There’s more Disinformation Warriors out there than we thought

This deep dive gave me the bends.

Today’s deep dive documents the extreme measures influential and elitist organizations have employed in recent years to combat “misinformation.” Of course, savvy Substacker readers understand these misinformation commandos are themselves the No. 1 spreaders of misinformation and disinformation. However, even I didn’t truly grasp how massive and coordinated the effort has been to control information that threatens the agendas of the statists.

This changed after I exchanged several emails with one of my subscribers, who happens to live in Washington state. In one of my emails I wrote:

“It seems to me that the Gates’ influence is very strong in your neck of the woods. I’m skeptical of a lot of comments from, say, officials, at the U of Washington …”

As it turns out, this reader (who wishes to remain anonymous) works for the University of Washington. Here’s what she shared with me:

“UW is as you say. At the beginning of the whole thing, the UW daily emails that all of us staff get started churning out articles on misinformation … I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

My correspondent included several links from press releases produced by the University of Washington’s “Center for an Informed Public” (CIP).

She also sent me a link to an article that documents how the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has pledged to make at least $300 million in grants to fund efforts to fight mis- and disinformation.

Well, I quickly put my Scuba gear on and did another deep dive. From hours of Internet research, I was able to flesh out enough information to make the following conclusions:

• That Orwell World we think we are living in … Trust me here. We’re living in it.

• The effort to counter misinformation and disinformation had clearly gone to the next level by 2019 - before Covid … which makes one wonder if “someone” knew what was getting ready to happen and that people like myself needed to be neutralized …. and pronto.

* Massive amounts of money have been spread across numerous organizations to purportedly fight misinformation, which really means neutralize the voices of any person who might challenge any of the establishment’s authorized narratives.

* The campaign to stop “misinformation” has been highly-coordinated and involves thousands of influential people and organizations. These people are working their plan. If any of these people have read Orwell’s 1984, they took it to be a vital instruction manual, not a warning.

The excerpts that follow might scare the daylights out of you. However, we probably all need to know how committed these enemies of free speech and true information really are. Because I couldn’t resist, I added my own comments. For article skimmers, I added plenty of subheads and boldfaced key lines of text.

Knight Foundation makes $300 million commitment to fight Disinfo

From a July 22, 2019 press release:

MIAMI - Today, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced a commitment of nearly $50 million in research to better understand how technology is transforming our democracy … Knight’s investment will fund new, cross-disciplinary research at 11 American universities and research institutions.  Funding for these research centers and projects are part of an unprecedented $300 million commitment made by Knight Foundation in February to strengthen journalism and democracy.

Quick Comment: These are commitments of $50 and $300 million … from one Foundation (I‘m not even getting into the massive “investments” made by the Gates Foundation.)

Grant-givers are certainly not trying to conceal their real motives. In a July 2019 press release, they spell them out. Here are four of the 11 grants that were awarded:

• Carnegie Mellon University: The Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cyber-Security ($5 million): To expand the study of information manipulation through online platforms; develop approaches to counter disinformation; and build and educate a community of scholars, practitioners and policymakers to foster an informed democratic society.

• The George Washington University: The Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics ($5 million): To help the public, journalists, and policymakers understand digital media’s influence on national dialogue and opinion, and to develop sound solutions to disinformation.  

• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: The Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life ($5 million): To examine the impact of the digital information environment — especially the influence of social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube — on democracy and other sociopolitical systems.

• University of Washington: Center for an Informed Public ($5 million): To study how misinformation and disinformation flow through information systems; how … researchers, educators, librarians and policymakers can intervene in these processes to foster a more informed society.

Who/What is the Knight Foundation?

      As I learned, the foundation was started by members of the Knight family who started what, briefly, was the largest newspaper chain in America. Old Mr. Knight started a paper in Akron, Ohio in 1903, which he passed down to his two sons, James and John, who rapidly grew the newspaper chain. When Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Newspapers in 1974, Knight Ridder became the largest newspaper chain in the country.

When the various Knights passed away, they left stock for the foundation that had been created in 1940. In the early years, the Knight Foundation did things like fund scholarships for future journalists and the local symphony orchestra in cities served by Knight newspapers.

Today, the Foundation has assets of more than $3 billion and has distributed grants totaling as much as $133 million a year. Gone are the days of focussing on symphony orchestras or building Little League parks. The War Against Misinformation and the effort to re-label censorship as patriotism are the philanthropies of our New Normal foundations.

FWIW, here are the Foundations’ goals …

According to the Foundation’s website, “We invest for impact in these areas.” Each area deserves a brief and scathing comment.

“First Amendment - We support efforts to safeguard press freedom and champion free speech.”

