Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in an Instagram post that she and several other members of Congress were exploring the possibility of setting up a commission to “rein in” the media, whom she accuses of spreading “disinformation” in the lead-up to the Capitol attack.
Since I don’t think she’s talking about stifling the New York Times or Washington Post, I wonder who she has in mind to “rein in”?
This was the same Instagram interview in which she admitted that she feared for her life during the Capitol attack, so it’s not surprising that the media would ignore her suggestion for censorship and lead with her life being in danger.
But her suggestion that the United States Congress needs to form a commission to rein in the news media has gone largely unreported,
There’s absolutely a commission that’s being discussed but it seems to be more investigating in style rather than truth and reconciliation.
[…]
I do think that several members of Congress in some of my discussions have brought up media literacy because that is part of what happened here.
Here’s our “expert” on media literacy.
I don’t want to hear these coup-supporting GOP talk about “blue lives” ever again.
They never cared about safety.
Never cared about “law & order.”
And certainly do not care for democracy.They only care for power, & invited chaos in an effort seize it. They are unfit to serve. pic.twitter.com/3XOVOZEolY
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 13, 2021
How easily could a government commission become a censorship board?
We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.
It’s one thing to have differentiating opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to just say things that are false, so that’s something that we’re looking into.
What is “disinformation”? What is “misinformation”? What is “false”? What AOC is ignoring is that her “truth” might not be the same as your “truth.” And she wants a government commission to “investigate” which is which?
As a practical matter, we can already envision from “lived experienced” — as a progressive might say — how sanctioning the state to adjudicate the veracity of journalism can be abused.
We need only point to our media “factcheckers,” journalists with political and ideological biases who have regularly, and arbitrarily, labeled completely debatable contentions as falsehoods, while either ignoring or justifying scores of other unsettled contentions. Are these the arbiters of facts who will be manning the government commission appointed by those storied truthtellers in congress?
A recent example was the suppressing of the New York Post’s blockbuster story of Hunter Biden’s business deals and whether or not Joe Biden, as vice president, profited from them. An alliance of Big Tech and left-wing media made sure that either the story was suppressed or “debunked” by “fact-checkers.”
No doubt AOC’s “commission” would help facilitate bringing to heel the conservative media. I don’t know about you, but I’d almost prefer a “truth and reconciliation commission” to a media star-chamber.
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