Loading ...Breaking: Landmark Lawsuit Slaps Legacy Media With Antitrust, First Amendment Claims for Censoring COVID-Related Content
A lawsuit filed today by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and multiple other plaintiffs, alleges the Trusted News Initiative, a self-described “industry partnership” launched in March 2020 by several of the world’s largest news organizations, partnered with Big Tech firms to collectively censor online news.
Great Time to be a Lawyer ….eh ?
Feels like half the GDP is now legal fees 🙂
The complaint frames this as a antitrust case. See point 1. They mention Sherman.
But as someone familiar with antitrust law, I see little evidence they hired anyone to draft this complaint with antitrust background. They probably should have referenced Clayton not Sherman, as this is a private action not government driven via DOJ or FTC.
The TNI is composed of big media companies. They sell eyeballs to advertisers. That is the “relevant market” (technical term). The complaint sees otherwise. They see “political news” or “covid news”. These lawyers appear clueless.
To advance the case, they would need to specify actions the consortium took to deny petitioners access to advertisers. Did the filing provide instances of that? Examples might be similar to how companies recently pulled advertising from Twitter. WAS THAT A COORDINATED EFFORT? Where is the evidence? That sort of thing.