After a second wave of what they believe is coordinated suppression of news coverage of their work, the disabled queer and trans artists behind the mutual aid fundraiser play Wake Up and Smell the C*VID have published an open letter to actor and playwright Eric Bogosian and AMC Networks.
Wake Up and Smell the C*vid: the suppression of a queer and trans disabled-led play
The artists raised concerns that this possible de-indexing from Google News could be intended to shield AMC’s brand and its star, Eric Bogosian, from reputational risk ahead of the high-profile San Diego Comic-Con panels on 26 July.
The letter begins with a photo of an empty wheelchair with a sign that reads “Disabled Artists Will Not Be Erased” against a disability pride flag background in the lobby of AMC Networks’ New York City corporate headquarters. July is Disability Pride Month, commemorating the July 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
As preamble, the letter includes an access statement for wheelchair users and an accessible text version for people with cognitive and attentional access needs, or for use with screen readers. It starts in stating that:
One of the primary authors of this letter is a mostly housebound wheelchair user living with hEDS (Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome).
It continues:
They wanted to deliver this letter to AMC Networks in person, asking for transparency on possible suppression and a disability-centered transformative justice repair process. Due to access limitations, the image was taken by members of our group who have have fewer mobility limitations. Respecting their energy budgets, a lighter, portable transport wheelchair was used.
The play, subtitled ‘An Evening Without Eric Bogosian’, was a hybrid in-person and live-stream event staged on 24 April. According to the group, this:
was homage to Eric Bogosian’s style of free speech and speaking uncomfortable truths. It was an opportunity for our community to grieve what we’ve lost, and critical commentary raising this crucial question: Where are the theatrical elders in [the COVID and long COVID] crisis?
The play earned coverage in Broadway World, the Sick Times, and this outlet, trending on Google News since its premiere.
Where’s Eric Bogosian? Coverage of the play began to vanish
The letter states:
All of these articles organically trended from April to July, not due to paid PR, but due to wide grassroots community uptake. One quote retweet on Twitter/X had 14k likes.
Mid-April, artists noticed those links seeming to vanish from the news tab. After the group requested public monitoring of Google News results on their social media account, they say the articles temporarily reappeared. In response to this first instance of possible suppression, the artists organised an international artistic action. Empty chairs bearing the play’s title appeared outside theatres globally, including the National Theatre in London, the Public Theater in New York, and Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.
Despite the attention this drew, according to the artists, the suppression appears to have happened again this July.
Screenshots included in the open letter show title searches returning “no results” for both the play announcement and a Broadway World report on a mask-distribution demo outside George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck Broadway debut.
By 19 July, after the group began posting timestamps on their social media account and asking followers to check their own regions, most stories appeared to quietly re-enter Google’s index. Some seem to remain missing.
The group wrote in its letter:
As disabled and chronically ill artists, producing a play was a monumental task. Disabled labor isn’t just important because it‘s one more group historically marginalized from creative industries, but also because it is so difficult for us to do any labor in the first place. Most of us have limited energy budgets. One of long COVID’s primary symptoms is extreme energy depletion. For our group member with hEDS, every word written was painful. But it was worth it because the work of disabled artists got coverage in Broadway World, the publication of record for theater, and went viral organically.
They ask:
Can you imagine what it’s like to see the labor that was such a win for disabled art – and hurt so much to make – casually be erased, possibly to avoid public scrutiny or preserve a smooth promotional rollout, not once, but twice?
Google telling queer disabled people their work – and lives – don’t matter
Google News page one is a significant representation of legitimacy, the artists explained:
Google News Page 1 is critical because it shapes public perception. For public figures, it’s often the first place industry decision-makers look to verify credibility and relevance.
The group believes that based on the timing of the possible de-indexing, this might coincide with a promotional cycle.
They wrote that:
Eric Bogosian is a lead actor on the tentpole AMC series Interview with the Vampire and its Immortal Universe spinoff Talamasca. The possible de-indexing was detected on July 14, 12 days before panels for these shows at San Diego Comic Con. AMC is currently under increased scrutiny by advertisers, investors and industry press ahead of the event. With its Immortal Universe franchise relying on high engagement to drive streaming revenue, any association with the suppression of disabled artists could pose a reputational risk.
