Biden and the Media’s ‘Anti-Disinformation Campaign

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

― George Orwell, 1984

For years the media, “fact-checkers,” and “anti-disinformation” initiatives told the public there was nothing wrong with Joe Biden. A few weeks ago, in the space of five minutes, they flipped. Rapid-onset dementia had struck the President and it was time for change.

The people who claim they can sort truth from fiction spent years lying despite the crippling obvious. What is more baffling is why so many people went along with it for so long. Was it fear? Complacency? Cowardice? An incredible level of discipline was enforced – that has thankfully now unraveled. Rather than debunking “misinformation,” Biden’s protectors often spread it.  

In August 2020 the Aspen Institute coordinated a Hunter Biden laptop pre-bunk exercise that sought to suppress a true story to protect Biden’s wayward son and shield the President from major corruption allegations. A swathe of major media and Big Tech participated in that exercise, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Twitter, Facebook, and many more. Claire Wardle, former director of “anti-disinformation” NGO First Draft (now the Information Futures Lab at Brown University) also participated.

In a letter allegedly organised by Anthony Blinken, 51 former intelligence agents claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was a “Russian information operation” and Facebook, Twitter, and others suppressed the story on their platforms. Almost everyone now admits the laptop was real.

Or take Biden’s claim that “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.” PolitiFact thought that may have been an “exaggeration” but reassured us that cases of the vaccinated getting Covid are “rare.”

The Party told you to reject the evidence not just of your eyes and ears, but your whole body.

However, perhaps the biggest lie was the years-long campaign to “debunk” suggestions that Biden was growing incapable of commanding the highest office in the land. PolitiFact was very diligent in “fact-checking” “cheap fakes” and other stories that alleged Joe Biden was senile, reassuring us that everything was fine.

The term “cheap fake” was coined by Britt Paris and Hunter Biden laptop denialist Joan Donovan. Donavan has long been a darling of the “anti-disinformation” field. 

In the words of Aspen Hunter Biden laptop pre-bunker Claire Wardle, the Biden cheap fakes are “the weaponization of context. It’s genuine content, but the context changes via minor edits. Anyone can be vulnerable with the right edit.” In fact, as recently as June 21 Wardle was carrying water for Biden. In a New York Times article that sought to debunk “misleading videos that play into and reinforce voters’ longstanding concerns about his [Biden’s] age and abilities,” Wardle explained that “This isn’t a new narrative, it builds on an existing one, which tends to be much more effective.” Yes, adding more true information to other true information tends to make an argument more convincing.

Or take Rebekah Tromble, Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs and the director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics at George Washington University. According to Tromble “Biden became a main target of deceptive edits.” “These clips draw on a common trope about President Biden that’s popular among his detractors: He’s old, bumbling, and senile, meaning he’s incompetent and incapable of doing this job.” His gaffes and inability to speak clearly are unrelated to his cognitive ability, and are instead because “Biden grew up stuttering.”

PolitiFact is a project of the Poynter Institute which coordinates the biggest network of fact-checkers in the world, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). IFCN is funded largely by Facebook but also by the “Craig Newmark Foundation, the Koch Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the National Endowment for Democracy, Microsoft, and the Washington Post.” This is not a small fringe “fact-checking” outfit; it is one of the leading organizations in the sector. 

Perhaps the name makes it clear – it is Politi(cised) Fact-checking. 

Newsguard, a “disinformation” ranking service that can punish a news site’s advertising revenue through its rating system, has also been active. Power Line, a conservative online news outlet, alleges they were contacted by Newsguard in 2021 about their claims of Biden’s cognitive decline. In an email, Newsguard asked:

We’ve noticed that the site has repeatedly stated as fact in its article[s] that Joe Biden has dementia, both during the 2020 election cycle and since he became president. Why does the site make this claim without providing credible evidence that he has dementia?

Newsguard’s approach is particularly concerning because of its ability to impact the revenue of media outlets, and due to its strong links to the State Department and intelligence agencies – its board includes former CIA Director Michael Hayden.

If all that fails you can always blame the Russians. EUvsDisinfo, a European Union project to “forecast, address, and respond to the Russian Federation’s ongoing disinformation campaigns” claimed reports of Biden being “senile” are “false” and are part of “pro-Kremlin disinformation.”

Mainstream media have also been a critical part of the lying machine, claiming recent videos that show Biden wandering off at a G7 event were “misinformation” or “cheap fakes” and are part of a concerted effort to “hammer the narrative that Biden is too old to be president.” PolitiFact also “fact-checked” the story with the usual line.

The list could go on and on and on but Matt Orfalea’s amazing “sharp as a tack” compilation puts the nail in the coffin. More “out of context” clips and “cheap fakes” according to the “anti-disinformation” “experts” no doubt.

What is the lesson? On one hand, censorship and suppression only work for so long. Reality will eventually catch up with you. However, it also tells us that a lot of people can pretend the emperor does have clothes, even when he is stark naked and half the court is screaming and pointing at the top of their lungs – also known as “spreading misinformation.” It seems there is an endless supply of “fact-checking” and “anti-disinformation” sycophants ready to bow and scrape before the mad king.

Ultimately it tells us just how corrupt the “fact-checking” and “anti-disinformation” industries are. Whilst there are an increasing number of people on the outside speaking up, internally cowardice and the silencing of critics have allowed a prolific level of corruption to grow. This is an across-the-board problem in the liberal and progressive spheres where pious bullies have shut down dialogue. This corruption has led progressives and liberals down a disastrous dead end. Barring a miracle, Trump is coming.

If there is any justice a reckoning is also coming for the “fact-checkers” and “anti-disinformation” “experts.”

Republished from the author’s Substack