One of the most pernicious lies the media has propagated is that journalists possess some special freedom of speech unavailable to everyone else. They do not. The First Amendment does not create a privileged caste called “the media.” Freedom of speech belongs to everyone, equally. And “freedom of the press” does not mean special constitutional privileges for people carrying press credentials. The press is the means of publication and dissemination, historically the printing press. That freedom belongs to everyone too, because freedom of speech is worthless if you are forbidden from publishing or disseminating what you say. This is elementary constitutional law. Yet media figures, including increasingly toxic voices at Fox News, continue pretending that calling yourself a journalist somehow entitles you to rights the rest of the country does not have. It doesn’t. That lie should be called out every single time it is repeated.

The Community Note here is as misleading as the people insisting that, in the end, the miscarriage problem turned out not to be that serious. Leaving aside whether first trimester miscarriage can even be measured with the precision people now pretend, that was never the point. Fauci, Murthy, and Walensky were privately discussing specific risk indicators, including significant cytokine storm, fever, and concerns that mRNA might cause mutations in a developing fetus. Days later, Fauci went on television and told the public there was no risk. So it does not matter how all of this ultimately turned out. They identified specific risks in private, and Fauci then told the public there was no risk. Whatever the final numbers showed does not make that any less evil.