The Arizona Supreme Court launched a Task Force on Countering Disinformation in 2019 that is raising concerns. It is the first state court system in the country to establish one. The task force has issued two reports with recommendations since its launch.
The task force members include some partisans, and none of them appear to be conservative.
One of them is Scott Ruston, a research professor who directs Arizona State University (ASU)’s Center on Narrative, Disinformation, and Strategic Influence. His background includes applying his expertise to “counter violent extremism and counter violent extremist ideology research contexts, including: analysis of extremist narratives.”
“If the courts aren’t saying what’s happening and explaining why judges make rulings in particular ways, then that’s fertile ground for people to basically lie about it and make claims that are untrue,” Ruston told The Arizona Capitol Times about the task force in February 2021. “And not only are they untrue, but they are malicious.”
The article said Ruston (pictured above, left) concluded that “disinformation actors seek out social wedge issues around which they can erode the public’s faith in political institutions, whether that’s the judiciary, the legislature, the education system, the press or the executive branch.”
In an interview published by ASU, Ruston said people should “use fact-checking sites like Poynter and Politifact to add insight and context.” Both of those sites are left-leaning.
Another task force member is Joe Hengemuehler, the chief communications officer for the State Bar of Arizona. His Twitter feed is full of retweeting Democrats and Democratic talking points. He is a strong proponent of wearing masks and getting the COVID-19 vaccine. During a meeting, task force member Frederic Bellamy, an attorney, said Sean Hannity is disinformation.
Dawn Gilpin, an associate professor with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU, is a task force member who also reveals her left-leaning side in tweets. She praised Changing Hands used bookstore, which refuses to carry conservative books and shared a guide to avoiding gender bias in writing. Furthermore, Gilpin (pictured above, right) retweeted a professor who tweeted, “There’s a long history of why female faculty, esp female faculty of color, should be addressed as Dr or Professor by everyone until they say otherwise.”
The task force is utilizing resources on disinformation from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). NCSC lists several types of disinformation, including four “even more dangerous political themes.” The first two involve elections. The first one is “[t]he justice system ignores voting irregularities and fraud allowing elections to be stolen from certain candidates.” The second is “[t]he justice system tips the electoral map in favor of a particular party.”