Comment: The Foundation “champions free speech” if said speech happens to support the authorized narratives. If “free speech” challenges any of these important narratives, it is “disinformation” that should be squelched and silenced - thus the tens of millions of dollars in  grants to fight “disinformation.”

Here we should define disinformation or mis-information for what it really is: Information that challenges or contradicts information provided by corporate journalists. Basically, news organizations (or the hedge funds that now own news organizations)  do not like it when someone disagrees with them as this constitutes a threat to their control and power.

“Local Media: We invest in models and methods that advance the practice of journalism, build trust, reach new and diverse audiences, and generate revenue solutions to ensure a sustainable future.”

Comments: “Trust” in newspapers has never been lower so the Foundation has been a colossal failure in “advancing” this  goal. The “revenue solutions” have also been a bust. If news organizations actually have a “sustainable future,” it will be because philanthropists like the Knight Foundation and Gates Foundation heavily subsidize these newspapers and make them bleed less money.

“Talent and leadership: We support the development of a diverse and inclusive network of journalists, technologists and news leaders accelerating change.”

Comments: The words “diversity” and “inclusion” are peppered throughout descriptions of the Foundation’s myriad missions.

For example, the “Communities” goal is to  “support equitable, inclusive engagement.” As I have learned in other investigative journalism deep dives, beware of people who constantly spout the the word “engagement.”

“Equity,” I’ve also come to believe, is code for socialism or communism.

While “diversity” of gender, race or sexual orientation is to be celebrated, “diversity” of thought or opinion cannot be allowed.

I definitely agree Foundation leaders are trying to “accelerate change.” Indeed, they’ve been wildly successful in this mission.

“Technology Innovation: … We invest in efforts that combat misinformation and increase access to accurate, reliable information in a rapidly changing media ecosystem. “

Comment: If we’re going to be accurate, the language about “increasing access to accurate, reliable information” should be changed to read: “Our goal is to block access to accurate, reliable information.”

I think I picked up on something here …

From my research, I learned that the Knight Foundation and the Gallup polling organization have partnered to produce several opinion surveys about journalism. This poll from October probably addresses the Foundation’s goal of ensuring a “sustainable future” for newspapers.

“Americans, particularly Gen Z and millennials, do show an openness to public funding and reliance on private donations as a way to support the news. More than half of Americans are open to government funding and private donations for news organizations to ensure the news is free for everyone …”

Re-stated: The people in our “democracy” aren’t going to pay for our “journalism” and advertisers have largely abandoned newspapers so the government and groups like the Knight Foundation are going to have to pool their resources to keep newspapers open.

For what it’s worth, “free news for everyone” sounds like a communist agenda to me.

The Knight Research Network is moving that needle ….

An Executive Summary I found  “evaluated the progress of the Knight Research Network (KRN). The progress is impressive (which is to say, scary as hell.)

Per the report, KRN now supports “a group of researchers located across 38 universities and 16 policy institutes.”

Aside No. 1: How many policy institutes are there in this country? Probably 200 too many. Aside No. 2: If we had no policy institutes, at least we could corral our Disinfo Warriors in our colleges, of which there are probably 500 too many.

“Launched in 2019, KRN has now seen $55 million in investment from Knight Foundation, matched by another roughly $40 million from institutions and funders. This assessment finds the network to be in a strong place: generating knowledge at a high rate and having an increasing level of impact in the policy sector.”

Findings over the period studied, mid-2020 to fall 2021, include:

• KRN had grown to roughly 620 persons (faculty, staff, students, and affiliates) involved, including a large pipeline of graduate students and 324 authors of research products.

• The 14 core institutional grantees generated 583 publications; core grantees served as expert sources in 1,358 news stories, providing a vital base of trusted expertise for media.

Comment: Okay already; I get it.  It’s “vital” we all trust the experts. And KWN gives us our “experts.”

• KRN members continue to brief policymakers in, for example, Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Science Foundation, the European Commission, the U.K. House of Lords, as well as other governmental bodies. Core grantees alone had nearly 600 speaking engagements.

Comment: This excerpt shows us that the grant recipients aren’t just supposed to spend their grant money on beer and greens fees, they are suppose to “brief” the world’s most powerful “policy makers,” which they apparently do.

• The network is developing diverse institutional voices who are becoming known as go-to centers of excellence on issues such as race and technology, social media and democracy, fact-checking and journalism.

  Comment: Now we know where all those damn “fact checkers” came from.

• KRN members are beginning to leverage the network by creating working groups and leadership committees, and they produced a collective blueprint for a path forward as a community of knowledge and practice.

