We had no operational authority or capability. Again, this was an internal working group that was meant to support and advise the operational components of DHS. And nothing could have been farther from the truth. JANKOWICZ: Well, there were a lot of folks, mostly on the conservative side of the spectrum, who said that the board was going to be a ministry of truth, a la George Orwell's "1984," that we were going to adjudicate what was true and false online and that I was a czar, a disinformation czar, a minister of truth. GROSS: What was the narrative? How was the board mischaracterized? And because, you know, the department didn't provide a ton of information at the beginning, folks created their own narrative, a scary narrative. It was about something much more anodyne, much more boring.
And I would have never taken a job that was all about that. We can't just fact-check our way out of the crisis of truth and trust that we face. You know, I've spent a lot of my career talking about how we can't just play what I call whack-a-troll to get out of our disinformation crisis. And the idea was to bring me in as an expert and work with the folks in the department, making sure they had access to best practices, helping them put good information out there and, frankly, making sure Americans were equipped with information that kept them safe and secure.Īddressing disinformation more broadly really isn't about labeling or censoring individual facts, which is what the narrative about the board was. DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, has about 250,000 employees and lots of different component agencies and departments, some of which have been doing work on addressing disinformation, let's say, about critical infrastructure or our voting systems, about the border, about natural disasters.
It was an internal working group that was meant to coordinate a very large department's work on addressing disinformation. The Disinformation Governance Board was widely misunderstood and mischaracterized. NINA JANKOWICZ: Well, thanks for having me, Terry. Let's start with the Disinformation Governance Board. She's also been a disinformation fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
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Nina Jankowicz is the author of the new book "How To Be A Woman Online: Surviving Abuse And Harassment, And How To Fight Back." Her previous book is titled "How To Lose The Information War: Russia, Fake News, And The Future Of Conflict." In 2016 and '17, she worked in Ukraine as a Fulbright fellow, advising the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on how to fight disinformation. This month, the board's work was suspended until further review, and Jankowicz resigned. She was also blitzed with social media posts harassing and threatening her. The board and Jankowicz immediately became the targets of disinformation campaigns, mostly coming from the right. Jankowicz was appointed to head this new board. In late April, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board, whose mission would be recommending best practices to counter disinformation related to homeland security. In the past month, she's been the target of both. My guest Nina Jankowicz is the author of books about political disinformation and the harassment of women on social media.