DOJ Backs Children’s Health Defense in Lawsuit Targeting Media’s COVID Collusion
The argument in this case is that poorly-named Trusted News Initiative suppressed competition in the marketplace of ideas.
Legal Insurrection readers can vividly recall the mainstream media’s smearing of everything that went against the preferred narrative on the COVID pandemic as “misinformation.”
- The press deemed assertions that the virus could have been released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as disinformation.
- Journalists pushed the 6-foot social distancing and masking nonsense, despite the fact that there was no basis in science.
- The media smeared credible and professional epidemiologists and medical experts who challenged the lockdown policies as “deniers“.
- When Elon Musk acquired Twitter, the “Twitter Files” emerged, revealing how government entities colluded with Stanford’s Vitality Project to identify and ban challenges to their narratives on social media.
I will simply point out that the facts deemed “misinformation” by the elite media and its “experts” turned out to be true and accurate.
And the above is just a small sample of the societal-level damage caused by the COVID polices, especially as prolonged by Dr. Deborah Birx and the Biden administration.
To ensure the media was unable to conduct another campaign to silence valid criticisms of science policy again, back in early 2023, The Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit organization established by now Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed an antitrust lawsuit against The Washington Post, the BBC, the Associated Press, and Reuters.
Now the Justice Department has issued a statement supporting CHD, urging the federal court to acknowledge that restricting competition among viewpoints can be a valid basis for antitrust action.
The government doesn’t take a stance on the merits of the facts in this particular case, but says it’s important for the court to recognize that the “the Sherman Act protects all forms of competition, including competition in information quality.”
…The issue was a collaboration between news outlets and tech platforms called the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), which works to flag “high risk disinformation” and share best practices about how to address it. CHD and several online publishers allege they “lost millions of dollars in revenue” by being demonetized, downranked, or otherwise restricted on “platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.”
While web platforms have a First Amendment right to not publish speech they wish to avoid, CHD claims the TNI amounts to a coordinated effort to violate antitrust laws in “the US online market for COVID news and the U.S. online market for political news” by disadvantaging the organization and its co-plaintiffs. The antitrust lawsuit is filed solely against the initiative’s news publishers, which CHD complains flagged covid-related posts …
THIS IS HUGE! DOJ filed a statement of interest in case alleging Big Tech and major news organizations colluded to suppress dissenting COVID-19 viewpoints.
The lawsuit alleges that the Washington Post, BBC, AP, and Reuters colluded with one another and with the large digital… pic.twitter.com/SarttwGi84
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 11, 2025
The argument in this case is that poorly-named Trusted News Initiative suppressed competition in the marketplace of ideas.
CHD alleges that TNI’s restrictions are unreasonable not only because they “collusively reduce output” and “lower product quality”—conventional indicators of illegal collusive behavior—but because “they suppress competition in the marketplace of ideas.” Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division is running with CHD’s argument.
Slater said that the “Antitrust Division will always defend the principle that the antitrust laws protect free markets, including the marketplace of ideas,” in a press release. In the department’s statement of interest, Slater references the majority opinion from U.S. v. Associated Press (1945) to argue that “right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection.”
The DOJ filing was a reminder to the court of the very nature of Sherman Act protections, as clearly some of our judges apparently need remedial lessons on such things.
Although concerted activity can have procompetitive benefits, it “inherently is fraught with anticompetitive risk” because it “deprives the marketplace of the independent centers of decisionmaking that competition assumes and demands.” Copperweld Corp. v. Indep. Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752, 768-69 (1984). When concerted action is among competitors, it presents heightened risks. See Arizona v. Maricopa Cnty. Med. Soc’y, 457 U.S. 332, 348 n.18 (1982) (“horizontal restraints are generally less defensible than vertical restraints”).
Courts, therefore, should exercise care when analyzing claims of concerted action among competitors to ensure that the Sherman Act’s goal of protecting competition throughout the U.S. economy is advanced.
Accordingly, when rival news publishers come together and conduct aspects of their news businesses jointly, that is concerted action subject to Section 1 scrutiny.
