The charity arm of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., is set to host a left-wing “misinformation” researcher who is under fire for helping to lead a group that suppressed disfavored speech on social media before the 2020 election.
University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, who testified to Congress last year that she personally advised social media companies on content moderation policies, will appear virtually on April 24 for a discussion hosted by the National Press Club Journalism Institute about “successful efforts by organizations to grow news and information literacy and to help the public fact-check the information it interacts with,” Beth Francesco, the group’s executive director, told the Washington Examiner. The nonprofit organization “promotes a free press, the cornerstone of a free society,” it asserted on its tax forms filed last November.
That the National Press Club Journalism Institute is giving Starbird a platform is a window into how the researcher has gained influence in the nation’s capital after playing a sizable role in the Election Integrity Partnership, or EIP. The initiative collaborated with the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and other partners as it flagged “misinformation” reports to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms in 2020, data show. And the EIP, which has drawn the ire of Republican lawmakers over First Amendment concerns, even targeted certain content posted by Donald Trump while he was the president as well as content posted by conservative websites, such as Newsmax and the Babylon Bee, the House Judiciary Committee said in a report last year. The report said the EIP censored various right-of-center journalists, including Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations, who has extensively covered President Joe Biden and his family, as well as efforts by Democrats to accuse Trump baselessly of colluding with Russia.
“Everything Starbird did flies in the face of the First Amendment and a free press,” said Rob Carson, a longtime Newsmax radio show host who told the Washington Examiner that social media platforms in recent years suppressed his posts on COVID-19 and other topics. “You’re allowed to have an opinion on anything, even if it’s wrong, but the government decided they would decide what is wrong and destroy ‘misinformation.'”
“Kate Starbird is a government apparatchik,” Carson added.
Starbird will be joined on the Zoom panel by Axios editor Delano Massey, University of Arizona journalism professor Mollie Muchna, manager Henry Hicks of PEN America’s Free Expressions Programs, and Tamoa Calzadilla, editor of a website called Factchequeado, which “is an initiative created to counter mis and disinformation within the Hispanic and Latino communities in the United States,” according to a press release.
Francesco declined to comment on whether the National Press Club Journalism Institute plans to ask Starbird about her role with the EIP or a since-dissolved committee under the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which GOP lawmakers have accused of facilitating censorship of U.S. citizens. Moreover, the executive director declined to comment on whether her organization will ask Starbird about both the EIP’s alleged role in censoring media outlets, and also Starbird’s recent testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.
“As an expert in online rumors and disinformation campaigns, groups often invite Dr. Starbird to share her insights with them,” Michael Grass, a spokesman for the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, which Starbird leads, told the Washington Examiner. “She’s looking forward to speaking with the National Press Club Journalism Institute about her work.”
News of the forthcoming appearance comes on the heels of Republicans criticizing CBS for not disclosing Starbird’s work on the DHS-housed panel or the fact that her group has received millions of dollars in federal grants when the network hosted Starbird on 60 Minutes in March. In the interview, Starbird said, “It’s interesting that the people that pushed voter fraud lies are some of the people that are trying to discredit researchers that are trying to understand the problem” of misinformation.
Starbird often frames criticism from Republicans of the EIP or her work in connection to thwarting “disinformation” or “misinformation” as, rather, attacks on researchers seeking to stand for truth. But Republicans have grown increasingly frustrated with efforts by Starbird and other researchers to crown themselves arbiters of truth when it comes to content on social media, particularly because the speech suppression campaign typically targets the Right and, in some cases, opinions that Democrats find inconvenient or wrong.
“The Censorship Industrial Complex is made up of not only governments but prestige granting institutions such as think tanks, media, and academia that all trade fake legitimacy back and forth,” said Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation.
“It’s ultimately a circular exercise of self-citation laundered through different shingles,” Howell told the Washington Examiner. “These people trade on their fake legitimacy for the shared cause of achieving political ends through directionally applying the junk science of diagnosing misinformation. Paradoxically, these self-proclaimed misinformation experts end up only identifying themselves as people to be ignored.”
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According to Protect the Public’s Trust, a watchdog group investigating conflicts of interest and coordination between public and private groups, there are legitimate concerns about the U.S. government’s work to thwart alleged falsehoods in tandem with private researchers.
“Efforts such as the ‘Twitter Files,’ lawsuits, and Freedom of Information Act requests have revealed the Censorship Industrial Complex’s attempts to address what they term ‘misinformation,’ which have almost exclusively focused on suppressing speech of alternate outlets,” said Michael Chamberlain, the watchdog’s director.