A lawsuit filed today by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and multiple other plaintiffs, alleges the Trusted News Initiative, a self-described “industry partnership” launched in March 2020 by several of the world’s largest news organisations, partnered with Big Tech firms to collectively censor online news.

In a live interview on Tuesday evening on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, chairman and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), announced that he and several other plaintiffs had filed a ground-breaking novel lawsuit making antitrust and constitutional claims against legacy media outlets.

The lawsuit targets the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a self-described “industry partnership” launched in March 2020 by several of the world’s largest news organisations, including the BBC, The Associated Press (AP), Reuters and The Washington Post – all of which are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Filed on Tuesday January 10 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas-Amarillo Division, the lawsuit alleges these outlets partnered with several Big Tech firms to “collectively censor online news,” including stories about Covid-19 and the 2020 US presidential election that were not aligned with official narratives regarding those issues.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include CHD, Kennedy, Creative Destruction Media, Trial Site News, Ty and Charlene Bollinger (founders of The Truth About Cancer and The Truth About Vaccines), independent journalist Ben Swann, Erin Elizabeth Finn (publisher of Health Nut News), Jim Hoft (founder of The Gateway Pundit), Dr Joseph Mercola and Ben Tapper, a chiropractor.

All of the plaintiffs allege they were censored, banned, de-platformed, shadow banned or otherwise penalised by the Big Tech firms partnering with the TNI, because the views and content they published were deemed “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

This resulted in a major loss of visibility and revenue for the plaintiffs. Legacy news organisations are publishers of original news content and include the defendants named in the lawsuit.

“By contrast,” the lawsuit states, “the TNI’s Big Tech members – Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft – are first and foremost Internet companies, each of which is, owns or controls one or more behemoth Internet platforms, including social media platforms and search engines.”

“Core partners” of the TNI include the AP, Agence France Press, the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta, Microsoft, Reuters, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter and The Washington Post.

The lawsuit further alleges that Big Tech firms, having partnered with the TNI, based their decisions on determinations jointly made by TNI, which touted its “early warning system” by which each partner organisation is “warned” about an individual or outlet that is disseminating purported “misinformation.”

The TNI’s legacy media and Big Tech firms then acted in concert – described in legal terms as a “group boycott” – to remove such voices and perspectives from their platforms. This forms the basis of the lawsuit’s antitrust and First Amendment claims.

Remarking on the lawsuit, Kennedy told The Defender, “My uncle, President Kennedy, and my father, the attorney general, sought to prosecute antitrust laws that are still on the nation’s books, with vigour. As private enforcers of those laws, we are confident that the federal court in Texas will vindicate our bedrock freedom to compete with legacy media in the marketplace of ideas.”

Mary Holland, CHD president and general counsel, told The Defender, “I’m glad that CHD is bringing this case. We are hopeful we will get a fair hearing and I’m glad that we are together with other organizations that have also been harmed by these corporate and governmental censorship policies.

“To have a free society, you have to have free speech, you have to have a diversity of views. We don’t have the same views as all of the other plaintiffs by far…but we want to protect the marketplace of ideas. If in fact the government and the corporations they collaborate with can engage in censorship and propaganda nonstop, and there are no alternative voices, democracy is dead.”

Charlene Bollinger similarly remarked on the importance of preserving free speech. She said: “This lawsuit is about preserving our free speech rights as Americans and holding those involved in violating antitrust laws accountable, like the TNI.

“My husband and I remain steadfast in our commitment to highlighting the well-documented risks of Covid-19 vaccines and the myriad of dangers to those who are not informed by their healthcare providers of the side effects of harsh pharmaceutical treatments for life-threatening illnesses.”

Mercola, in turn, focused on collusion between government agencies, media and Big Tech. He said: “These are the twin evils of our day. Platforms partner with the alphabet soup of federal agencies to censor speech. Those same platforms and legacy media outlets conspire to boycott stories that don’t fit an official narrative about Covid and many other topics.

“Our nation’s founding fathers would be appalled and resolute in defence of maintaining an informed citizenry.”

Alleging per se and “rule of reason” violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act on the basis of direct and circumstantial evidence of horizontal agreement and economic collusion among the defendants and Big Tech firms, the plaintiffs are requesting a jury trial and treble damages.

They also are requesting orders declaring the defendants’ conduct unlawful and enjoining further such actions on their part. TNI viewed organisations reporting non-establishment views as “an existential threat.”

The lawsuit states, “There are two main categories of TNI members, playing different but often complementary roles in the online news market: (a) large legacy news organisations (hereafter the TNI’s ‘Legacy News Members’) and (b) Big Tech platform companies (hereafter the TNI’s ‘Big Tech Members’).”

The lawsuit’s executive summary states: “The TNI exists to, in its own words, ‘choke off’ and ‘stamp out’ online news reporting that the TNI or any of its members peremptorily deems ‘misinformation.’

“TNI members have targeted and suppressed completely accurate online reporting by non-mainstream news publishers concerning both Covid-19 (on matters including treatments, immunity, lab leak, vax injury, and lockdowns/mandates) and US elections (such as the Hunter Biden laptop story).”

The lawsuit also alleges: “By their own admission, members of the [TNI] have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to Covid-19 and US politics.

“While the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ publicly purports to be a self-appointed ‘truth police’ extirpating online ‘misinformation,’ in fact it has suppressed wholly accurate and legitimate reporting in furtherance of the economic self-interest of its members.”

• A Children’s Health Defense report / by a senior reporter for The Defender, Dr Michael Nevradakis