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Comments
if the media doesnt work for the government then why can they NOT CHOOSE TO VOICE OPINIONS OR FACTS THAT DIFFER D=FROM THEIRS?
sure we dont like it
but if they are not run by the government and THEY SHOUDLNT BE
then as long as they dont change wording etc etc BUT CHOSE NOT TO RUN COUNTERING OPINIONS/FACTS
as long as the marketplace ALLOWS any and all opinions to be broadcast
^^^which is why no laws ORRRRR REGULATIONS should even exist^^^ preventing that
so cnn nyt mslsd etc etc say the same lie russiagate
but foxnews says that there is no trump russia collusion
and we know the who anti trust thing is bsssss
the government uses that as part of their shakedown of companies to “do it the governments way” or else
if li puts out the product and gains 95% of alllll readership in the usa
why should the government have a right to claim anti trust?
they dont /should not
correction:
and we know the whole anti trust thing is bsss
No they ain’t just bs. Anti trust serves a good purpose in preventing crony capitalism, collusion, over concentration of market share and anti competitive practices. Used correctly (and IMO we haven’t used it nearly enough in the past 3 decades) it boosts competition and encourages innovation and entrepreneurs. Personally I’d have a more mechanical automatic trigger for its use to take politics and cronyism out of the decision to invoke anti trust enforcement actions.
no such thing as crony capitalism
once you leave the arena of capitalism ..the selling /buying of goods services and backed up by the justice system should disputes arise
you enter socialism
nothing is *needed* in this context to “boost” capitalism
the need/want to make money…ambition etc is the boost
extra help from the government is exactly what is wrong with the rino pov
Are you making the case that crony capitalism doesn’t presently exist or that it does exist but isn’t true capitalism? If the latter then part of fixing it is govt anti trust enforcement and IMO private legal actions to bring the guilty to account. Grant individuals the right to act as private AG to bring enforcement actions if you want govt out of it.
Remember that the ‘engine’ of capitalism is a healthy desire to make $ in a legal and hopefully ethical open market competition, put more simply ‘greed’. Without guard rails people, being flawed, will sometimes seek to maximize their gains in unlawful or unethical ways.
Extra help? Sure let’s get rid of govt in business …. but who’s gonna fill the gov’t contracts? If it isn’t private companies then that means bigger govt, more govt employees to perform those functions.
What about the advantage gained by a big business with armies of lobbyists to pressure Congress or the Executive about delaying or deferring workplace immigration enforcement at Farms and Hospitality industries? If govt doesn’t enforce the law then the business acting unlawfully gain an unfair competitive advantage.
to: commochief post 7:31 pm
again..after you go outside the bounds of capitalism ..you can call it what you want but its no longer capitalism
“without guardrails”
yes,, and those guardrails are the law…not regs ,,but laws that are enforced.
which when not enforced we get where people can say things like “crony” capitalism..so that they can hold something over the beauty that is capitalism
businesses fill the government contracts but that doesnt mean the gov should have a legal right to dictate how the business is run etc UNLESS the business breaks a law
lobbyists>>so what..let business pay those people huge salaries and we indict any bribe givers AND ANY bribe takers
When gov enforces the law no one gets an advantage EXCEPT those that are following the law
destroycommunism,
Sign me up. What you described seems ideal to me, basically it is Galt’s Gulch. As you know we don’t live there. Our system isn’t anywhere close to that ideal of ethical capitalism without much if any regulation where the courts are used primarily to enforce private consensual contracts.
Instead we live in the real world where the rich, the powerful and the connected have always had more influence and are not shy about using it craft laws that benefit them, to help determine which person is appointed to Executive Branch positions in charge of enforcement.
It’s human nature to do so. I believe it was Adams who said ‘if men were angels we wouldn’t need gov’t’.
I am about as libertarian as one can realistically be. I believe taxation is theft and that big govt is a bad idea. What I am pragmatic about is applying lessons of history and human nature to set simple,.clear laws and consistently enforce them. Some of them should be anti trust, otherwise you’d eventually have a situation where one giant corporation owns everything and is more powerful than any gov’t ….which means any ‘rights’ you believe you should hold won’t mean very much.
