As you are hopefully aware by now, the illustrious Taylor Lorenz has a new piece for the Washington Post all about the apparent demise of DHS’ Disinformation Governance Board. Alas, Nina Jankowicz! We hardly knew ye.
Poor Nina was, according to Lorenz, the tragic casualty of “coordinated right-wing attacks” against the notion of a Ministry of Truth. Takes one innocent victim to know one, huh?
Anyway, Politico and MSNBC’s Sam Stein couldn’t help but be struck by one particular aspect of Lorenz’s heartbreaking article, and, naturally, it’s about Fox News:
A wild stat in this @TaylorLorenz piece about the dinsinformation board being put on pause
"The week following the announcement, approximately 70 percent of Fox News’ one-hour segments mentioned either Jankowicz or the board”https://t.co/OHlMvyvNxc
— Sam Stein (@samstein) May 18, 2022
Yes. Such “a wild stat.”
That is not what is wild here, Sam.
— Dr. Marcus Brody (@MarcusBrodyDr) May 18, 2022
Unless “wild” means something very different to Sam than it does to the rest of us.
The idea that the admin shut this down because Fox News spoke about it a lot is a take, I guess. https://t.co/ou0I0OrgdJ
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) May 18, 2022
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It certainly is a take. Though we’re guessing that our takeaway from Sam’s take isn’t the takeaway he intended.
Why was it only Fox News reporting that the person heading up the disinformation board trafficked in several instances of disinformation herself? Maybe you guys will figure this out someday. https://t.co/7KwyhJbD5i
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 18, 2022
Pointing out that Fox News, a media outlet, spent a great deal of time covering a story about a DHS board to be headed by a woman who believes she should get to be the arbiter of the First Amendment, is not the dunk Sam thinks it is. If anything, it’s a testament to the value that Fox News brings to the media landscape. Without their coverage of the Disinformation Governance Board and Nina Jankowicz, a lot of Americans might not have been aware of the very real threat the Biden administration intended to pose to our freedom of speech.
You seem awfully upset that a fundamentally dishonest person isn't managing supposed correction of misinformation. As a journalist, that is quite a position to take, no?
— Jason Hamby (@IPAzRGR8) May 18, 2022
As a Real Journalist™, it’s exactly the position you’d expect Sam to take.
Yeah, we should totally have ignored an actual Ministry of Truth being run by an outright ideologue and well-established partisan. Crazy right-wingers! Why don’t they love Big Sibling?
— Will Collier (@willcollier) May 18, 2022
Even more wild is how other ppl in the media were totally silent about it Sam
Government run 'disinformation' is bad and should have been considered bad by every media outlet
but they would help push an agenda and narrative so you stayed silent like a good little donkey https://t.co/ssBKqPkIkH
— Ahmed Al Assliken (@assliken) May 18, 2022
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