Physician Censored by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, but Why?

“NEVER FORGET OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 16, 2020) —An attorney representing one of “America’s Frontline Doctors,” a self-described group which spoke out several weeks ago on the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic, tweeted Sunday morning that his client, Dr. Simone Gold of Los Angeles, was silenced by Twitter for a seven-day period “for exercising her right of free speech to inform public of her views on treatment of Covid-19.”

During the doctors’ July 27 press conference and afterward, Gold strongly advocated for the early administration of hydroxychloroquine to combat the coronavirus, as did many of her colleagues outside the U.S. Supreme Court building that day.  The physicians’ referenced website was subsequently de-hosted, and Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also removed the video of the presser.

President Trump, too, has touted the drug’s reported positive effect on the virus, reporting in May that he himself had taken a ten-day course of the medication as a preventive measure for which he received much criticism from the media.  On July 29, a journalist at The Hill wrote that “America’s Frontline Doctors” made “false claims” during their presser about hydroxycloroquine’s ability to treat COVID-19.

In mid-June, the FDA revoked the Emergency Use Authorization it had issued in late March for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in the battle against COVID-19.  Its approval as an anti-malaria drug as well as to ease the symptoms of lupus has been in place since the 1950s.

A new website was established containing the video footage from the AFD presser as well as replication of the group’s agenda from its July 27-28 “White Coat Summit.”  The purpose of the gathering, the website states, was to “educate and inform” members of Congress and the public about the coronavirus.

On Saturday, the attorney for Gold, L. Lin Wood of Atlanta, tweeted the notice Gold received from Twitter as to the week-long suspension of her account:

On July 30, Gold revealed she had been fired by her employer, a hospital, and that she retained Wood to represent her.  Wood has famously represented Nicolas Sandmann, the Kentucky high-schooler who was maligned in the press after a Native American man approached him at a January 2019 Washington, DC pro-life rally beating a drum and alleged that Sandmann had disrespected him. Without verifying the details of the story, considering that the subject of the report was a minor, or showing complete footage of the encounter, multiple mainstream media outlets depicted Sandmann as the aggressor, catapulted the story to front-page news, and failed to issue retractions when more complete footage was finally released showing Nathan Phillips approaching Sandmann and not the opposite.

Several of the media outlets Wood sued for defamation on Sandmann’s behalf have settled with his client, who recently graduated from Covington Catholic High School.  Suits filed against other media giants such as ABC, NBC, The New York Times, CBS and others remain pending, Breitbart reported.

Wood has recently joined the legal team representing Carter Page, the former 2016 Trump-campaign adviser who was the subject of government surveillance for nearly a year based on what is now known to have been unverified information but which the FBI affirmed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) was “verified” on four separate occasions.

On Saturday, Gold tweeted, apparently before her account was shuttered:

On August 3, a columnist calling himself “a real front-line physician” treating coronavirus patients wrote in Arizona Central, in part:

For the past four months, I have been treating very sick patients diagnosed with COVID-19, struggling to breathe, some needing to be placed in medically induced comas and placed on life-support machines, and others not even surviving despite that last ditch intervention. I have been on the front lines as a hospital physician, using the latest strategies that scientists and doctors from around the world have discovered to combat this new virus. My colleagues and I risk our lives every day to help our patients and the community.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a now viral video spreading from a group of white-coat wearing individuals calling themselves “America’s Frontline Physicians,” questioning my and my colleague’s expertise, science, integrity and even our compassion in combating this pandemic. It is both a national embarrassment and also quite dangerous that misinformation such as this has been promulgated so widely throughout the country.

Danger lies in doubts spread by video

For those of you who have not seen the video, consider yourselves fortunate. But to summarize, the group claims that doctors around the country are withholding a cure for COVID-19. They cite hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc as cures, but these have been debunked as ineffective, hazardous or unproven.

Wood’s mantras are “#FightBack,” Speak truth,” and “BE FEARLESS.”  A descriptor he often uses is “#WorldOfTheBlocked.”

As The Post & Email reported Thursday, Facebook is censoring assertions that U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris is not eligible for the vice-presidency or presidency, citing third-party “fact-checkers” such as Politifact, USA Today and “leadstories.”

On Friday, reader Tom Pavich reported the same of his own Facebook post on the topic.  “I had posted an article from American thinker two days ago and it was censored yesterday,” [sic] he told us in an email with an accompanying photo of the censored comment.

In February, The Post & Email learned through an Associated Press article that YouTube, whose parent company is Google, instituted a policy to censor videos discussing “eligibility” for public office and “birtherism,” of which those doubting Harris’s and Barack Hussein Obama’s eligibility have been accused of promoting.

Donald Trump has been said to have led the “birther” movement arising from questions as to Obama’s constitutional eligibility for the presidency given his foreign-citizen father and claimed, but unproven, birth in Honolulu, HI in 1961.  According to the former detective and private investigator who carried out a five-year investigation into the “long-form” birth certificate image posted on the White House website in 2011 and found it to be fraudulent, the U.S. intelligence community is well aware that Obama was not born in the United States.

As a result of his investigation, Mike Zullo said on a radio program in April 2019, “We’ve also come to learn and understand from media executives that there actually are CIA employees embedded in media newsrooms. They’re not supposed to be doing that. The CIA’s charter is not to work inside the confines of the United States of America. They’re supposed to work outside, abroad.”

Earlier on Sunday, Wood tweeted references to “Operation Mockingbird,” a 1950s-era CIA project which introduced CIA-backed information into newsrooms with the intention of “influencing public opinion.”  In some instances, information has been prevented from reaching the public.  According to former Fox News journalist Adam Housley, a reliable source informed him that “U.S. intelligence agency personnel are present in every major news outlet.”

In response to a follower’s comment about CNN’s coverage of the “QAnon” phenomenon on a particular occasion, Wood responded Saturday: