1984: USA Launches Disinfo Ministry of Truth

[grarpamp]

The Disinformation Panic

https://reason.com/2022/05/03/the-disinformation-panic/

New York Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst reportedly said,
"You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war!"

Hearst and his rival, Joseph Pulitzer, sensationalized, exaggerated,
and outright lied to millions of Americans daily in the lead up to the
Spanish-American War, spreading what many today would call
"disinformation." Yellow journalism famously fanned the flames of
conflict, wrongly blaming the Spanish for sinking the U.S.S. Maine.
But if political lies aren't new, why are so many powerful
institutions hyping fears about the internet and flirting with new
restrictions on speech?

The Biden administration came under fire last week for creating the
Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland
Security—only a few days after former President Barack Obama warned
that disinformation in the digital age presents an "unprecedented
crisis for democracy" in an address at Stanford University on April
21. Two weeks earlier, the University of Chicago Institute of Politics
and The Atlantic hosted a "groundbreaking" three-day event on how to
combat online disinformation. And a month before that, The New York
Times published an op-ed by University of California, Irvine law
professor Richard L. Hasen arguing, "There can be no doubt that
virally spread political disinformation and delusional invective about
stolen, rigged elections are threatening the foundation of our
Republic."

Lawmakers increasingly look to turn fears about disinformation into
laws restricting free speech.

One such proposal is Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D–Minn.) "Honest Ads Act,"
which is regularly featured in Democratic election reform packages
like H.R. 1 and the Freedom to Vote Act. Ironically, its title could
be called disinformation, because it has nothing to do with making ads
honest.

This legislation would drive up the costs of speaking online through
unprecedented regulatory burdens on ads related to social or political
issues. It would force web platforms to warehouse data about ad buyers
in public files, including the buyer's name, address, and minutiae
about the ad's cost and viewership. It would impose rigid disclaimer
requirements that would make many cost-effective forms of online
advertising impractical.

The bill even threatens to regulate political content on websites,
YouTube, and mass emails by removing a key protection from the law
that limits campaign finance laws online to paid advertising.

Proponents say policies like these are necessary because today's
information environment is flooded with "cheap speech" of little
value, making it harder for voters to discern what's accurate. But was
it easier to discern accuracy when Hearst and Pulitzer were furnishing
headlines?

If the news environment of the 1890s is too distant of an example,
consider 1990, when a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah gave a
gut-wrenching—and completely fabricated—congressional testimony
alleging to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers remove Kuwaiti babies from
incubators and leave them to die on the cold floor. Portions of her
testimony aired on ABC's Nightline and NBC Nightly News, reaching an
estimated 35 million and 53 million Americans respectively, before
airing on 700 other television stations and going virtually unchecked
for nearly a year.

The American people didn't learn the truth behind Nayirah's story
until 1992—a full year after Congress authorized the use of military
force in Iraq. In the lead-up to that decision, her gripping tale was
invoked by President George H.W. Bush six times in one month, and
cited by seven senators in their speeches supporting the same cause.

Scandals like these happened long before the rise of Twitter and
Facebook and the decline of media gatekeepers. In fact, if people had
been able to communicate on social media then the way we do now, the
truth about this lie may have been uncovered much sooner. "Cheap
speech" can benefit society by allowing researchers or citizen
journalists to challenge the narratives of major media outlets and
government leaders.

Some people seem to think those benefits are outweighed by the
potential for lies to spread online. "Today, the clearest danger to
American democracy is not government censorship but the loss of voter
confidence and competence that arises from the sea of disinformation
and vitriol," Hasen writes. Yet he largely ignores how influential
media and prominent political figures contribute to that cesspool.

Hillary Clinton dismissed Trump as an "illegitimate president"; Jen
Psaki, the White House press secretary, claimed that Russia "of course
hacked" the 2016 election; journalists and Democrats credited $100,000
worth of pathetic Russian Facebook ads and memes for Donald Trump's
2016 presidential victory. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D–Ohio) declared that
Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial election was "stolen," and Georgia
gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said then that it was "rigged."

That's just the tip of the iceberg. When the New York Post reported on
Hunter Biden's emails in October 2020, numerous outlets dismissed the
story as Russian disinformation or deemed it unworthy of coverage,
depriving voters of potentially valuable information weeks before the
presidential election. The laptop was reportedly authenticated in
April 2021 and again in September 2021, but The New York Times and The
Washington Post only acknowledged these facts in March 2022.

Scandals like these damage trust in the democratic process and the
media, but they would be untouched by proposals like the Honest Ads
Act. No matter the source, government has no business legislating fact
from fiction.

Americans should not have their right to speak about politics online
restricted, especially as politicians and the media continue to blare
their own disinformation through megaphones.