Homeland Security Dept. wants to monitor journalists, media influencers worldwide

The Department of Homeland Security is poised to begin monitoring journalists and media influencers through a comprehensive database, according to stories that made national news over the weekend of April 6.

DHS, according to a posting on FedBizOpps.gov, is advertising for “media monitoring services.”

According to a report on Forbes.com (https://bit.ly/2HaC36G), the plan is to gather and monitor the public work of journalists and media influencers worldwide, not just within the United States.

The Forbes article says DHS is aiming to track more than 290,000 global news sources as well as social media in over 100 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian, for instant translation into English. “The successful contracting company will have ‘24/7 access to a password protected, media influencer database, including journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc.’ in order to ‘identify any and all media coverage related to the Department of Homeland Security or a particular event,’” the article reads.

The database will be brows-able by “location, beat and type of influencer,” and for each influencer, the chosen contractor should “present contact details and any other information that could be relevant, including publications this influencer writes for, and an overview of the previous coverage published by the media influencer,” Forbes said, and one aspect of the media coverage to be gathered is its “sentiment.”

Tyler Q. Houlton, DHS spokesman, took to Twitter on April 6 to criticize those who believe such a database is a tool to crack down on the free press.

“Despite what some reporters may suggest, this is nothing more than the standard practice of monitoring current events in the media. Any suggestion otherwise is fit for tin foil hat wearing, black helicopter conspiracy theorists,” he tweeted.

The announcement comes amid attacks on the press by President Donald Trump. He calls mainstream media outlets “fake news” and on April 8 called the Washington Post “made up garbage” after they published an account of friction between the president and his chief of staff, John Kelly.

“The Washington Post is far more fiction than fact. Story after story is made up garbage - more like a poorly written novel than good reporting. Always quoting sources (not names), many of which don’t exist. Story on John Kelly isn’t true, just another hit job!” Trump tweeted.

Freedom House, an international watchdog group, says they see Trump’s attitude toward the press as hostile “toward the fundamental principles and purposes of press freedom.”

“No U.S. president in recent memory has shown greater contempt for the press than Trump in his first months in office. He has repeatedly ridiculed reporters as dishonest purveyors of “fake news” and corrupt betrayers of the national interest. Borrowing a term popularized by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Trump has labeled the news media as ‘enemies of the people.’ His senior White House adviser described journalists as “the opposition party,” Freedom House wrote in their 2017 press freedom report. “Such comments suggest a hostility toward the fundamental principles and purposes of press freedom, especially the news media’s role in holding governments to account for their words and actions—as opposed to the government holding the media to account. They also raise concern that the U.S. president may, in effect, be offering a license to political leaders elsewhere who have cracked down on the media as part of a larger authoritarian playbook.”