightening alignment of the left wing’s agenda, these NGOs, Democrat politicians and the mainstream legacy media. They’re all rooting for the same stuff. They’re globalists. They don’t believe in borders. They don’t believe in free speech. 

“Nonprofits were working on mass migration in the United States and in Europe. They’re working on censorship. And then the press will fact check, or have a ‘verify team’ go after some conservative that points it out, and call him an extremist and maybe try to get him thrown off the ballot. Or maybe say that they can’t run for office, or maybe even try to throw him in jail for the rest of his life. 

“So, all these folks are pretty well aligned – and part of the reason why Trump won, and why his tenure is so important, is we’ve got to bust that up.”

In the absence of meaningful news coverage, Schmitt says his subcommittee’s hearing was held to raise public awareness of the insidious and continuing nature of government/Big Tech censorship.

It’s a process that Schmitt began as Missouri attorney general, by filing the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit along with the state of Louisiana to stop the administration’s collusion with social media companies to silence conservatives.

The lawsuit ultimately was stalled when the U.S. Supreme Court oddly ruled the states don’t have legal standing in the matter.

But what the case did do was raise public awareness – and supply Schmitt and the other plaintiffs with troves of proof of the censorship scheme.

‘Nefarious and widespread network’

Awareness is still needed, as evidenced by the media’s collective yawn last week.

“Part of the process, sort of like with Missouri v. Biden, is further exposing this,” Schmitt tells The Heartlander. “In order to build momentum, I think people have to be aware of how nefarious and how widespread this network was – or is – that’s been created to silence speech. It’s been well-documented about the government’s role, Biden’s administration working with Big Tech giants. 

“And in the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, there were some NGOs, or some nonprofits, that we had talked about – Stanford University, University of Washington – that were working with [the Biden administration] to flag what they referred to as disinformation or misinformation. 

“But that network is sprawling, and it’s vast. That’s what the purpose of the hearing was, was [to] flesh that out a little bit more, to make people aware of it so that we can go after it. 

“USAID was the principal funder for a lot of these NGOs that were working to silence speech here and abroad. And as far as I’m concerned, those programs that work to censor Americans or people abroad should be gutted. 

“It’s one of the biggest grifts in Washington, D.C.  

“People in the Obama administration would then go to these nonprofits, get money from the Biden administration, line their pockets, hire their friends, do much harm to this country, and then they go back in the government with a new administration.  

“So, we’ve got to close that revolving door as well.”

How does Big Tech get off censoring?

Section 230 of the federal Communications Act protects internet providers – including social media companies – from being sued over the content that streams across their platforms. It essentially says they’re not the publishers of the content.

But if they’re not the publishers, how come they exercise the freedom of a publisher to censor content according to viewpoint – which they did to conservatives at the behest of the Biden administration.

It’s something that needs to be addressed, Schmitt says.

“Big Tech companies receive special legal protections, right? And so, it’s not like this is some marketplace where they’re being treated like a normal publisher. They’re supposed to be a platform – meaning they’re not supposed to be sifting through and editorializing about these things.

“They can have terms of service, that’s correct, for safety and things like that. But once they become an arbiter [of information] they’re now a publisher and can be sued. They would lose their Section 230 protections.

“I have legislation to make that clear, to say that if you’re engaged in censorship, you lose your Section 230 protections.”

And that’s just one front in the war on the “censorship-industrial complex.”

The seeds of today’s “labyrinth” of government and internet censorship were planted decades ago, Schmitt argues.

“It started in the ’90s with this political correctness movement. It’s more mature now; it’s not just on college campuses. They are hellbent on narrowing the bandwidth of what you can say and what you can hear and what you can think. 

“And that’s what we’re fighting against.”