Nina Jankowicz just found out the hard way that in America you can call a spade a spade. The former head of the defunct government censorship board just lost her lawsuit claiming she was defamed by being labeled a “censor.”
Jankowicz sued Fox News for alleged libel, claiming that she was forced to resign from the now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) “as a result of Fox's false statements and the ensuing harassment.” But a Delaware Chief U.S. District Court Judge Colm Connolly ruled against Jankowicz. He argued the alleged defamatory statements “cannot support Jankowicz’s defamation claim because the Complaint does not plausibly allege that they are not substantially true.”
Jankowicz, who has been a Wilson Center fellow and an advisor to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, describes herself as “an internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization.” Last year she defended her lawsuit during a Guardian interview. She whined, “It was lies, very personal and very vitriolic lies. And I don’t think that is democratic.” Without addressing her work to crush Americans’ rights, she pontificated, “If we can’t agree on statements of fact, how can you live in a democracy?”
Judge Connolly ruled that she did not prove that Fox published vitriolic lies, however. In his ruling, the judge explained his reasoning.
“Fox contends, and I agree, that Jankowicz has not pleaded facts from which it could plausibly be inferred that the challenged statements regarding intended censorship by Jankowicz are not substantially true. On the contrary, as noted above, censorship is commonly understood to encompass efforts to scrutinize and examine speech in order to suppress certain communications.”
Connolly added that “The Disinformation Governance Board was formed precisely to examine citizens’ speech and, in coordination with the private sector, identify ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’ D.I. 31-1 at 10. For the reasons discussed above, that objective is fairly characterized as a form of censorship.”
Author and legal analyst Jonathan Turley wrote in an X post that the ruling “shatters the spin out by Jankowicz and the anti-free speech movement.”
Turley was unsurprised by the “Mary Poppins of Defamation,” as he calls her, losing her bid to protect her censorship work from honest reporting. “The federal court has dismissed the defamation case of Nina Jankowicz. As some of us predicted, the criticism of Jankowicz was deemed opinion,” Turley posted on X, linking to his 2023 column on the suit.
Despite her claims to the contrary, Jankowicz has repeatedly supported censorship efforts. She even infamously posted a cutesy TikTok video where she said, “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation.” MRC Free Speech America revealed at the time how members of the DGB, Michael Chertoff and Jennifer Daskal, were tied to leftist billionaire George Soros. Jankowicz continues her anti-free speech efforts through her new censorship organization The American Sunlight Project.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
