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She joined DHS to fight disinformation. She says she was halted by... disinformation
She joined DHS to fight disinformation. She says she was halted by... disinformation
May 21, 20225:00 AM ET
Shannon Bond
Three weeks: That's how long it took for the Department of Homeland Security to go from announcing a board intended to combat disinformation to suspending it. In those three weeks, both the Disinformation Governance Board and its leader, Nina Jankowicz, came under relentless and sometimes vicious attack from right-wing media and Republican lawmakers.
DHS initially shared few details about the board's function and purview, leading to speculation and fears it would police online speech. As the board's public face, Jankowicz became a lighting rod. A well-regarded authority in online disinformation, who has studied Russian information operations and advised governments including that of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she was accused of being a Democratic hack.
Conservatives seized on her tweets and past public statements as evidence of her partisan bias. The attacks got personal: Jankowicz has been barraged with abuse, harassment and death threats.
---snip---
How has this experience changed the way you see the challenge of disinformation?
It's made me a lot less optimistic about the American response to disinformation. This needs to be a wake-up call that things aren't getting better in this country by ignoring them. That our democratic discourse, the way it is so polarized and so, again, childish and not focused on the real threats, leaves us vulnerable to attacks from without and within. And our adversaries know that.
That's what I worry most about. I'm coming out of this experience pretty pessimistic. But I'm still committed to the work, because I don't want my son to grow up in a world where you can't tell truth from fiction and where you can't trust anything anybody says.
I'm going to keep working on it as long as I have the energy to.
May 21, 20225:00 AM ET
Shannon Bond
Three weeks: That's how long it took for the Department of Homeland Security to go from announcing a board intended to combat disinformation to suspending it. In those three weeks, both the Disinformation Governance Board and its leader, Nina Jankowicz, came under relentless and sometimes vicious attack from right-wing media and Republican lawmakers.
DHS initially shared few details about the board's function and purview, leading to speculation and fears it would police online speech. As the board's public face, Jankowicz became a lighting rod. A well-regarded authority in online disinformation, who has studied Russian information operations and advised governments including that of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she was accused of being a Democratic hack.
Conservatives seized on her tweets and past public statements as evidence of her partisan bias. The attacks got personal: Jankowicz has been barraged with abuse, harassment and death threats.
---snip---
How has this experience changed the way you see the challenge of disinformation?
It's made me a lot less optimistic about the American response to disinformation. This needs to be a wake-up call that things aren't getting better in this country by ignoring them. That our democratic discourse, the way it is so polarized and so, again, childish and not focused on the real threats, leaves us vulnerable to attacks from without and within. And our adversaries know that.
That's what I worry most about. I'm coming out of this experience pretty pessimistic. But I'm still committed to the work, because I don't want my son to grow up in a world where you can't tell truth from fiction and where you can't trust anything anybody says.
I'm going to keep working on it as long as I have the energy to.
The whole piece: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/21/1100438703/dhs-disinformation-board-nina-jankowicz
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