A supposedly “objective” commission established to combat disinformation and “information disorder” turns out to be made up of mostly left-leaning individuals, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.
The Aspen Institute created the Commission on Information Disorder in January to “examine the nation’s public information crisis,” and was given $3.25 million in funding from the Craig Newmark Philanthropies, according to the report.
“America faces a crisis of information on multiple fronts. Disinformation is not just a news or social media problem. It can be literal life and death, as we are seeing daily amid this pandemic and after last week’s events at the Capitol,” Christopher C. Krebs, the founding director of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a January press release announcing the new commission. “We can’t ignore this problem without risking a pretty significant breakdown of democracy and civil society. Addressing and minimizing the threat from mis- and disinformation in daily life will require bringing everyone together—government, the private sector, and civil society—and I look forward to having the chance to do that at the Aspen Institute.”
The commission is made up of 18 members including Krebs, journalist Katie Couric, Skoll Foundation President Marla Blow, Prince Harry, former Texas Congressman Will Hurd, Kathryn Murdoch, wife of James Murdoch, and daughter-in-law of Fox Founder Rupert Murdoch, among others.
The Caller investigation found that most of the commissioners had either been involved with left-wing causes or donated to candidates on that side of the aisle, according to the report.
Murdoch, for example, donated $500,000 to a PAC that allegedly spread pro-Democratic propaganda and fake news reports in swing states, the report said.
“For any study on disinformation to be credible, it must take a non-partisan approach which reviews the spread of disinformation from all political stripes and causes,” said a letter sent to Aspen Institute President and CEO Daniel Porterfield by the conservative American Principles Project. “Early indications leave us skeptical that the commission can meet this test.”
The former legislator Hurd is the only Republican on the commission, which the APP letter said was just window dressing for its left-wing bias.
“What it looks like is the typical progressive playbook of ‘Let’s pretend we aren’t on bias, let’s pretend we’re non-partisan, we’ll include a token Republican who’s not really conservative to say that it’s bipartisan,'” APP President Terry Schilling said in the report. “This should be rejected on its face.”
The Daily Caller said the Aspen Institute did not respond to requests for comment.
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