Disinformation purveyor and former CNN anchor Brian Stelter recently hosted a panel titled “The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation” at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday. Instead of discussing genuine truth-seeking, the panel was far more preoccupied with lamenting about Trump, demonizing the political right, and rebranding censorship as “public safety.”
While many of the panelists claimed they wanted to protect free speech and expression, their policy prescriptions for combating disinformation showed us very clearly that this wasn’t the case. According to panelist and New York Times journalist Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, “the disinformation question maps basically to every other challenge that we’re grappling with as a society, and certainly the most existential among them.”
What is Sulzberger’s answer to the “existential” disinformation “challenge”? Censorship.