Crisis PR strategies which can alter the visibility of news coverage have become increasingly common, according to the artists. The group cited recent high-profile examples, including Harvey Weinstein’s alleged use of private intelligence firms to discredit reporters, and Johnny Depp’s reported use of influencer-driven social campaigns, illustrating how such strategies have historically been used to silence marginalised groups, whistleblowers, and survivors.
The letter states that:
Google News is one of the main ways people decide what is real. When our stories disappear, it tells the public our work – and maybe our lives – don’t matter.
Erasure has real-world consequences
In an appendix, the group described plans to publish more information:
The most likely argument for plausible deniability will be ‘algorithmic fluctuations.’ That is why we have included both screenshots of Google News returning no results for the articles and a record of the news coverage consistently trending on Google News Page 1 under ‘Eric Bogosian.’ These are a selection of screenshots, more are available for journalists and researchers. Documentation of the first wave of possible suppression, more in-depth discussion of possible SEO flooding and other topics relevant to these events to follow in a subsequent data publication.
They also expressed concerns about possible future retaliation, naming tactics including legal intimidation, flagging accounts, strategic triangulation with fan and marginalised communities, or:
DARVO tactics (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender), often using pathologization and leveraging ableist, transphobic, or transmisogynistic stereotypes to frame accountability efforts as harm.
It said that:
The play’s platform has been used to ensure members of our community receive medicine, food, shelter. And with cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, social security, our community is literally dying. If account flagging has been used as a crisis PR tool, we point out that the collateral damage has been our ability to source support for people requiring life-saving aid.
Speaking to the mutual aid work, the artists estimate that at least $75,000 (£58,000) may have been spent on public relations strategies to suppress the visibility of their work, money they argue could instead have supported disabled people facing urgent health and housing crises.
The letter states:
We’re not experts. We’re just mutual aid organizers who know how money translates to lives.
Right now in a long COVID mutual aid thread, a couple urgently needs $600 [£450] to continue dialysis. A homeless artist needs $100 [£75] for a motel room and an eye disease appointment. A disabled mom is begging for food for her children. That budget could have solved every problem shared in that thread for the past year.
It highlights the harsh reality of mutual aid efforts against a backdrop of accelerating cuts to disability benefits in the US and UK.
An appeal to Eric Bogosian and AMC to advocate for a disability-led transformative justice process
At the end of the letter, the artists explicitly reject retaliation against Eric Bogosian or AMC:
We are not asking for punishment, a financial settlement, a boycott, or cancellation.
Instead, they ask for “transparency about what happened” and:
repair guided by experts in disability justice.
They further acknowledged that Bogosian himself likely does not control these possible PR mechanisms directly, stating:
Coordinated suppression of search engine visibility is likely beyond the reach of a single public figure.
They suggested that, if suppression is happening, the actor may be constrained by contractual obligations preventing him from publicly addressing the issue. The group added that:
At the same time, fear of professional repercussions is no excuse for what could be considered silence in the face of the erasure of disabled voices.
In the letter’s closing, the artists made clear their preference for a restorative approach. They invoke Bogosian’s decades-long career as a cultural provocateur known for speaking uncomfortable truths, appealing to shared historical stakes:
The regime would like nothing more than for your truth-telling to be neutralized as brand maintenance, for you to lose your voice inside an NDA, and when this dissonance between image and substance is perceived, for the wider public to be demoralized because yet another prophet of uncomfortable truths is seen to paper over violence with propaganda.
Therefore, they call on Bogosian to privately advocate within AMC for a disability-led transformative justice process:
We wrote our play as an invocation to who you’ve told us you are. Please show us we weren’t wrong.
AMC Networks and Eric Bogosian will be notified of this publication and invited to respond. Any statements, clarifications, or corrections they provide will be considered in good faith and incorporated as updates.
Featured image and additional images supplied
This post was originally published on Canary.