Judge Napolitano: Twitter's Blackburn Ad Block 'Censorship at Its Worst'

Napolitano: Twitter's Blackburn Ad Block 'Censorship at Its Worst'

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Tuesday, 10 October 2017 03:10 PM EDT

Twitter's decision to ban a paid advertisement from Rep. Marsha Blackburn after deeming its pro-life message as being inflammatory "censorship at its worse," Judge Andrew Napoiltano said Tuesday.

"Think of Twitter as a bulletin board, an enormous international bulletin board, the likes of which doesn't exist anywhere else," Napolitano, who is now Fox News' senior judicial analyst, told the "Fox and Friends" program.

"They can decide what they want to put up there...the statement that they gave basically translates to 'we don't like the message that she delivered, so we are not going to post it.'"

Twitter, as a private company does not fall under the First Amendment freedom of speech guidelines, which protect speech from the government, not private entities, but still, it did censor her ad, said Napolitano.

Blackburn is running for the seat currently occupied by Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who is retiring at the end of 2018, posted a nearly three-minute video, during which she referenced claims that Planned Parenthood sold body parts from aborted fetuses.

"I'm 100 percent pro life," she said in the spot. "I fought Planned Parenthood, and we stopped the sale of baby body parts, thank God."

The remedy, said Napolitano, is in the free market.

"A big giant bulletin board that doesn't censor might just be around the corner," he said. "I'm not suggesting I know who it is, but that's the remedy. Can you boycott their advertisers? You can bombard them with criticism. But you can't take any legal action against them because they own the bulletin board."

Napolitano said he also hopes that there is no government intervention into Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites, even following advertising that was purchased on them during the 2016 presidential election.

"As much as I condemn what Twitter has done. I would rather that they were free to do it than the government telling them what to do," said Napolitano. "I don't know more than anyone else where the Russia investigation is going to go...whether they affected the outcome or not, we don't know and we may never know. I hope it doesn't produce any government regulation of speech. "