Nineteen days after the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of an Orwellian new board to fight “disinformation,” the networks are still refusing to discuss the blatant attempt to muzzle free speech. Since April 27, the morning and evening newscasts have stayed silent on the DHS board.
They have also buried the background of Nina Jankowicz, the “truth” minister who is constantly wrong and is enthusiastic when it comes to stifling political dialogue.
With the exception of one minute and 23 seconds on the May 1 edition of the Sunday show Meet the Press, there’s been no network coverage of the board or Jankowicz. This is despite there being new – and disturbing – information out about her and the ideas and beliefs she wants censored. The networks just aren’t covering it.
In a newly-surfaced Zoom video, the partisan promoted the idea of certain Twitter “legit” users being able to edit views she considers disinformation: “So verified people can essentially start to edit Twitter, the same sort of way that Wikipedia is so they can add context to certain tweets.”
Here’s the Zoom video as played on Newsmax on Friday.
As the Post Millennial explained on Thursday:
In what appears to be a conversation about Twitter's Birdwatch feature, which was eligible for Twitter verified users, Jankowicz laments that “there are a lot of people who shouldn't be verified, who aren't, you know, legit, in my opinion. I mean, they are real people, but they're not trustworthy,” she told those on the call.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who is attempting to purchase Twitter, attacked Jankowicz’s plans as “disconcerting.”
Network coverage of this call for censorship by elite blue check marks on Twitter? ZERO.
In the fall of 2021, Jankowicz supported a British-backed crackdown on free speech. As reported on NewsBusters, Thursday, she lobbied for the Draft Online Safety Bill, saying fines for companies who don’t censor a “useful starting point.” The MRC’s Alexander Hall noted:
Jankowicz also appeared to praise the idea of shadowbanning or deboosting, phrasing it as “demoting content” and phrasing the tactic as “You can shout into the black void, but you don’t get a huge audience to do that.”
Network coverage of Jankowicz endorsing a government crackdown of free speech? ZERO.
From our last update, here are some other disturbing stories about Jankowicz and the disinformation board the networks are still burying:
She promoted the debunked Trump-Russia collusion claims.
Jankowicz cast doubt on the Hunter Biden laptop story and promoted the idea that the 2020 New York Post story was fake, saying, “We should view it as a Trump campaign product” and “The emails don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign. Voters deserve that context, not a [fairy] tale about a laptop repair shop.”
She also peppered her Twitter feed with bizarre moments, such as in February 2021 when she parodied Mary Poppins, singing, “Information laundering is really quite ferocious. It’s when a huckster takes some lies and makes them sound precocious, by saying them in Congress or a mainstream outlet, so disinformation’s origins are slightly less atrocious.”
Coverage of any of this on the networks? ZERO.
RealClearInvestiations deputy editor Benjamin Weingarten put it this way in Thursday’s New York Post: “If you were trying to discredit your own regime, you would be hard-pressed to do better than create a Ministry of Truth, house it within your domestic-security apparatus and appoint a serial spewer of untruth to lead it.”
But the networks clearly aren't interested. Last week, House Republicans pushed a bill to dismantle the disinformation board. That, too, was ignored by the networks. Instead of ignoring that threat to free speech, the journalists at ABC, CBS, and NBC should do their jobs: Investigate this Orwellian board and speak real truth to power.