Turning a blind eye to social problems created by naked capitalism or worse crony capitalism is not gonna work long term. That’s partly how that nutty Marxist Mamdani
got so much support. The center/right populist movement isn’t opposed to common sense regulation that actually reduces real harm to consumers and helps our workers compete. Ignore all the economic issues created over the past 35 -50 years by the big corporate suits that hollowed out our domestic manufacturing and destroyed the middle class and go back to losing elections.
Rent control is one crony capitalism fiasco. Allowing financiers to buy up residential real estate (single family homes) using cheap money created by Fed Reserve that the large corporations had access to the capital to borrow took milky of homes off the market. Now they are for rent. Combined with another crony capitalism fiasco of NIMBY zoning and goofy bureaucracy dragging out permits means new construction is nil in many places.
Look at LA and the aftermath of the fires for an example of this in action.
FWIW the ‘rinos’ are largely believers and supporters of corporatism. They oppose any interference with the ability to make profits. Sure they’ll back increased regulation which helps them gain a competitive advantage over smaller players but not regs, like antitrust, which level the playing field itself.
That’s who you are aligning yourself with the rinos who unreservedly back corporatism and in so doing sold out the Nation.
commoch
re:9:51 pm post
you said“the rich have more influence”
no they do not
the fear of the uprising of the poor etc is a detriment to wealth
(another reason why trump won..WEALTHY DEMS had to face that they too could no longer just step over bodies and that their families were also at risk and no limo could skirt them away safely
we do agree that men are not angels
that doesnt mean laws have to be unfair or written as fair but adjudicated unfairly
rent control is socialism pure capitalism
no capitalism involved..period
you said: social problems created by naked capitalism
huh?
capitalism allows for those of us that want to help to do so without gov interference aka skimming off the top
fwiw…we are running out of space to continue this discussion
I have no ego involved here so if you want the last word on this page go ahead
take care
Opinions are allowed to differ. Facts aren’t.
When all the “facts” you print are wrong, that’s fraud.
When all the “facts” everybody prints are the same wrong facts because they colluded, that’s conspiracy.
Anti-trust laws simply deal with that particular flavor of conspiracy.
agree and thats why I posted that
OK. I frankly am having trouble following what you mean in your comments on this topic. Like crony capitalism, which — yes, isn’t capitalism, but is called that to make a point, same as “voting from the roofs” isn’t really voting.
As Biden paraphrased Reagan, “Facts are stupid things.”
No paraphrase, Reagan really made that blooper.
it’s fraud only if the media outlets knew what they were espousing was false
I have to operate on the level of “knew or should have known.”
Also the level of “reckless disregard for.”
So do they.
I beg to differ. Facts are bits of information generally agreed upon, but are not Truth. Facts can be long established and widely regarded as reliable, but they are not Truth.
Sorry — not up for solving “what is truth” here today.
“DOJ Backs Children’s Health Defense”
And here we see the genius of the one-two punch that Trump made possible by naming RFKJ to HHS.
these clowns are manipulating pharma companies /prices which goes right to the eurotrash way
of allowing the government to decide what meds are even allowed into the market
That’s not new at all. The Federal govt has long had the power to ‘decide what meds are even allowed into the market’. That’s what the FDA is supposed to do; review the product and determine whether to grant or withhold approval to ‘enter the market’.
not decide via safety but market driven
under socialism gov decides whats *important* to spend the money on
Every govt decides what’s important to spend $ on. Though in the US we.have a $37 Trillion dent increasing at roughly another
$1 Trillion every 100 days. So it isn’t as if we’re doing a good job of setting priorities and using any spending restraint/discipline to.stick to a revenue based budget spending limit.
The price issue here is not about the govt telling Pharma to set a particular price but rather the gov’t telling Pharma the US market won’t be the saps who pay higher prices while EU and other Nations pay far less. The price the govt is willing to pay will the same price the Pharma companies were willing to accept from the EU and other Nations.
to : commochief
7:39 pm post
???
