No need for "government official". There were plenty of non-government official branches such as media and social networks that were demonstrated to work as shadow tools for imposing heavy censorship around specific agendas. Up until the recent election so was the case for the large majority of mainstream social networks and legacy media.

The whole corona fabrication wasn't that long ago when governments directly mandated to silent dissident voices (even the scientific ones) and push a whole group of normal people into burning anyone who'd point out the obvious inconsistencies.