Why Is the New York Times Ignoring the Disinformation Governance Board?

Yesterday, the Washington Free Beacon’s Joe Simonson noted:

I just checked — the Times still hasn’t even acknowledged the formation of the DHS’s new Ministry of Truth. If you still regard mainstream journalism as an earnest, if left-leaning, profession that seeks to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable “without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved,” that discrepancy might be confusing. But it makes sense if you realize that today, America’s elite legacy media essentially function as an activist extension of institutional progressivism. Its job is not to hold the powerful accountable, but to serve as the attack dogs of the most powerful players in American life. It is an enforcement arm of the socio-political hegemony of the elite Left — the Public Relations team for the alliance of academia, Big Tech, the corporate HR bureaucracy, the culture industry, and the Democratic Party.

Just read some of the lines from last week’s Politico magazine feature, “The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter”: “Washington reporters have long considered the role of White House correspondent to be the crown jewel of American political journalism,” Politico laments. “But during the age of Biden, a perch inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room has become something altogether different. It’s become a bore.” Why? To be sure, “the dulling down of the White House beat is not due to a lack of reportorial talent in the room.” Of course not. “Rather, what is happening is the fulfillment of a central Biden promise. Running for office against Donald Trump . . . he pledged to make Washington news boring again. And, well, mission accomplished sir.” That’s followed by an absolutely jaw-dropping quote from an anonymous White House reporter:

“Jen [Psaki] is very good at her job, which is unfortunate,” one reporter who has covered the past two administrations from the room said. “And the work is a lot less rewarding, because you’re no longer saving democracy from Sean Spicer and his Men’s Wearhouse suit. Jawing with Jen just makes you look like an asshole.”

“For the vast majority of Americans, and even plenty of people in Washington, it’s all been a relief — the minute-by-minute churn of presidential politics is no longer so omnipresent and existential in their lives,” Politico subsequently notes. Of course, the Biden administration has been far from a relief for the “vast majority of Americans” — just look at the septuagenarian White House occupant’s approval ratings, which are now lower than Trump’s at a similar period in his presidency. But when progressives hand-wave about American majorities, what they mean is people who agree with us. It is a doctrine of progressive faith that the American people are on their side; if progressivism is ever and always on the “right side of history,” then it would be incomprehensible to conclude otherwise. Hence, every conservative victory is chalked up to cheating, ignorance or “disinformation.”

So why would the Times note the formation of a Disinformation Governance Board in the federal government? Those are their people. After all, the conservative media outlets that will undoubtedly be targeted by the new anti-disinformation push are the legacy media’s primary epistemic competitors; the right-wing news ecosystem, of which Tucker Carlson is a primary representative, is the preeminent threat to mainstream journalists’ power, prestige, and control of the national political narrative. The obsession with Carlson, and the silence regarding the Biden administration’s erosion of civil liberties, is a feature, not a bug. To use the fashionable left-wing neologism, “The system isn’t broken. It’s doing what it was designed to do.”