Comment: They are beginning to “leverage the network!” Beware the words “leverage” and “network.” Also, the word “blueprint.” Re-stated: They’ve got a plan; they’ve had it for a while … and the SOBs are actually working the dang plan. Oh yeah, they’ve got the money to fund the plan.

Disinformation is a grave threat to ‘communities of color’

In April, the Knight Foundation announced that “that nine universities and nonprofits were awarded more than $1.2 million to work on projects to identify solutions that help news organizations and civil society expose and lessen the impact of disinformation on communities of color.”

For example, Texas Tech University received a grant “to educate and support Spanish-speaking populations across the South Plains to identify and challenge mis- and disinformation by connecting them to trustworthy messaging.”

Among the types of disinformation targeted by Knight Foundation grant recipients are “election denier disinformation,” “Climate change denier disinformation” and of course “Covid disinformation.”

Regarding the latter, skeptics of the official and authorized narrative were screaming at the top of their lungs in March 2020 that the lockdowns would be devastating to “people of color,” which of course turned out to be the case.

Despite this fact, the Knight Foundation wants this community to keep receiving their “trustworthy messaging” from the same sources that took away millions of jobs for “people of color’ and made “people of color” stay at home all day with their children who couldn’t go to school.

Aside No. 3: The lockdowns were devastating to people of non-color as well.

Washington students get to celebrate Misinfo Day!

More than 1,300 students from more than 70 schools across Washington state and beyond participated in recent MisinfoDay 2022 educational activities planned and co-presented by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

The program … included a misinformation-themed escape room game teams of students played, along with eight pre-recorded video workshops facilitated by experts from the CIP … that teachers used in classroom activities and can continue to use as educational resources.

They accuse you of doing what they do …

In an interview with KUOW Public Radio’s Kim Malcolm during NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Jalbert shared insights about the psychological aspects of sharing information, including the illusory truth effect, which, Jalbert said:

“refers to the phenomenon that merely repeating information makes it seem more true. This occurs for true information and for false information. If you’ve seen something before, you’re more likely to believe it when you come across it again. Before it was ever studied in a lab, demagogues knew that it worked, that just merely repeating something over and over was an effective tactic to spread that belief.”

Comment: Have misinfo students perchance considered “the vaccines are safe and effective” case study? Or the “It’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated” case study? Ah, who actually used this tactic?  Were they “demagogues” too?

***

During a May 23 special event at the University of Washington in Seattle, the Center for an Informed Public recognized the accomplishments of Data & Society‘s Disinformation Action Lab.”

I included this excerpt only because I wanted my readers to know there is such a thing as a “Disinformation Action Lab.”

Rapid-response teams always on call ….

The National Science Foundation, through its Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program,  has awarded a $3 million grant led by the University of Washington‘s Center for an Informed Public and supported by Stanford University to study ways to apply collaborative, rapid-response research to mitigate online disinformation.

Comment: So it’s not just the Knight Foundation that’s making the Center for an Informed Public rich - the National Science Foundation is doing its part too. The “rapid response” line came up several times in my research. Just like in school-shooter situations, we have to have a “rapid response” SWAT team when someone somewhere says the vaccines don’t work.

***

Since January 2020, the CIP has collected more than 11 billion tweets and more than 100 terabytes of social media data as part of its rapid-response mis- and disinformation research activities.  Take-away: This means I must be on their radar.

You can apply for a fellowship …

“We are seeking to hire an additional postdoctoral fellow, also to be hired through the iSchool, with a focus on health and/or climate misinformation.

Comment: Like I suspected, it’s much more than the Covid disinformation. For the rest of my life, they’ll be watching me for my climate misinformation.

Rapid Misinfo Response delivers counter assault to Joe Rogan ….

Apparently all that “rapid response” mumbo jumbo isn’t just mumbo jumbo.  Here’s an NPR affiliate and CIP misinformation commando who sprung into action when Joe Rogan got into hot water for spreading a few doses of Covid “misinformation.”

“Millions of people use the streaming platform Spotify for podcasts and music. And as the company's grown, it's signed blockbuster deals with scores of celebrities. But controversy over Joe Rogan, a darling for the company, has changed the public's tune in recent weeks. What's the impact of misinformation on a show like Rogan’s?

“Soundside talked with Jevin West, director of the Center for an Informed Public, about how misinformation spreads online and how Rogan's podcast fits into our disinformation landscape.”

Question: Did Jevin West’s shot across the bow of Joe Rogan and Spotify intimidate or muzzle these “disinformation conspiracy spreaders?” Some say yes; some say no. All I know is there is an army of Jevin West’s going to work every day trying to save the world from the threat of misinformation. If we let them, these would-be totalitarians will end up silencing “civilized discourse” for good.