Bill Thompson: Accurate or untrue? You choose, not the govt

As extended as we’re cracking down on people and tips we really do not like – bye-bye Trump tweets, bye-bye Parler – how about a crackdown on morons in Congress?

Just take Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – you should!

Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, suggests what this country needs is a “media literacy” fee to come up with a way for the government to stifle what the New York congresswoman calls “disinformation and misinformation” functioning rampant in the media.

“We’re likely to have to figure out how we rein in our media atmosphere so you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation,” she reported.

Ocasio-Cortez floated the thought during an Instagram Dwell dialogue Jan. 12, indicating she feared for her existence for the duration of the prior week’s Capitol riot and blaming media misinformation for contributing to the violence.

“I do assume that numerous associates of Congress in some of my discussions have introduced up media literacy because that is part of what took place below,” she stated. “It’s just one factor to have differentiating thoughts, but it’s another factor totally to just say issues that are wrong, so that is something that we’re seeking into.”

The issue in this article, other than the obvious issue that AOC hasn’t read through or heard about the Very first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is that a person person’s misinformation is some other person’s truth of the matter. Ocasio-Cortez says we can have differing views but we cannot say factors that are phony. Regretably, as I have discovered from yrs in the impression business, persons who disagree with your feeling are generally inclined to dismiss your feeling as falsehood.

Nancy Pelosi claims Donald Trump is outrageous. I say Pelosi is crazier than Trump. I say AOC is an fool. I’m certain AOC and her supporters would say that is not accurate.

Is anyone lying below, or do we have just a difference of impression?

Hyperbole is not intended to be taken practically and it is guarded underneath the cost-free speech/no cost push provisions of the Constitution. Trump’s promises of fraud in the presidential election strike most realistic persons as preposterous and untrue. But if that is what Trump believes, he has a proper to his opinion. The way to counter his claims is by furnishing details to the contrary – which the mainstream media have performed to a fault.

We only can not make it possible for the govt, or a governing administration-selected fee, to decide what is real and what is not. If AOC doesn’t know that she requirements to go back again to the significant university in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.,  that unleashed her on the globe in 2007 and get herself some remedial instruction in civics.