You’d think a person earning their bread and butter by holding a title as ridiculously worded as, “the European Commission’s Vice President for Values and Transparency” – would show a little humility, if not common sense, to balance out the PR act.
After all, this is not a role held at a non-profit or an NGO – this is a highly paid job financed by EU taxpayers. And really – really? – does the European Commission need nothing short of a full commissioner, not to mention a VP, to supposedly work every day, on something so nebulous and ever-changing as, “EU’s values and transparency”?
Either way, as taxpayers who earn their money through real work are compelled to finance this sort of thing, they might expect that the unelected Brussels-based elites would at least pretend to show some respect toward them.
For example, toward their democracy-given right to free speech?
Apparently not by Vera Jourova, the EU’s values and transparency pony: she recently took a trip to the US – no doubt considered timely by both the EU and the current White House, bearing in mind the elections looming over them. And the key point she made over and over was against free speech and in favor of even more online censorship.
Jourova’s “values and transparency” work this May in the US was to hold meetings with Big Tech CEOs, legacy media, California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom, and – deliver a speech at Stanford.
Wherever she opened her mouth, she was big on pushing for “fact-checking,” and “protecting the children” – and there was a decent amount of Donald Trump bashing, too.
“Disinformation” was a keyword, as the perfect – or so the EU believes – guise to hide demands for even plain censorship.
Jourova’s message was not simply to perpetuate the already present censorship on social platforms, but to make sure more is happening: one of her encounters was with X CEO Linda Yaccarino.
The “problem” with X is that its level of submission to governments these days has dropped significantly, compared to what the platform did when it was called Twitter.
But even Google, according to Jourova, can “do more” – the company’s CEO was told to “improve online information space (… engage in ) intensive cooperation with the expert community and media.”
That would be, legacy media. Speaking of, is the EU market-driven – or a controlled socialist economy, like those 50-some years ago?
Hard to tell. Here’s Jourova’s take:
“Independent media are more important than ever for democracy, to help counter disinformation and deep fakes. But their financial sustainability is also challenged by online platforms and AI.”
