The State Department’s fight against disinformation is under attack

A Republican-led campaign against researchers studying disinformation online has targeted the most prominent U.S. government agency dedicated to countering propaganda and other information operations by terrorists and hostile countries.

The agency, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, is facing a barrage of accusations in court and in Congress that it helped social media giants — including Facebook, YouTube and Amendment.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and two conservative digital news outlets last week became the latest plaintiffs to sue the department and its top officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. The lawsuit said the center’s work was “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the nation’s history.”

The center faces a more existential threat in Congress. Republicans in the House of Representatives this month blocked a proposal to reauthorize the center, which began in 2011 to counter the propaganda of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State. The center is a small agency, with a permanent staff of 125 people, including many contractors, and a budget of $61 million. The center coordinates government-wide efforts to track and expose propaganda and disinformation from Russia, China and other adversaries. With its mandate set to expire at the end of next year, the center is now operating under a shroud of uncertainty, even as its supporters say there is no evidence to support the charges against it.

If Republicans hold their ground, as a core bloc in the House of Representatives seems determined to do, the center would fall apart amid two major regional wars and a wave of elections in 2024, including the US presidential campaign.

James P. Rubin, the center’s coordinator since early this year, disputed allegations that his organization censored Americans’ online comments. The center’s legal mandate, he said, was to “focus on how foreign adversaries, especially China and Russia, use information operations and malign interference to manipulate world opinion.”

“What we don’t do is examine or analyze the U.S. information space,” he said.

The center’s fate has become entangled in a much broader political and legal campaign over freedom of speech and disinformation, which has gained enough traction to reach the Supreme Court.

A lawsuit filed last year by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana accused numerous government agencies of persuading or coercing social media platforms to remove content that spread what officials called false or misleading information about the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 presidential election and other issues.

A federal court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in July, temporarily banning government officials from contacting officials with the companies except on matters of law enforcement or national security. An appeals court largely upheld the ruling in September but limited its scope, excluding several agencies from the lower court’s ban on contacts, including the Global Engagement Center.

“There is no evidence that State Department officials flagged specific content for censorship, proposed policy changes on the platforms, or took similar actions that would reasonably bring their conduct within the scope of the First Amendment’s prohibitions,” wrote a panel of three judges. the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the Missouri case next spring, a decision that could have major implications for government and free speech in the Internet age. The campaign against researchers studying the spread of disinformation has already had a chilling effect on universities, think tanks and private companies, which have been smothered by subpoenas and legal fees.

The effort has been sparked by disclosure of communications between government officials and social media companies. Elon Musk, who published a selection of posts after purchasing Twitter, since renamed X, called the Global Engagement Center “the worst perpetrator of censorship and media manipulation by the US government.”

‘They are a threat to democracy’ wrote Mr. Musk, who reinstated numerous accounts that Twitter suspended for violating the platform’s guidelines on misinformation, hate speech and other content. (Over the weekend, he allowed the return of Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist who for years falsely claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.)

The Global Engagement Center has been criticized before – not for censorship, but for having little effect at a time when global propaganda and disinformation have become more harmful than ever with the rise of social media.

a report The State Department’s inspector general said last year that the center suffered from a hardened bureaucracy that limited its ability to manage contractors and failed to establish a strategic planning process that could measure its effectiveness. The department accepted the findings and promised to do something about it, the report said.

Mr. Rubin, who was appointed late last year, has sought to strengthen the center’s core mission: challenging disinformation from foreign adversaries seeking to undermine American democracy and influence around the world.

In September, the center released a sweeping report accusing the Chinese Communist Party of using “deceptive and coercive methods” in an attempt to control the global information environment. A month later, it released two reports on Russia’s covert influence efforts in South America, including one intended to pre-empt an operation before it got off the ground.

The center has been in regular contact with the social media companies, but the appeals court ruled there is no evidence its officials coerced or otherwise influenced the platforms. Federal regulations prohibit any agency from engaging in propaganda domestically.

“It is not our job to decide what is true or false,” Mr. Rubin said, adding that the center’s role was to identify “the hidden hand” of foreign propaganda.

However, since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January, the Global Engagement Center has faced numerous subpoenas from a subcommittee investigating the “weaponization of the government,” as well as depositions in lawsuits and requests for records under of the Freedom of Information Act. .

During public hearings, Republicans in the House of Representatives have repeatedly threatened not to renew the center’s expiring mandate and have questioned department officials about Americans whose accounts have been suspended. “It’s up to you to change your mind,” Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, told Daniel Kimmage, the center’s chief deputy coordinator, at a hearing in October.

Democrats in both houses of Congress and Republicans in the Senate reached an agreement to extend the center’s mandate as part of the defense authorization bill — one of the few bills that could actually pass this year — but Republicans in the House of Representatives succeeded in removing the provision from the broader legislation.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed last week in Texas argued that the department had effectively circumvented its legal restrictions by providing grants to organizations that routinely identify sources of disinformation in public reports and private interactions with social media platforms. The organizations include the Global Disinformation Index, a non-profit organization based in London; and NewsGuard, a New York company.

The two news organizations that joined Texas in filing the lawsuit – The Federalist and The Daily Wire – were both listed in the December 2022 Global Disinformation Index. report because they run a high risk of publishing disinformation. (The New York Times was among the sources rated as having minimal risk. The Times’ website, the report said, “was not always free of bias but generally avoided language and hostile stories.”)

The center’s grant to the group – a total of $100,000 – went to a project focused on disinformation in Southeast Asia. But the lawsuit alleged that the support harmed the media “by depriving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speeches – all as a direct result of Defendants’ unlawful censorship program.”

Josh Herr, general counsel for The Daily Wire, said the outlet may never know “the full extent of the business lost.”

“But this lawsuit is not about quantifying those losses,” he said. “We are not claiming any compensation. What we are seeking is to protect our rights, and all rights of publishers, under the First Amendment.”

Nina Jankowicz, a researcher who briefly headed a disinformation advisory board at the Department of Homeland Security last year before the controversy scuttled her appointment and the board itself, said the State Department was responsible for the study’s impact that it did. not financing it was absurd.

Ms Jankowicz said the campaign to combat disinformation as a form of censorship had proven politically effective, even when the evidence did not support the claims.

“I think every American, when you hear, ‘Oh, the government, the White House, is setting something up to censor Americans, even if there’s not a shred of evidence behind it,’ your ears perk up,” she said. . “And it’s really hard to refute all of that.”