On behalf of the Media Research Center's Board of Directors, MRC President David Bozell is proud to announce that the winner of the MRC's 2026 Free Speech award is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
As President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy inherited a department deeply entangled in the censorship apparatus that the MRC has spent years exposing. Kennedy arrived with the power to do something about it. And he has.
MRC’s Free Speech Award honors Kennedy for using his position, influence and authority to protect Americans’ right to speak.
MRC’s documented 57 censorship initiatives connected to the Biden administration included activity involving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of the Surgeon General and other parts of HHS. When RFK Jr. was appointed to take over, he quickly got to work dismantling the department’s censorship apparatus and helped to restore trust in an agency that had previously trampled free speech rights.
Kennedy rapidly reformed the HHS agency’s grantmaking standards. While grant money had previously been funneled into programs targeted at identifying and mitigating so-called misinformation, especially around COVID-19 and vaccines, Kennedy pulled back such grant money and moved to fund more legitimate public health programs. The ventures included programs to support military members in various ways.
