The liberal media viscerally hate anything the Trump administration is doing to defund the federal government pushing leftist ideology and squashing conservative counterpoints. One major field has been "misinformation research," in which professors equate conservative arguments with falsehoods.
In the Biden years, "misinformation" experts at major universities worked with the federal government and Big Tech platforms to prevent apparently under-educated Americans from accepting conservative arguments. The National Science Foundation issued hundreds of grants in this field, and now that they're being canceled, the leftist media are freaking out.
On "CBS Mornings Plus" June 4, co-host Adriana Diaz sounded the alarm: "The fight against misinformation just got a lot more difficult as the U.S. government slashes funding for programs meant to fight it." They brought on as their expert Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University professor and president of the American Association of University Professors. They presented him as some kind of objective expert, which he is not.
CBS did not ask about how supposed "misinformation" sometimes "evolves" into regular information. For example, the notion that the COVID-19 virus emerged from a Chinese lab, or that the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic.
At least co-host Tony Dokoupil threw one question at Wolfson about the conservative view: "Todd, the administration would argue, has argued that colleges have broken so far to the left that all the research they do on so-called misinformation is really just code for squashing Republican talking points and elevating liberal right-speak. What do you say to that?"
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Wolfson bluntly said the right-wingers are ignorant about what goes on at universities.
"They have no idea how the academic enterprise works. Look, scholars who are doing research do not want to create research that's not verifiable. And the way research works is: Somebody does research, somebody else comes along after them, they check that research," he claimed. "No one is here with a partisan agenda. That's not how research on misinformation, disinformation or research on cancer and vaccines works. they're the ones that are actually blatantly lying about the research project in this country in order to move forward their own misinformation."
Feel free to laugh at the argument that it's ignorant to think university professors favor Democrats in their donations or in their classes. A quick visit to Wolfson's X page makes you roll your eyes at his line, "No one is here with a partisan agenda."
Wolfson is a raging radical who likes to smear his opponents as "fascists," including Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.). It's apparently "nonpartisan" to be on the extreme left.
Over video of an ICE arrest in Tennessee, "nonpartisan" Wolfson tweeted, "This country is cruel and disgraceful! And the Christian nationalists think they are religious. If it's religion it is worshipping the devil."
Last year, Wolfson told the website Inside Higher Ed he wants to make AAUP "a fighting organization" after he called GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance a "fascist." But we're told conservatives "have no idea" about political tilt against conservatives on campus!
It's no surprise that liberal Democrats in TV network news are upset that their leftist radical friends on campus might not be supported any longer by federal "misinformation" grants. They are all seeking the same goal: information dominance.
These people are all suspicious of Republicans, who infuriate them by failing to accept their superior political logic. Republican voters get their "news" from "untrustworthy" sources and thereby endanger "democracy."
But the biggest misinformation of all is that these people are "objective" or "nonpartisan" in their approach. To borrow from their terms, that's a Big Lie.