{"id":5834,"date":"2024-02-06T17:35:12","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T23:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5834"},"modified":"2024-02-06T17:35:14","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T23:35:14","slug":"supreme-court-to-weigh-whether-covid-misinformation-is-protected-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/02\/06\/supreme-court-to-weigh-whether-covid-misinformation-is-protected-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court to weigh whether Covid misinformation is protected speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2024\/02\/06\/supreme-court-covid-misinformation-public-health-free-speech\/\">STAT<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As social media sites were flooded with misleading posts about vaccine safety, mask effectiveness, Covid-19\u2019s origins and federal shutdowns at the height of the pandemic, Biden officials urged platforms to pull down posts, delete accounts, and amplify correct information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now the Supreme Court could decide whether the government violated Americans\u2019 First Amendment rights with those actions \u2014 and dictate a new era for what role, if any, officials can play in combating misinformation on social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments next month in a case that could have sweeping ramifications for federal health agencies\u2019 communications in particular.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2024\/01\/29\/covid-misinformation-supreme-court\/\">Murthy v. Missouri&nbsp;<\/a>alleges that federal officials coerced social media and search giants like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google to remove or downgrade posts that questioned vaccine safety, Covid\u2019s origins, or shutdown measures. Biden lawyers argue that officials made requests but never forced companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Government defenders say that if the Court limits the government\u2019s power, it could hamstring agencies scrambling to achieve higher vaccination rates and other critical public health initiatives. Critics argue that federal public health officials \u2014 already in the throes of national distrust and apathy \u2014 never should have tried to remove misleading posts in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2024\/02\/06\/supreme-court-covid-misinformation-public-health-free-speech\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"EhchwDd j CsKYMZh LV sg\"><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STAT As social media sites were flooded with misleading posts about vaccine safety, mask effectiveness, Covid-19\u2019s origins and federal shutdowns at the height of the pandemic, Biden officials urged platforms to pull down posts, delete accounts, and amplify correct information. Now the Supreme Court could decide whether the government violated Americans\u2019 First Amendment rights with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5835,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions\/5835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}