The Biden administration has a new Misinformation and Disinformation Governance Board, but you didn’t hear that from any left-leaning media outlets. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the reveal in a reply to a question while speaking to Congress April 27. News outlets considered to be more trustworthy by conservative readers jumped on it – but even now, a few days later, some of the biggest names in news haven’t mentioned it at all. Wonder why?
As Liberty Nation’s Mark Angelides pointed out April 28, the head of this new “Ministry of Truth” seems to believe that disinformation is simply whatever doesn’t fit the left-wing, Democratic Party narrative. Nina Jankowicz is a fellow at the Wilson Center, author, and go-to subject matter expert for numerous news outlets when it comes to misinformation coming from her new boss’ predecessor, Donald Trump – or from Russia on his behalf.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki doesn’t agree with the criticism and accusations of bias, of course. When pressed by Fox News White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, Psaki defended the board and its leader. She even presented it as a continuation of the work began by the Trump administration – with a fresh face and name – despite Mayorkas testifying Wednesday that the board had been recently created to combat online disinformation. Jankowicz she called “an expert on online disinformation” and “a person with extensive qualifications.”
A search for Nina Jankowicz on CNN’s website returns 12 entries, all of which are either stories in which she’s quoted or videos in which she speaks. In each, Jankowicz is used as a go-to subject matter expert on misinformation – more specifically, the “misinformation” spread by Donald Trump and by Russia on Trump’s behalf. What the most trusted name in news has not reported on, however, is the Department of Homeland Security’s new Misinformation and Disinformation Governance Board or Jankowicz’s role as the president’s own misinformation expert.
Vox cited Jankowicz in four articles in 2020 and 2021, all to make the same points as CNN. And of course, just like CNN, the outlet makes no mention of the Biden Administration’s new Misinformation and Disinformation Governance Board. A search for the board also turns up no relevant results with The New York Times, Salon, or Slate. Even CBS didn’t report on the board or the new “disinformation czar” until Friday – after, one might argue, the story had spread across other news outlets to the point that ignoring it might appear suspicious.
But LN wasn’t the only outlet to report on the board, its chief, or her concerning relationship with the truth. New York Post asked on April 28 “Which useful idiot thought such a clearly partisan hack should be Biden’s ‘disinformation Czar’?” A day later, the same outlet shared the “cringeworthy Mary Poppins TikTok” in which she sang about how to convincingly spread lies and presented Rudy Giuliani as an example. National Review, Breitbart, and Fox all ran multiple articles on it as well.
Now let’s take a look at what the left-wing media doesn’t want the people to see. Just a few weeks before the 2020 election, Jankowicz explained to CNN that Trump’s call for folks to watch the polls was “very disturbing.” She tweeted about the “laptop from hell,” pushing the narrative that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian influence operation, which she has also called a Trump campaign product.
As for her own new job, back when Trump was president, the very idea horrified her. “Imagine that, you know? With President Trump right now calling all of these news organizations that have inconvenient for him stories that they’re getting out there that he’s calling fake news, and now lashing out at platforms. I would never want to see our executive branch have that sort of power,” she said in a 2020 video chat now making the rounds on Twitter. She went on to talk about Poland’s “Ministry of Digitalization,” saying she wouldn’t be surprised if they got the idea from the Trump administration. She called the idea that the government could pressure Facebook to overturn content moderation actions “very scary.”
Fast forward to spring of 2022, and not only is it apparently just fine that the Biden administration has been flagging “problematic posts” for Facebook to remove, but an executive branch board of information control is a good idea, especially if she’s leading it.
So to recap the sum of Ms. Jankowicz’s method for discerning disinformation, if it comes from Trump or his supporters – or if they would consider it good news – then it’s clearly misinformation. As well, anything that counters the Democrat Party’s narrative in general must be false. It’s elementary, you see. No wonder the left doesn’t want to talk about her anymore.
