During a podcast appearance with Lex Fridman, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlined how during the pandemic the media engaged in an “organised conspiracy” by acting as “propaganda organs for the government agencies,” and acting to censor “anybody who dissented.”
Kennedy again spoke at length of the “insurmountable and mountainous and overwhelming” evidence that the CIA was involved in the murder of his uncle and his father, prompting Fridman to ask “What is the mechanism by which the CIA influences the narrative?”
“Through the press,” Kennedy responded, adding “Directly through key members — there are certain press organs that have been linked to the agency, the people who run those organs, things like the Daily Beast and Rolling Stone… have deep relationships with the intelligence community. Salon, Daily Kos.”
He continued, “I actually think the entire field of journalism has really shamed itself in recent years. It has become, the principal newspapers in this country, and the television stations, and the legacy media, have abandoned their tradition… they believed that the function of journalists was to maintain this posture of fierce skepticism toward any aggregation of power, including government authority… their job was to speak truth to power and be guardians of the first amendment right to free expression.”
“But if you look at what happened during the pandemic, it was the inverse of that kind of journalism,” RFK Jr. further urged, adding “the major press organs in this country… were broadcasting propaganda, they became propaganda organs for the government agencies. They were actually censoring the speech of anybody who dissented, of the powerless.”
“In fact, it was an organized conspiracy. The name of it was the Trusted News Initiative,” Kennedy noted, adding “Some of the major press organizations in our country signed onto it. They agreed not to print stories or facts that departed from government orthodoxy.”