Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced last week that DHS is setting up a Disinformation Governance Board to tackle misinformation, headed up by Wilson Center Global Fellow, Nina Jankowicz, who just two years ago said she didn’t even believe in the job she now holds.
During an Oct. 15, 2020 House hearing on the Spread of Online Misinformation, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) confronted Jankowicz about her belief that “misinformation is dismantling democracy,” as he recalled her saying, and that “governments are fighting disinformation,” which he “sensed was said approvingly.”
Himes spoke about how he grew up in Latin America in the 1970s and was all too familiar with governments that cracked down on misinformation. “I am violently allergic to the inclusion of the word information and government in the same sentence,” he said.
Jankowicz appeared to sympathize with Himes’s position on governments getting involved in such efforts.
“I totally understand your aversion to the idea that the government would fight back against disinformation,” she said. “The use of that term has been basically the foundation to some very draconian fake news laws in places like Russia or even Singapore. I do not believe that government should be in that business either.”
While Jankowicz's own beliefs and social media history have drawn much attention since the announcement she would be heading up the Disinformation Governance Board, the greater issue is the creation of the board at all.
Lawmakers, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), have demanded it be dissolved.
"It can only be assumed that the sole purpose of this new Disinformation Governance Board will be to marshal the power of the federal government to censor conservative and dissenting speech," he wrote in a letter to Mayorkas. "This is dangerous and un-American. The board should be immediately dissolved."