During their Wednesday newscast, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings boasted that TikTok was talking the American government to court because the company refused to comply with American law. The networks boosted TikTok’s claims in their legal filing that the law violated the First Amendment and their suggestion that members of Congress were hypocrites for having TikTok accounts, but what they failed to disclose to their audiences was the fact that those same filings proved that the Chinese Communist Party controlled TikTok.
In their filing, TikTok admits: “Third, the Chinese government has made clear that it would not permit a divestment of the recommendation engine that is a key to the success of TikTok in the United States … By doing so, the Chinese government clearly signaled that it would assert its export control powers with respect to any attempt to sever TikTok’s operations from ByteDance, and that any severance would leave TikTok without access to the recommendation engine that has created a unique style and community that cannot be replicated on any other platform today.”
ABC senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott trumpeted that “TikTok is taking on the federal government, setting up a showdown in court over free speech and national security.” Ignoring the fact the filing admitted they were taking orders from the Chinese government, Scott framed their lawsuit as an act of brave defiance. “TikTok's parent company is making it clear they cannot and will not be selling the platform,” she proclaimed.
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