Dr. Simone Gold was asked by USA Today to submit an opinion piece regarding the Left’s move to mandate Americans to wear face coverings in order to help end the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
To her surprise, she says, the newspaper giant materially altered her work.
What follows is a transcription of her reaction of USA Today’s actions:
Hi everyone. I need to share with you something that happened to me this week. I was invited by USA Today to write an opinion opposition to their opinion of whether masks should be mandatory. So this is how it went down. I’m going to show you censorship in action. The deal with USA Today is that they would publish my words next to their words in their online and in their newspaper. Here we go. Let’s see.
I put on the screen my submitted and accepted version and what they actually printed in their newspaper. The first sentence that they deleted, again without telling me just deletion was I wrote the COVID virus was supposed to be contained in the kind of lab where people wear astronaut suits and people go through tripled sealed doors.
Now, the reason I’m offended that they deleted this is when you have a very visually strong sentence the reader remembers it and then they share that with other people. It’s a very good technique to use as a writer. I think they found it too effective and they simply deleted it.
The next sentence that I took great offense that they deleted was I wrote the COVID virus is 200 to 1,000 times smaller than the pore size in surgical masks or cloth-like things like bandannas. That is such an easy to understand concept. 200 to 1,000 times smaller. I think they found hearing that truth so threatening because it’s easy to understand that they simply deleted it.
And the third sentence that I took great offense that they deleted was, I wrote, the mask has become the most visible symbol #socialconditioning. I think they deleted this because it’s too unifying. Freethinkers that realize that they are being socially conditioned by things such as wearing masks feel more isolated when they don’t understand that they are actually part of a much larger group.
What I want to share with you is I think it’s very clear that the media has an agenda and here is what it is. They have two things they are trying to achieve. One is they are trying to make you think there are no actual facts that you can discern for yourself. That everything is he said she said.
Everything is opinion. You can’t know the truth anyway. And that’s a really good way to let people live in fear. It’s not true. There are facts you can find out. The second thing is their goal is to make you feel very isolated if you feel otherwise. That’s also not true. I actually think that we are the majority of Americans. That we can see clearly what’s going on.
Now that you’ve seen censorship in action it gets even better. They found my words so threatening, the truth really, not just my words but the truth so threatening that they didn’t even publish it online at all. They simply put it in their print paper because they solicited it. They had to. But they didn’t put it anywhere online. How do you like that guys? You should be offended.
Watch her remarks:
@USATODAY invited me to debate the usefulness of masks. Unfortunately what I submitted was different from what they printed in their paper. Shameful! I can't link what they printed, bc the truth is so dangerous they wouldn't publish online!! Read it here: https://t.co/X77Ypw3AhP pic.twitter.com/NfTx7d2Q4b
— Dr. Simone Gold (@drsimonegold) June 28, 2020
Read her full, unedited op-ed here.
