LOS ANGELES—The LA County Board of Supervisors has passed a motion to crack down on “misinformation” and “disinformation” regarding the county’s COVID-19 protocols and vaccines, in a 4–1 vote on March 1.
The motion will direct county departments to create a “communication toolkit” that includes a series of countermeasures to tackle “misinformation” spread both online and countywide.
“The 2020 Presidential Election and the fabrication about the stolen election that followed, as well as additional information during the pandemic, and given us two really frightening and vivid illustrations about the danger and demonstrably false information actually made our pandemic more deadly,” Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said at a March 1 board meeting.
To identify “misinformation,” the county will partner with “trusted sources” of information, such as “libraries, hospitals, schools, parks and ethnic/mainstream media news,” according to the motion.
Once identified, the county will “take countermeasures” against such “misinformation” by educating the public through a “pilot education program.” The county will also promote elected officials as “trusted sources of election information.”
The communication toolkit will draw on guidelines created in the National Association of Secretaries of State’s #TrustedInfo2022 initiative, a statewide public education effort to battle “misinformation,” and the nonprofit Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder, a collective of policy experts aiming to “prioritize the most critical sources and causes of information disorder.”
Supervisor Kathryn Barger was the only dissenting vote on March 1, saying that the “ACLU explicitly noted we should be wary of proposals at risk harming online expression.”
“Freedom of expression is at the core of democracy,” she said at the board meeting. “Throughout the pandemic, our departments have found ways to overcome misinformation [and] disinformation ... using their knowledge as subject matter experts without infringing on those rights.”
But Supervisor Hilda Solis, who authored the motion, disagreed and said the intent of this motion is to put “factual information out there.”
“Because many times even our own departments may not be clear in their own messaging to our communities,” she said.
Others in the community submitted public comments both in support and against the motion. Professor Richard L. Hasen of the University of Irvine’s law and political science department wrote a letter in “strong support” of the motion.
LA resident Chris Kretzschmar sent a letter to the board saying the most worrisome part of the motion is suggesting that LA residents should be “relying on ‘trusted institutions such as libraries, hospitals, schools, parks and ethnic/mainstream media news to identify and expand measures against misinformation.’”
“Who is vetting these ‘trusted institutions?’ Who decides what is misinformation/disinformation?” the letter read.
