The host of CNN’s unaptly named Reliable Sources told viewers that the Biden Administration’s new Ministry of Truth was “common sense” and something that was only a big deal in the “Fox World.”
Host Brian Stelter made the comments while speaking with National Democratic Institute director Moira Whelan.
“Here in the US, there’s been an uproar recently about the Department of Homeland Security setting up what they call a Disinformation Governance Board,” said Stelter. “This has been mostly a Fox world story… I want to let people know what it is and what it isn’t, and there just has been a lot of right-wing uproar about what it is.”
She responded that the board is “meant to bring together people to coordinate a lot of the efforts inside of DHS, that means law enforcement… emergency services like FEMA, they’ve all been doing counter disinformation efforts for a while to give us accurate information about human rights abuses, but also about disasters and where people can get assistance.
The level of historical ignorance, sheer stupidity and corporate-serving malevolence required to believe the US Security State is trying to *combat* disinformation — rather than aggressively spread it — is so extreme that no words in the English language suffice to describe it: https://t.co/b93um3k0nx
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 1, 2022
“So coordinating that activity, making it speak with one voice, and being a stronger advocate to tech companies and engaging the public in academia, that’s really what they’re after.”
Stelter responded by saying that it sounded like “common sense,” but expressed frustration that when he Googles the new board, ” all I see is Joe Biden’s Ministry of Truth, and they’re gonna—there’s this incredible backlash to something that sounds like a basic government bureaucracy.”
Stelter, a CNN drone, is almost an exact description of what George Orwell describes in his book 1984, when he wrote that a member of the Ministry of Truth was a “He was a fattish man… of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms — one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended.”
“It is basic government bureaucracy,” said Whelan. “Around the world what we’re asking for governments to do is step up more, and to play a bigger role in advocating for people.”
“The big litmus test is, is civil society included, is the media included and so far everything we’ve heard about the board which is new and just started shows us that that is the intention, to be fully transparent and demand more from our government in terms of how they protect us from disinformation and enable us to have information that protects our country and advances our ability to survive in a major incident, for instance,” Whelan said.
