Introducing the Censorship Files

What you can expect to find in Racket's FOIA library, opening today. Why we targeted publicly-funded "anti-disinformation" programs, which are misnamed

“CENSORSHIP FILES,” STARRING: Clockwise from top left, Katie Couric, Kate Starbird, Nina Jankowicz, and Clint Watts

Last June, in the Washington Post, University of Washington academic Kate Starbird complained that outside queries about work in the anti-disinformation field were taking a toll. “The political part is intimidating, to have people with a lot of power in this world making false claims, false accusations about our work,” said Starbird, her quote nestled between plaintive photo portraits.

“Right now, there’s a lot of bad actors who are using freedom of information requests to harass academics working at public universities,” added Alice Marwick of the University of North Carolina. “And that wasn’t something we saw until a few years ago.”

In the last year, newspapers, magazines, and even broadcast programs like 60 Minutes have been aggressively arguing that civic-minded “anti-disinformation researchers” are suffering under assault by outside investigators, who misuse tools like congressional subpoenas and the Freedom of Information Act to slow or halt their crucial work. The “bad actors” are almost always described as “right-wing activists,” “conservatives,” “Trump’s allies,” and so on, who attack beleaguered protectors of the informational realm out of “bias” and bad faith.

Bullshit. These are publicly funded researchers who’ve spent years developing tools for suppressing or deamplifying the speech of the very people paying their salaries. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to use FOIA to find out what these programs do or how they’re funded, but a look under the hood makes clear why they want things that way: