Secretary of State Tony Blinken this week told a gathering of Jewish leaders that he asked the Qatari government to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement” during a meeting with the Emirs earlier this month, Axios reports, explaining that this much more about the state-owned outlet’s Arabic-language programming than the English side of it.
The sources told Axios that Blinken didn’t mention any specific examples of Hamas-sympathetic coverage. Such details are almost beside the point when you look at it alongside the American right wing’s multi-year meltdown over the US government contacting social media companies with content moderation requests about election and COVID disinformation, especially with that demented fucking lawsuit from Missouri and Louisiana now on the Supreme Court’s docket.
Call us cynical, but we don’t expect Jim Jordan to subpoena Blinken demanding answers on why he “censored the free speech” of an outlet that certainly counts American citizens among its audience.