Cofounder of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public Kate Starbird, a self-described “misinformation specialist,” and other activists who consider themselves online narrative curators recently saw their complaints amplified by CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
The liberal news network presented Starbird as a victim of conservative criticism and a defender of the truth, but neglected to provide important background information about the self-described expert, including the fact that she is a partisan who has accepted funding from the Biden administration and is a defendant in a censorship lawsuit that is still pending.
“A lecturer at the University of Washington and the president of a disinformation research organization founded before the 2020 election,” according to “60 Minutes,” was how to introduce Starbird.
The babbling scholar bemoaned to interviewer Lesley Stahl that X has not addressed or taken seriously over thirty percent of the recommendations made by her censorious group — “and on the bulk of those, they placed labels.”
X, formerly Twitter, only responded to 30% of the notes from researchers flagging misinformation in posts, says Kate Starbird, the leader of a misinformation research group. https://t.co/yCfxH64hAU pic.twitter.com/71SwTl4yUe
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 24, 2024
She further implied that conservatives have a stake in undermining her fact-checking efforts and have attempted to frighten her and her staff by claiming that they are disproportionately the ones spreading “misinformation” online.
Stahl declared, “The goal of this effort against you is to discredit you so that we will not believe you.”
“Yes, without a doubt. Furthermore, it is intriguing that some of the same individuals who promoted falsehoods about voting fraud are now attempting to discredit those who are attempting to solve the issue, Starbird added.
Based in part on Starbird’s statements made during the show, “60 Minutes” implied afterwards that although conservatives lament online speech suppression, they also attempt to “chill the research” of kind academics like Starbird.
The liberal news outlet failed to disclose that Starbird is a radical partisan, a contributor and grantee of the Biden administration, and that she has worked with the Biden Department of Homeland Security to stifle speech that the establishment deems unacceptable.
According to The Daily Caller, Starbird was the driving force behind narrative-curing research that received $2.25 million in August 2021 from the National Science Foundation. “Study strategies to utilize collaborative, rapid-response research to minimize internet misinformation” was the initiative’s declared goal.
After receiving the grant, Starbird released the following statement: “This research will evaluate ‘rapid response’ methods for communicating about disinformation at a pace on par with the dynamic of the challenge, with the goal of working to advance scientific understanding of online disinformation.”
Jim Hoft from the Gateway Pundit and Jill Hines, co-leader of the conservative Health Freedom Louisiana group, who repressed criticism of mask wearing on Facebook, sued Starbird last year, naming the singer as a defendant. The case Murthy v. Missouri, which is currently before the US Supreme Court and involves the Biden administration’s attempts to control American content online, also makes reference to Starbird.
Starbird and other members of her group were allegedly participating in “perhaps the greatest mass surveillance and mass censorship campaign in American history—the ‘Election Integrity Partnership’ and ‘Virality Project,'” according to Hoft and Hines’ lawsuit.
The UW lab of Starbird received the aforementioned $2.25 million grant, according to the complaint, “only months after Starbird’s lab aided in censoring the Biden Administration’s political enemy during the 2020 election.”
Starbird was a member of the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of the Infrastructure Security and Cybersecurity Agency. The CISA task group “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation.” appears to have included her as its main member.
In the case of Murthy v. Missouri, the Department of Homeland Security’s CISA is among the elements of the Biden administration accused of infringing Americans’ First Amendment rights when they are online.
The Foundation for Freedom Online’s executive director, Mike Benz, posted a Starbird video last year that showed users how to delete or edit narratives on Twitter.
During her appearance on “60 Minutes,” Starbird repeated many of the talking points put forth by the Biden administration in an effort to maintain its reliance on social media platforms for the online censorship of dissident voices.
Starbird remarked, “It is ironic that some of the same folks who are trying to discredit scholars that are trying to study the problem are also the ones that propagated voting fraud falsehoods.”
The bespectacled scholar is a big admirer of the guy in the White House and supports the Democratic administration’s crackdown on unwanted speech online.
According to The Daily Caller, Starbird contributed to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
According to Federal Election Commission records, Starbird has contributed significantly to ActBlue and other leftist groups, in addition to signing checks for the Biden team and the Biden Victory Fund.
The caller said that when asked for comments, “60 Minutes” did not reply.
In response to Starbird’s interview, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) wrote, “Missouri v. Biden revealed this.” “Misinformation researchers” are an integral element of the extensive censorship network. No tax money is going to these would-be autocrats.”
America First Legal quoted Trump advisor Stephen Miller as saying, “Irony Alert: CBS is guilty of flagrant misrepresentation in this interview. They refer to Kate Starbird as their “expert,” but they fail to mention that Starbird is a defendant in our case, which claims that there was a massive conspiracy to stifle speech and deny Americans their basic constitutional rights.”
