‘Banned and Blacklisted’ Scientists Vindicated Over COVID Era Censorship [WATCH]

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Wednesday that a newly released letter from Google represents “vindication” for many individuals who were banned or blacklisted over their views on COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

The letter, dated September 23, was sent by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to the House Judiciary Committee.

In it, the company acknowledged that it had engaged in removing content and suspending accounts based on viewpoints regarding the pandemic and the election.

Turley told Fox News’ America’s Newsroom that the disclosure showed just how far-reaching the censorship was during the Biden-Harris administration.

“You had this coordination between the government, corporations, academia and the media to censor people with opposing views and it came at a great cost, not just to free speech, but in Covid, we never had the debate that other countries had,” Turley said in the interview with co-host Bill Hemmer.

“Many of our allies did not shut down their schools and they have not experienced the psychological and developmental problems that we have experienced and that’s because platforms like Google and YouTube and Facebook, these scientists were barred, they were banned and blacklisted.”

Turley pointed to the experience of scientists connected with the Great Barrington Declaration, who advocated against widespread lockdowns in favor of “focused protection” for the most vulnerable.

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The declaration, authored in October 2020 by Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, presented an alternative to government-enforced closures.

“Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, who were scientists that raised opposing views, were at a speech of mine at the University of Chicago over a year ago and they have been vindicated in many respects on the stuff that they wanted to get out to the public but were prevented from doing so,” Turley said.

The professor emphasized that the suppression of dissenting voices had long-term consequences, particularly when it came to education policies during the pandemic.

He argued that Americans were deprived of meaningful scientific debate at a time when many other nations took different approaches.

Facebook has since shifted away from its earlier moderation systems, announcing that it would replace that process with a “community notes” model, allowing broader input on disputed information.

Turley noted that the purchase of Twitter by Tesla CEO Elon Musk also marked a turning point in the debate over free speech online.

Musk has positioned the platform, now known as X, as a forum more open to competing viewpoints.

Despite changes among U.S. platforms, Turley warned that censorship pressures remain, particularly from the European Union, which has pushed stricter online speech regulations.

He said the Alphabet letter to Congress underlined how intertwined government and corporate actions had become in limiting speech during recent years.

Turley concluded that the release of the letter was a significant step in confirming what many critics of social media platforms had long claimed — that voices challenging the dominant narratives on COVID-19 policies and the 2020 election were deliberately silenced.

He described the acknowledgment as overdue validation for scientists, academics, and commentators whose work had been suppressed.

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