State Attorney General Jeff Landry is supporting the arguments of a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-aligned group in its federal lawsuit accusing large media companies of conspiring to stamp out certain political viewpoints.
Landry’s office filed an amicus brief Aug. 30 in support of plaintiffs including Children’s Health Defense in a case filed in the Western District of Louisiana. The plaintiffs allege that Trusted News Initiative, a group that includes the Washington Post, Associated Press, British Broadcasting Corp., Reuters and major tech companies such as Facebook and Google, violated federal antitrust laws by working to sideline online news reports and thus deny market access to rival outlets, according to the original complaint filed in May.
“Louisiana writes as amicus curiae to support the plaintiffs, who have plausibly alleged that ‘members of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI) have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics,’” the Louisiana brief states.
The attorney general’s brief calls TNI members’ agreement to root out what they perceive to be online misinformation a “conspiracy,” resulting in a reduction in the amount of news available to consumers about subjects such as the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the efficacy of cloth masks at preventing the spread of COVID-19.
The defendants contend that the RFK Jr. group, Children’s Health Defense, and other plaintiffs should be precluded from filing an antitrust action because they have already filed a parallel lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly pressuring social media companies to take down content on their platforms.
“We dispute any allegation that Reuters violated any antitrust laws,” a Reuters spokesperson said in an email to the Louisiana Record. “Reuters is, and always has been, committed to reporting news fairly and accurately in the public interest, including about the global COVID-19 pandemic.”
Other viewpoints the plaintiffs say were suppressed by TNI involved topics such as COVID-19 treatments; the theory that COVID-19 was deliberately created at a lab in or near Wuhan, China; vaccine injuries; and government mandates/lockdowns.
“Louisiana residents … need a free press to receive information and make up their own minds about what is true and what is false,” Landry’s amicus brief says.
Instead of seeking monetary damages, the plaintiffs are asking the court to prohibit defendants from engaging in “social media censorship” in the future.