Who Defines Disinformation?

• Date: 22 June 2022
• Author: Orient, Jane M.
• Published date: 22 June 2022
• Author: Orient, Jane M.

Just after Elon Musk bought Twitter, promising more freedom, the Biden administration announces a new government agency to "protect" Americans and the world from harmful disinformation, especially about the COVID pandemic.

It is called the Disinformation Governance Board, although some would call it the Minitrue, short for Ministry of Truth, the ministry of propaganda in George Orwell's novel 1984. The abbreviation differs from KGB by only one letter.

There is the First Amendment, of course, but there is precedent for disregarding it, especially in war. Newspapers were shut down and editors arrested for expressing anti-war views, at the time of the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln and World War I by Woodrow Wilson. President Wilson even suppressed information about the raging 1918 influenza pandemic so as not to interfere with the war effort. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Wilson's Espionage Act and its 20-year prison terms. Wilson even demanded that the Librarian of Congress report the names of those who ordered certain books...