Bob Unruh played servile stenographer for a Republican activist in Colorado in an April 15 WorldNetDaily article:
A spokesman for the Denver Republican Woman organization is warning that a new plan in the Democrat-run state legislature in Colorado is dangerous to a free society.
Because it would end up in speech controls not heard of since … “1984.”
That would be the novel “1984” by George Orwell, whose dystopian plot included a “Ministry of Truth,” absolute speech controls, and very little truth allowed.
Republican Women vice president Ashley Troxell, in fact, has written at Complete Colorado, “Novelist George Orwell’s vision of government-controlled thought and speech has taken a disturbing turn in Colorado with the introduction of Senate Bill 24-084. Sponsored by Senator Lisa Cutter and Representative Lorena García, both Democrats, the ‘Attorney General Duties to Prevent Mis- & Dis-information’ reads like a page straight from Orwell’s classic novel ‘1984,’ and should send shudders down the spine of freedom-loving Coloradans.”
She cited the Democrats’ demands for state-monitored “curriculum” that would be intended to “facilitate productive and honest conversations” on various issues.
“On the surface, this may seem like a well-intentioned effort to combat misinformation. But Orwell warns about the perils of government-controlled thought and speech. Echoing the tactics of the Thought Police in Orwell’s novel, the bill represents a troubling encroachment on the fundamental freedoms that form the bedrock of our democracy,” she explained.
[…]“We cannot allow our lawmakers to twist rhetoric in service of an Orwellian agenda. The people of Colorado should see Senate Bill 84 for what it is: a blueprint for thought control, cloaked in the language of public safety. Orwell’s vision has become our reality, and we cannot afford to let our fundamental freedoms be gradually chipped away,” she said.
None of that is true. As the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition reported, the bill would simply fund a study, not create a “ministry of truth.” It quoted an assistant attorney general pointing out that the bill “does not put the attorney general in a position to decide what is or is not mis- or disinformation or what is a fact. It will not put him in a position to decide who can post what and when. What it will do is allow us to study the relevant laws, both state and federal, statutory and constitutional, to understand what is the legal framework when looking at this issue.” He added that the proposed study would be like “a law review article … because it will allow us to understand the First Amendment impacts, of what they may or may not have on misinformation. There is no predetermined outcome here.”
Nowhere in his article did Unruh bother to tell readers this information — even though just a few days earlier, his employer tried to scold the Associated Press for allegedly refusing to report the “other side” of stories. Apparently, Unruh and WND have exempted themselves from the journalistic standards they demand from others.