DHS to pause work of disinformation board
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will pause the work of a controversial board to coordinate efforts to battle disinformation, saying that while its work was “grossly and intentionally mischaracterized,” the “false attacks have become a significant distraction.”
Its leader, disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, will also resign from the department.
Designed as a way to coordinate efforts across the department with disparate missions, the Disinformation Governance Board prompted attacks from Republicans and civil rights groups alike.
While free speech and civil rights groups largely argued that DHS was not transparent enough in outlining the board’s mission to adequately evaluate it, the GOP was quick to borrow a phrase from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 in labeling it the Ministry of Truth.
Many also directly targeted Jankowicz, who was brought in to oversee the board, which was designed to ensure DHS protected civil liberties and free speech rights in disinformation efforts at agencies dealing with topics as varied as immigration and natural disasters that have already been underway for the better part of a decade.
“The great irony here is that the board was designed to protect against the very thing that the board is accused of engaging in,” one senior DHS official said on a call with reporters.
The board, created just three weeks ago, never formally met.
The Washington Post first reported the board would be paused.
While the board is on hiatus, its mission will be reviewed by DHS’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, which is led by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, a George W. Bush appointee, and former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, a Clinton administration official.
They have already been tasked with providing recommendations on how the department can garner public trust surrounding its disinformation efforts.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday also asked the council for a broader review of the board within 75 days, after which next steps will be determined.
The clunky rollout of the board – announced in a short blurb in Politico playbook – led to an immediate misfire for DHS. Few outside the agency were comfortable defending the board without more information, while Republicans sounded a civil liberties alarm and pored over Jankowicz’s earlier comments on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“The reaction to the creation of the board has been extreme in some quarters,” another DHS official said Wednesday.
“There have been gross mischaracterizations of what the board’s work would be. And there have been grotesque personal attacks and the reaction has candidly become a distraction to the department’s important work in addressing disinformation that threatens homeland security.”
–Updated at 2:12 p.m.
Source: TEST FEED1
