OPINION:’ Censorship’ of student papers may occur under Trump, doctor says
According to Professor Paul Johnson at the University of Pittsburgh, the planet has now come to an end and it is only going to get worse.
The political connections professor and author of an essay about” Donald Trump’s Populism” says that the land is currently “undemocratic”.
” Johnson suggested the U. S. is moving towards an autocratic state. Structurally, he argues that there are already methods that the state is’ unfair,’ through warping, careful elections and social appointments”, The Pitt News reported, based on its meeting with him.
” The Supreme Court is not elected, the Senate is not a popularly elected body”, Johnson ( pictured ) told the student newspaper. ” And then Trump is technically term limited, although we’ll see … there’s not really a check on him]and his power, either ]”.
In other words, we’ve somehow been able to survive 200 years under our present “undemocratic” system of government.
The professor of political communications even stated to the student newspaper that he anticipates more “censorship” to occur.
” Things are pretty bleak out it’: Media repression under the Trump management”, the headline says.
Johnson predicts there will be more repression as other wealthy individuals, apparently following Elon Musk, purchase up social media platforms and next halt debate about” DEI” or the government’s push for repression.
” Yeah, either some gazillionaire billionaire comes in and says’ I want to get your program for too much money,’ or the government sort of decides that while there’s a little too far DEI happening in these places, and, using whatever kind of Jerry skewed logic, shuts them down”, Johnson said.
Of course, censorship of conservative and common sense views, like that there are two genders, happened censorship-regime-new-report” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>for years by Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In some instances, the Biden administration pushed for censorship and funded research on how to censor voices. What Johnson, who once said “deplatforming works“, means is that left-wing voices will be shut down.
On the contrary, President Trump’s administration has opened up press access to both conservative and news outlets. For example, the Pentagon has given , Huffington Post office space and the White House has welcomed , Axios into the White House briefing room. By contrast, President Joe Biden’s press team yanked regular access to the White House from 440 journalists.
He anticipates that Trump might even censor student newspapers. He made this claim because Trump is attempting to reduce university DEI spending. ” Johnson predicts universities that receive federal funding will see similar pressure against criticizing Trump’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies”, the student newspaper reported. He anticipates that the government will censor news outlets that conflict with its political agenda, including those published by the mainstream media and student newspapers.
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Another Pitt professor agrees about censorship concerns and points to X’s alleged dominance of center-right voices as proof.
According to Professor Samuel Wooley, “people who know how to manipulate algorithms can get their content to be prioritized by social media and shown to us in trends, on the” for you page,” it’s an unfair playing field,” in reference to X.
Johnson has a way to get around the algorithms, which is to join left-wing Bluesky. That’s the kind of place where you can curate a feed and actually have a say in how it looks, Johnson said. ” It’s a kind of choice that X doesn’t give you these days or Facebook doesn’t give you these days …Things are pretty grim out there”, he said.
I did not give a talk about” the year of the angry white male,” as Johnson did, but it seems to me that urging people to leave X and join a left-wing social media site only serves to aggravate conservative dominance on the platform while provoking liberals even more into an echo chamber.
If conservatives are better and more active at using X or are willing to spend the money to increase their content, it isn’t censorship. Liberal professors who criticize Trump’s censorship are also free to worry because they will always have sympathetic student newspapers and Bill Gates’ The Conversation to offer their ominous warnings about the president.
MORE: Check out the news College Fix ‘ Restore the Media ‘ series
IMAGE: University of Pittsburgh
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