(TheRedAlertNews.com) – New scandalous revelations from the GOP-dominated House show that President Joe Biden’s administration pressured Amazon to force the online shopping giant to restrict the sale and distribution of books expressing doubts about the COVID-19 vaccines.
In the early months of 2021, the Biden administration sent Amazon a series of emails to that end, with Amazon caving and reducing the visibility of skeptical books about the vaccines’ effectiveness.
This has been revealed by internal Amazon emails made available to the House Judiciary Committee as a consequence of a subpoena, National Review reports.
The emails show that Andrew Slavitt, a senior advisor for COVID-19 response at the White House, accused the company of disseminating “misinformation” following a preliminary investigation into vaccine-related content.
“Who can we talk to about the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?” Slavitt inquired in an email to an Amazon contact on March 2, 2021.
“If you search for ‘vaccines’ under books, I see what comes up. I haven’t looked beyond that but if that’s what’s on the surface, it’s concerning,” Slavitt noted in another email.
The report points out that Amazon at first hesitated to take action against any books, expressing concern over the potential backlash, particularly from conservative media circles.
“We will not be doing a manual intervention today,” stated an internal email among Amazon’s executives.
“The team/PR feels very strongly that it is too visible, and will further compound the Harry/Sally narrative (which is getting the Fox News treatment today apparently), and won’t fix the problem long-term . . . because of customer behavior associates,” the email adds.
Before responding to Slavitt, Amazon deliberated over possible replies to his questions.
In defense of its practices of selling books, Amazon argued that “retailers are different than social media communities” and emphasized its role in providing “customers with access to a variety of viewpoints” on myriad subjects, including vaccines.
“Our guidelines do not specifically address content about vaccines,” read another drafted response.
A week after these exchanges, on March 9, 2021, Amazon engaged in a meeting with the White House.
This came after company executives acknowledged in an email that they were under significant “pressure” from White House officials.
“Is the Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?” queried an email from the company.
On the day of the meeting, Amazon implemented a “Do Not Promote” policy for books opposing vaccines, aiming to diminish their visibility, and invented further strategies to lessen the exposure of such titles.
“As a reminder, we did enable Do Not Promote for anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective on 3/9, and will review additional handling options for these books,” mentioned another internal email.
