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Remember the Disinformation Governance Board? As we were quick to point out, this organization was named in the dumbest possible way by some incompetent people within the Biden administration, which only fed into the [ahem] disinformation around it. The program, a part of DHS, was an advisory group with no enforcement capabilities, and was tasked with coordinating standard best practices for government agencies to respond to and counter foreign disinformation campaigns. But it was launched with a blatantly over-the-top Orwellian name and with only vague details of its actual role, leaving the field open to everyone to speculate… or to pollute.
And speculate they did. Almost immediately the media was awash in people screaming about how Biden was creating a “Ministry of Truth” who would “police your speech.”
Fox News absolutely lost their minds, apparently mentioning the Board and its named director, Nina Jankowicz approximately 300 times in the course of just eight months. According to a (somewhat misguided and unsuccessful) lawsuit that Jankowicz later filed, Fox News became obsessed about claiming she was the new censorship czar of America:
The next day, on April 29, 2022, 11 different speakers referenced Jankowicz and the Board on 11 separate segments. Hannity repeated the falsehood that the Board was “in charge of policing disinformation,” and that Jankowicz is now “the person that polices our thoughts.” Fox News tweeted: “What you’re seeing is a full-scale attack on free speech in a country that has been free for nearly 250 years.”
On Fox & Friends, Carly Shimkus said Jankowicz is “lead[ing] a government board in charge of deciding what we can and cannot say.” On Outnumbered, Emily Compagno said Jankowicz is “now the official referee of disinformation” and also a “self-obsessed social media neophyte [who the country has now set as] as the champion, as the arbiter of truth.” Greg Gutfeld followed suit on Gutfeld!, warning that the Board “will likely target you,” and stating unequivocally that the goal of the Board is “to police your opinions, to hide their bad news or magically turn it into good news.”
This went on and on and on and on, despite all of it being nonsense. The board had no enforcement authority at all. It wasn’t about policing anything, let alone free speech or “truth.”
Even today you’ll hear MAGA folks claim that Biden had planned to launch a “Ministry of Truth” to try to censor Americans for their political wrong think.
Now contrast that with the coverage of Trump from a month ago openly telling his FCC to get more aggressive about policing speech. We mentioned it briefly, and there were a few news reports talking about how Donald Trump was demanding his FCC punish speech about his negative polls.
And then he demanded that the FCC punish news anchor Kristen Welker for the thoughtcrime of noting that in recent elections Trump had a bit of a “mixed record” on the success of his endorsements.
He literally says: “she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”
That was a month ago. What have you heard about Trump “Ministry of Truth” since? There’s obviously been coverage of his banning of some White House reporters, but the story of him literally demanding the FCC start punishing reporters for not reporting things the way Trump wants them to report was literally him demanding the FCC act as a Ministry of Truth, with Brendan Carr gleefully at the helm.
And, unlike Jankowicz, who went out of her way to explain that she wasn’t policing anyone’s speech, and who resigned within weeks after the death threats and harassment made the job untenable, Carr has embraced the role of actual speech cop. Hell, a year and a half ago when The Hollywood Reporter called out Carr’s role as Trump’s speech police attack dog, Carr responded with a screenshot of the caricature of him as an attack dog and tweeted “woof woof.”
And, of course, when questioned about Trump’s latest ridiculous speech police demands, Carr immediately promised to dutifully get his Ministry of Truth working on it.
In an appearance on “The Sunday Briefing” on Fox News, the Trump-appointed Carr was asked about the president’s threat against Welker. Carr responded by suggesting that broadcast news channels could face consequences if the agency interprets their reporting to not serve the public, citing “fake polls” designed to “suppress” voters as a potential risk.
“President Trump is over the target. We’re looking at a lot of actions,” Carr said, responding to host Peter Doocy. “There’s a lot of interest right now in fake polls that are out there. The FCC may put guidance out soon to remind broadcasters about their obligations with effect to not airing fake polls, particularly if they’re done to suppress people heading into the fall.”
And yet, that story lasted all of what, two days? Does anyone even remember that it happened?
It’s incredible the double standard at work. Biden launches something that is very far from being “the Ministry of Truth,” and the MAGA media machine spends the next eight months — and, really, the next four years — blasting out the fake news every damn day that Biden had hired someone to police everyone’s speech.
Four years later, Donald Trump publicly demands that the FCC — a supposedly independent agency that, unlike the DGB, actually does have enforcement powers, in theory limited by the First Amendment — punish a network anchor. And the guy running it hops right to it, promising to go after polls showing Trump’s popularity is in the dumps.
And the story disappears.
In 2022, we got nothing but hand-wringing from the loudest “but muh free speech” voices. Bari Weiss’s “The Free Press” had an article “All Hail America’s New Truth Czar!” about the controversy:
And Weiss herself went on Fox News (naturally) to mock it as the Ministry of Truth.
Now that the FCC is actually acting as the Ministry of Truth with Weiss running CBS News (complete with Brendan Carr’s designated “bias monitor” to police its speech)… I can find zero coverage from CBS News — a newsroom with vastly more resources than The Free Press — of Trump demanding that his FCC police the speech of one of CBS’s main competitors.
Gosh. I wonder why.
The Disinformation Governance Board (still a terrible name and roll out plan) had no enforcement power and no authority over American speech. It never actually launched and was completely abandoned within weeks. Yet it received 300 Fox News segments over the rest of 2022, and to this day people will insist that Biden launched a “Ministry of Truth” to police domestic speech.
Meanwhile, the FCC actually licenses broadcasters, and its chair just took orders directly from the president to “punish” reporters for truthful speech, and said he’s “looking at a lot of actions.”
That news cycle lasted about two days and is barely remembered.
Woof woof!
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