The Watchdog with David Bozell

If you had told me a few years ago that the Media Research Center would someday give a Kennedy an award, I probably would have asked what you were drinking. And then I would have asked for one. 

But here we are: MRC is giving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. our Free Speech Award, and he has earned it.

During the Biden administration, RFK Jr. became one of the most prominent targets of the federal government’s censorship campaign. He was the top name on the infamous so-called “Disinformation Dirty Dozen,” the list used to portray a small group of Americans as responsible for a huge amount of vaccine-related “misinformation” online. The message from Washington was pretty clear: these people are dangerous, their speech is dangerous, and the social media companies need to do something about them.

MRC spent years exposing how the federal censorship machine actually operated. It rarely involved some government official walking to a microphone and announcing, “You are forbidden to say that.” The system was more sophisticated. Federal agencies funded research into “misinformation.” Bureaucrats communicated with Big Tech. Contractors and academics developed tools and strategies for identifying supposedly dangerous speech. Government pressure moved quietly through emails, meetings, grants and regulatory leverage.

And HHS was right in the middle of it. MRC documented 57 censorship initiatives connected to the Biden administration, including activity involving the CDC, NIH, FDA, the Office of the Surgeon General and other agencies. 

Then came one of the great political plot twists: President Trump made RFK Jr. Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

The man treated as the poster child for “disinformation” suddenly ran one of the departments that helped build the censorship apparatus.

Kennedy did something important with that power. He started taking the machinery apart. His department moved to cut off grants connected to misinformation and disinformation programs. He elevated free-speech advocates such as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the most outspoken critics of government censorship during COVID. He shook up personnel and leadership inside agencies that had accumulated enormous power with very little accountability, and he backed structural and legal safeguards designed to make it harder for federal officials to pressure technology companies over constitutionally protected speech.

In other words, Kennedy didn't just give a nice speech about the First Amendment. He used the authority he had been given. That matters, because politicians talk about free speech all the time. The real test comes when they possess power themselves. Do they preserve the machinery because it might be useful someday? Do they simply point it at a different set of enemies? Or do they dismantle it?

RFK Jr. chose to dismantle it.

There is also a delicious irony here that I suspect is not lost on him. Once a member of the “Disinformation Dozen,” Kennedy is now sitting on the other side of the table. Instead of using the censorship apparatus against his own enemies, he is helping tear it down.

That is precisely the kind of record MRC’s Free Speech Award should recognize. We do not have to agree with someone on every issue to recognize courage and results when we see them. In fact, an award means more when it is based on a specific record rather than tribal loyalty.

MRC spent years documenting how government agencies, Big Tech companies and taxpayer-funded organizations worked together to police political speech. Now we have the opportunity to honor someone who experienced that system personally and then used his position to weaken it.

So yes, MRC is giving a Kennedy an award. I still cannot quite believe I just typed that sentence. But I can tell you this: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earned it.

Take it easy,David Bozell
President