MICHAEL BARONE: Google and Facebook run for censors-in-chief.

Do Google and Facebook engage in what lawyers call viewpoint discrimination? There’s some pretty good evidence that they do. Consider the lawsuit that radio talk show host Dennis Prager is bringing against Google. He alleges that YouTube, owned by Google (and its parent company Alphabet), puts his Prager University videos in restricted mode, but does not give similar treatment to videos from liberal sources.

Anyone familiar with Prager’s writings knows that they’re intellectually serious and far from abusive. He is a persistent but temperate advocate.

Until recently, Google hasn’t issued a public comment on the lawsuit. When it finally did, it started off with a typical Silicon Valley boilerplate about its dedication to free speech (“YouTube is an open platform”), quickly followed up with Silicon Valley boilerplate which, translated from the Orwellian, declares that Google actually isn’t so dedicated to free speech (“we provide different choices and settings. Restricted mode is an optional feature used by a small subset of users to filter out videos that may include sensitive or mature content”). It’s what “Congress has encouraged online services to provide for parents and others interested in a more family-friendly experience online.” As I wrote about the case of its firing of engineer James Damore last summer, Google is engaging in Orwellian doublespeak: free exchange of ideas means free exchange of ideas we approve.

All of which avoids the central question in the lawsuit, which is not whether YouTube consumers can choose restricted mode, but the criteria by which Google designates certain videos and not others as restricted. That designation restricts its circulation, as Google implicitly concedes. If, as is alleged and seems likely here, the designation is applied so as to discriminate against conservative videos, Google is engaged in viewpoint discrimination.

Let’s turn to Facebook, which according to author James Bovard blocked his post labeled “Janet Reno, Tyrant or Saint?” and including video of the burning of the Branch Davidian compound during an FBI raid in 1993. When he retitled the post, “Janet Reno, American Saint,” and substituted an official portrait of the late attorney general for the Branch Davidian burning, his post was immediately accepted.

Janet Reno, a saint? So much for screening out “fake news.”