“Disinformation Governance Board”

This is quote from the WP article that I put in my last post to answer this question.

quote:
"A textbook disinformation campaign
Experts say that right-wing disinformation and smear campaigns regularly follow the same playbook and that it’s crucial that the public and leaders of institutions, especially in the government, the media and educational bodies, understand more fully how these cycles operate.

The campaigns invariably start with identifying a person to characterize as a villain. Attacking faceless institutions is difficult, so a figurehead (almost always a woman or person of color) is found to serve as its face. Whether that person has actual power within that institution is often immaterial. By discrediting those made to represent institutions they seek to bring down, they discredit the institution itself."

She was a dummy target being used by the right to attack the administration.

Read the quote, here's the second paragraph again.

"The campaigns invariably start with identifying a person to characterize as a villain. Attacking faceless institutions is difficult, so a figurehead (almost always a woman or person of color) is found to serve as its face. Whether that person has actual power within that institution is often immaterial. By discrediting those made to represent institutions they seek to bring down, they discredit the institution itself."

The article was not about her anymore than the attacks were really attacks against her personally.

 

I'm not sure making one statement is "spreading disinformation." If so, then we need an entirely new term for what Trump and the Republicans do.

 

The article was critical of the Biden administration. It was not a puff piece. Calling it a puff piece because it didn't call Jankowicz a liberal Democrat is ridiculous. Jankowicz was not a controversial figure until the right started spreading lies about her in order to attack the Biden administration. She was just a little known figure. I'm sure the right couldn't care less about her either prior to her joining the administration. They probably don't care about her much more now that she's resigned from the administration.

 

Let's beat the dead horse just a bit more. I reread the article with the idea of pulling out of it the statements made by the article author about Jankowicz. This was about it.

quote:
In naming the 33-year-old Jankowicz to run the newly created board, the administration chose someone with extensive experience in the field of disinformation, which has emerged as an urgent and important issue. The author of the books “How to Be a Woman Online” and “How to Lose the Information War,” her career also featured stints at multiple nonpartisan think tanks and nonprofits and included work that focused on strengthening democratic institutions. Within the small community of disinformation researchers, her work was well-regarded.

That paragraph is not a puff piece, unless someone can provide any evidence that there are lies in the paragraph.

Other statements about her were quotes from other folks, like the administration. Now if the author had written them then I'd agree it was overly complementary regarding Jankowicz. That was not the case. The focus of the article was about how poorly the Biden administration rolled out the Disinformation Governance Board and then how poorly they did in defending the board against the disinformation attacks it is very reasonable to cover the little defense the administration did try to put up.

That article was not a puff piece.

 

A better title for the office would have helped.

 

Agreed, the title and roll-out was pathetically done. I assume that the administration just decided really soon after the announcement that fighting to keep the DGB was just not worth the trouble and they just decided to drop it. Therefore they ordered everyone in the DHS to not respond publicly to any of the criticism and just let it die.

I saw an interview of Jankowicz after she resigned. She said the intended purpose of the board was things like trying to handle the disinformation of the the folks that organize and facilitate the transportation of potential legal and illegal immigrants to the USA. They spread lies in order to increase their potential customers and it just makes the mess on the southern border much worse. So the DGB was supposed to get the word out in Central America and South America to counter this disinformation and tell people to not come to the southern border.

 

The Ministry of Truth lasted about as long as CNN+.

 

There never was a Ministry of Truth.

 

It was an interesting notion in this time of disinformation, but it was a lousy name. (What's with Democrats with dumb names and slogans? Like "defunding the police," when that's hardly what any of them really wanted to do.