Norway State Media Behind Facebook Censorship Of Seymour Hersh Over Nord Stream Explosion

Were the former CIA and NATO officials at Facebook involved?

Michael Shellenberger

Apr 19, 2023

Over the last several months, there has been a major debate over who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, which took natural gas from Russia to Western Europe. Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claims that the U.S. blew it up with the help of the Norway government. Others say Hersch’s story is wrong. It has been a fascinating debate.

But instead of allowing people to make up their own minds, Facebook has decided to take a side. It is censoring Hersch’s article, as the above video, made around 3:30 pm PT, shows. “We don’t think we can make ourselves the arbiter of the truth” said a Facebook executive just a few years ago. And yet that’s what they’re doing.

Some amount of censorship, or “content moderation,” is inevitable. The vast majority of Americans would support many forms of content moderation. But censoring a debate over who blew up a pipeline does not meet the threshold of needing to be censored. And instead of explaining, Facebook sends readers to an article in Norwegian by its Norwegian fact-checker, Faktisk, which is run by a Norwegian journalist.

In other words, Facebook has decided that a Norwegian journalist is right and Hersh is wrong. And maybe Hersh is wrong. Maybe the Norwegian journalist is right. Whatever the case, it should not be up to Facebook to decide. It’s a debate that should proceed without Facebook’s intervention.

What’s more, Hersh is infinitely more independent than Facebook’s Norwegian fact-checker. The fact-checking organization is a partnership with a Norwegian government-owned media company, NRK, which has a direct self-interest in censoring the story.

READ MORE