The Biden administration’s short-lived disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz is back in the headlines this week after filing a defamation suit against Fox News. The New York Times quickly came to her defense, uncritically reinforcing her claim to be an innocent victim of conservative ire.
Jankowicz, the former head of the Disinformation Governance Board, filed the case on Wednesday, alleging that Fox spread lies about her that generated threats to her safety and damaged her career, the Times reported.
The lawsuit asserts that Fox hosts denigrated her personally, using abusive language to portray her as a malicious lunatic. She alleges that Fox’s coverage “resulted in immediate online harassment and threats,” that continued even after the board disbanded. The suit comes on the heels of Fox’s recent settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, and was filed in the same Delaware state court system. (RELATED: Former Biden Disinformation Czar Sues Fox News For Defamation)
The notion that Fox damaged Jankowicz’s career options is patently absurd. The “abuse” prompted immediate sympathy from the Left and elevated her to the status of national hero among the corporate media. It gave her certified victim status to promote her latest book, “How To Be A Woman Online.” The Times interview, with a cover photo of her staring boldly into the distance, is case in point.
Fox News was hit on Wednesday with another defamation lawsuit, this one from a specialist in Russian disinformation who said the network promoted lies about her that generated serious threats to her safety and harmed her career prospects. https://t.co/AB9SnyZ0qL
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 11, 2023
The interview took the lawsuit’s claims at face value, assuming little room for legitimate criticism of Jankowicz or her work. For example, the Times accused conservatives of “falsely portray[ing]” Janowicz as part of an “Orwellian bid to control the speech and thought of ordinary Americans.” The Times went on to assert that the board had “no direct authority to affect speech.” After establishing Jankowicz as a noble victim—a “onetime Fulbright scholar” devoting her career to fighting “online attacks against women”—the second half of the piece rails against Fox’s “promotion of falsehoods,” broadly speaking.
The Times’ coverage of the suit offers a masterclass in language manipulation. According to the Times, Jankowicz’s role was to “monitor and defend against disinformation from foreign agents seeking to influence elections . . . and those seeking to undermine the government’s public health and safety efforts.” This assumes an objectively agreed upon definition of both functions, but the past several years show how this is far from the truth. (RELATED: Disinformation ‘Experts’ Are Keeping Quiet After Latest Twist In Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal)
Of course, it is now well known that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not “Russian disinformation,” despite an orchestrated attempt by numerous intel officials to portray it as such. Similarly, it is now clear that the government’s “health and safety efforts” to impose mask mandates, among many other such examples, were all a pointless lie. When the liberal establishment has the power to arbitrarily and untruthfully define terms, and then weaponizes the federal government to enforce them, the goal is indeed an “Orwellian bid” to control what American’s think.
Even Janowicz’s attorney, Rylee Sommers-Flanagan, has a history working as chief legal counsel to Democratic Governor Steve Bullock against the Trump campaign. She issued a letter to Fox this week, requesting the network preserve all records of communication about Jankowicz, the Times reported. Following the playbook established in the Dominion case, the point is create a media firestorm around Fox’s internal deliberations, de-legitimizing their coverage, and by extension any conservative outlet that follows the major network’s editorial lead. (RELATED: Former Tucker Carlson Producer Withdraws Lawsuit Against Fox News: Report)
Together, Jankowicz’s suit along with the Times’ fawning coverage of it, reveals that neither care about fostering a healthier media environment. The goal is quite the opposite—to create a dystopian environment where “truth” is subjective and can be frivolously altered to achieve political ends. Playing the victim card helps to obscure this from the public.
Jankowicz affirmed on Wednesday that, “this sort of disinformation and hate campaign doesn’t have a place in American media or American politics; that this isn’t what we stand for.” In its long-winded critique of conservative media, the Times assumes the same posture. Yet both are fine with a poisonous political landscape, as long as they get to set the terms.