Why is the USA GOVERNMENT paying anything ???(outside of a military budget)
The EU charges less b/c
a) the usa subsudizies them
b) and once again,,,the eu government (and now the usa gov) starts deciding which drugs are *worthy* of being made or not as opposed to the free market
a person/people can have diseases etc that arent considered mainstream
also as an added bonus”benefit”
wait times at doctor offices hospitals increase as theat all loving government takes over there too
You do know that the largest expenditure of the US Gov’t is health care? That the US govt sets a base payment rate for the rest of the healthcare market via the published reimbursement rate for VA. Tricare (military) and Medicare/Medicaid?
The issue here isn’t SHOULD the govt be involved in healthcare. That’s already been decided. If you want to get the govt OUT of healthcare …sure man go for it, go build a majority coalition of voters through enough election cycles to get a working majority of Congress both HoR and Senate plus a President to pass and the legislation needed to get end Medicare/Medicaid/CHIPS and every other health program but the VA and Tricare.
Socialism is bad. We agree. Let’s deport the 25-30 million illegal aliens. Maybe they will bring 2x as many or more family members with them back where they came from…that would clear out the waiting rooms.
The problem is your desire for corporatism runs counter to that. The corporatist rinos wanted the cheap labor imported to suppress domestic labor costs. That’s why wages have been on a 50 year decline and the middle class has been squeezed to near elimination compared to just a couple generations ago.
Go to world meters and click on each state and look at deaths by time line.
for most every state, more deaths occured after the introduction of the vaccine. ( the level of deaths in each wave). With the exception of a few states (CA, NY, NJ which are states the killed off a lot of elderly early), almost all the states had near equal deaths in the Nov2021-jan 2022 wave.
Gotta wonder if the vaccine actually did reduce deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
When is the press not the press but an organization structured to collude with a political party and both push preferred narratives while slamming alternatives as disinformation. Is said entity subject to the first amendment right of free press? Is such an entity entitled to the generous libel protections afforded to actual press entities? Does such an entity participate in actionable conspiracies if it colludes with like minded entities?
The government say yes, there exists a marketplace for information and that collusion to squelch information from competitors is every bit as illegal as it would be for businesses dealing with tangible products to collude to sideline competitors.
Sigh. This again. The freedom of the press is the right of every person to publish whatever he likes. It is not a privilege or special status for the news industry. Everyone has the freedom of the press, including but not limited to members of the news industry. There is no need to be a “press entity”, just a legal person with rights. “Press entities” have no special rights that everyone else doesn’t also have.
…he says, until he tries to enter the official venue without a press pass.
It is true enough in theory. Though in fairness the guild of the corporate press/media would definitely argue that they are the only ‘real journalists’ worthy of credentials as officially recognized press. See the outrage with the WH briefing press pool and changes this year bringing in alternative media members.
I don’t think you or I could show up to the WH and demand entry to the daily briefing as ‘members of the press’ waving a pocket Constitution and pointing to 1A and telling them the 14A equal protection requires them to let us in. We’d get locked up instead.
That’s entirely up to each venue’s owners or management. They have no obligation to allow anyone in, so they can choose whom to let in. If they choose to set up a pass system they can hand them out on whatever basis they like.
Nothing in the 1A or the 14A gives anyone a right to enter the White House. The White House has chosen to implement a system of press passes, and has established a set of criteria of its own choosing to decide who gets those passes. It can alter or abolish that system any time it likes.
See the decision in the Jim Acosta case about 7 years ago. The judge practically drew the White House a road map for how to get rid of Acosta, but they decided it was too much trouble. If they couldn’t pull his pass on five minutes’ notice they’d just let him keep it after all.
Rather than call this “the marketplace of ideas,” I think it’s better labeled “the marketplace of information,” in which information of varying quality and reliability vie against each other for attention, with the hope that competition will result prosperity for the sources of the best and most reliable information. This would not bode well for sources of worse and less reliable information. No wonder elements of establishment media attempted to block certain sources of certain information.