Last week, The Atlantic staged a gathering of journalism "elites" under the guise of addressing the claimed problem of false narratives in media to preserve our nation. Entitled the University of Chicago's "Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy Conference," you only needed to glance over the assembled luminaries to see just how rigged this effort would be. That it was derailed by their own ineffectiveness was both a foregone and amusing conclusion.
The prominent name to be seen on the panels was Brian Stelter, and the irony of his name being associated with a disinformation conference is enough to cure anemia. Also appearing was David Axelrod, and just to round out the deluded casting, the deposed GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger was also in attendance. Much of the panels were hosted by the managing editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.
It would be understandable for you to look at this reportorial rogues gallery and think that this conference was going to be a "How-To" seminar, and it took little time for the paradox to emerge. Goldberg opened things by declaring that The Atlantic was an ideal outlet to hold such a gathering because it is not a partisan news outlet. Credit to Goldberg for keeping a straight face during this welcome speech. Recall that this is the same outlet that years ago hired Kevin Williamson only to promptly fire him days later because the liberal readership could not tolerate the idea of a conservative on the staff.
Of course, by now, you likely are aware of the dust-up involving Stelter during one panel. During an audience question session, Christopher Phillips was given the microphone. Phillips, a freshman at the University of Chicago, writes at the right-leaning campus publication The Chicago Thinker. He challenged Stelter about CNN's record of disinformation, rattling off a string of examples from Russian collusion to Jussie Smollett. Stelter attempted a joke about it being lunchtime, then deflected mightily by suggesting the idea of CNN being a purveyor of false news is a right-wing talking point.
Stelter's desperate denial of CNN's behavior was hardly the lone black eye at this conference. During another panel, an editor from The Chicago Reader challenged Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic about the Hunter Biden laptop story being snuffed by the press in the fall of 2020. Applebaum responded in what might be the purest form of journalist elitism by stipulating the story was not worthy of being covered because she declared it to be unimportant.
WATCH The Atlantic’s @anneapplebaum refuse to answer @RealDSchmidt's???? question about Hunter Biden’s laptop during @UChicago’s “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference! pic.twitter.com/1OgXBBiiI0
— The Chicago Thinker (@ThinkerChicago) April 6, 2022
Her response is enraging on two fronts. In stating the story was "irrelevant," she ignores a central premise in that story – one brought up in the question – which was that a poll reveals a significant number of voters said they would have changed their vote for Biden had they been made aware of the story properly. The second aspect cuts directly to the basis of this conference.
The Hunter story was buried using the charge that it was "a Russian disinformation" effort. This has been proven now to be a lie. There has never been a single piece of evidence to support this false claim, and the infamous intelligence letter that was used as a shield has now become a toxic document for all involved. This detail should have been a primary focus of these experts had this conference been set up as it had been sold. Instead, this was a whitewash effort all around, and the embarrassments continued for the participants.
Adam Kinzinger, the contrarian Republican who has been currying affections from the Democrats and the press regarding Donald Trump, not only, is a questionable name for upright truth delivery, but he has regularly displayed his willingness to push false facts. Over the past month, he has been caught repeating fake narratives on social media regarding the Ukraine invasion, but he also has been trying to earn plaudits for attacking Tucker Carlson. He was then caught repeating provably false quotes attributed to Carlson – on the eve of the disinformation conference.
Goldberg as host is itself a laughable pretext, given Goldberg is the man with a track record of fake reporting. He has a famed false reporting history going back to his Iraq war coverage rooted in lies. He pushed out the fake story of Donald Trump avoiding a European cemetery visit that had been debunked years earlier, then went on to make things completely laughable as he summed up what had transpired during his mis-info propaganda conference. He addressed the way they had been completely exposed by arbitrarily declaring that the accurate reports of the false narratives from the panelists were themselves – you can guess: his judgment.
"I think one darkly humorous but inevitable measurement of our success is that our disinformation conference has been the subject of disinformation campaigns on social media already. So yeah, congratulate yourselves for that. We'll study that at next year's disinformation."
This displays the true intent of this conference. They desire to completely recalibrate what is considered approved facts and to rewrite the history of all the panelists to have their records now entered into the record as verifiably accurate. They were presented with proveably accurate facts about their own fraudulent reporting, and the conclusion is that doing so can be classified as "disinformation."
The attempt was to build a Tower of Truth comprised of their approved version of the facts. It has been exposed instead as being a house of cards, made entirely of those dealt from the bottom of the deck.