Federalist Co-founder and Publisher Ben Domenech said on Fox News’ “MediaBuzz” Sunday that conservatives have been warning about the kind of online censorship the website faced last week for years after Google tried to demonetize the online magazine based on reports from a left-wing reporter.
“We’ve been warning for years about the kind of silencing and de-platforming efforts that we’ve seen happen in American academia,” Domenech said. “Now as expected, that has migrated into the halls of the most powerful media corporations and in the case of Google, the most powerful company in the world.”
Last week, NBC News reported that Google banned the right-leaning website from profiting off its search engine ads after the network’s “Verification Unit” colluded with a left-wing British think tank to claim Federalist reporting violated Google’s terms of service. The reporting in question, while still publicly unknown, likely centers on a piece from Federalist Political Editor John Davidson exposing the legacy media’s deceptive coverage of the riots erupting in cities across the country.
Following NBC’s initial report however, Google released a statement debunking the network’s claims, noting that while The Federalist had not been demonetized, the California tech giant was threatening to sanction the website based on content in its comments sections and not its published commentary.
“I think that we’re going to see a real reaction from government and this was a warning shot for everybody who has views contrary into the existing corporate media narrative,” Domenech said.
