Montage Opinions Editor Needs a Lesson in His Least Favorite Word: Misinformation
We at The Forum Newspaper have always had a great deal of respect and support for our fellow student journalists at The Montage. However, me and some of my fellow staff members have increasingly noticed and become exasperated with the contentious and uncontextualized claims published in the paper by Opinions Editor Jack Jursnich, which have only grown more egregious with time.
I don’t speak for the entirety of The Forum staff, but at first I was willing to consider Jursnich’s articles a simple case of difference in opinion. However, as I have investigated the claims and sources of his recent articles, I’ve come to believe that the contents of at least one of his most recent opinion pieces has risen to more than simply a difference in opinion, but is, in fact, riddled with errors, misleading statements, a lack of necessary context, and thus—though I know that Jursnich hates this term—misinformation.
In his article “Democrats Mad Over USAID Cuts”, Jack Jursnich argues that American tax money is being misused on foreign aid programs, and could be better used to pay off our country’s debts and make America as a country “the most prosperous in the world, with the abundance to help others.” I’m not necessarily writing to disagree with Jursnich on his perspective; rather, my concern lies in the programs he claims USAID funded, the source he relies on for these claims, and how he cites that source in his article.
In his second paragraph, Jursnich makes very bold statements about a selection of these supposed USAID projects, quoting from the White House website: “$1.5 million to ‘advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces’; $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala; $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt; Hundreds of millions to ‘support heroin production in Afghanistan’; $2.5 million for electric cars in Vietnam. The list goes on and on.” The White House webpage that he presumably gets this information from, though doesn’t name, is titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep”, published in February 2025. The White House article bears many claims brought by Jursnich, which he subsequently parrots without criticism or any additional context, despite the fact that sources that the White House cites itself contradict some of them.
The supposed “$6 million dollars to fund tourism in Egypt” is an overt misrepresentation of a $6 million aid deal for Egypt announced by USAID under President Donald Trump’s first term. The White House webpage links to an old USAID press release from December 16, 2019, citing it as evidence of this assertion; the link is now dead as of the time of writing, but the previous contents of the page can be seen on the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine. The release states that the money would be used to “increase educational opportunities and strengthen the livelihoods of the people of North Sinai.” It went on to explain that the initiative sought to “provide access to transportation for rural communities and economic livelihood programming for families.” The word “tourism” does not appear once in the press release.
The “sex change” claim, too, seems problematic. If you are to believe Jursnich’s representation of that project, a lump sum of $2 million was given to Guatemala exclusively for the facilitation of gender-confirmation surgeries. This is false, and even the White House webpage that Jursnich used as his source acknowledges that the money was also used for other things. The White House links to a Daily Caller article titled “Feds Dump Millions In One Latin American Country To Fund Sex Changes, LGBT Activism”, which describes the aid as a “grant from USAID to both engage in LGBT activism and to help provide ‘gender-affirming care.’” It says that the organization that was awarded the money was “specifically expected to ‘strengthen trans-led organizations to deliver gender-affirming health care, advocate for improved quality and access to services and provide economic empowerment opportunities,’ according to grant records,” quoting a description of the grant publicly available at usaspending.gov.
Jursnich, the White House, and, to an extent, the Daily Caller dramatize and accentuate this spending at USAID that they see as negligent by conflating gender-affirming care with “sex changes.” As someone who has received gender-affirming care for years, but has not received what would be considered a “sex change,” I intimately know the difference between these two things. The term “sex change” is a relatively outdated term, and is also considered by some to be offensive or inaccurate, referring generally to gender-affirming surgical interventions such as mastectomy, vaginoplasty, orchiectomy, or phalloplasty. However, gender-affirming care is not just surgery; the practice includes puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and other non-surgical interventions. These distinctions matter for a great many people, especially transgender people, who see generalizations and inaccuracies such as these being used to target and demonize genuinely important and life-saving care; regardless of what you may think of USAID and this grant specifically, a paid student journalist should be providing this context.
Lastly, the pretense that USAID spent “hundreds of millions” of dollars “to ‘support heroin production in Afghanistan’” is another assertion that stretches the truth in order to vilify a political target. The White House’s source for this claim is yet another link to a right-wing tabloid, Breitbart. However, even this Breitbart article, called “Feds: U.S. Taxpayer Funds Helping Irrigate, Fertilize Afghan Opium Funding Taliban”, states that the USAID project was “intended to deter farmers and traffickers from cultivating and trafficking opium,” the exact opposite of intending to support the trafficking of opium products, which is implied by the Breitbart articles’s subhead, the White House webpage, and Jursnich’s article. The piece, published in June 2018, criticizes the “at least $330 million in funding” from USAID between 2005 and 2008 that “‘inadvertently’ fueled the cultivation of the poppy crop.” While unfortunate and even negligent, it’s inaccurate to present supposedly supporting heroin production in Afghanistan as the intended or exclusive outcome of the funding, when, in reality, it was an unintended byproduct of failed American foreign policy.
Mistakes like these are the fundamental issue with reiterating the statements of a U.S. administration without verifying their accuracy first, and it’s the same reason I was told not to copy the work of classmates in grade school: if they get something wrong, you do too.
Admittedly, though, some of the initiatives listed by Jursnich and the White House seem to be somewhat accurately described. There does appear to be a $1.5 million grant to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities,” which is verifiable at usaspending.gov. I would be remiss, as inconvenient as it is, to not acknowledge the truths present in Jursnich’s article along with the falsehoods. I merely ask that he provides the same level of attention to detail to his articles, even when basic background research might make his point harder to argue.
Now, Jursnich’s perspective on the question of whether these programs are good or worth the money in any moral or political sense is not the concern of this letter to the editor. In fact, I’d hope to see some debate on these issues at The Montage, but I would like these debates to be grounded in good, honest reporting and not rampant misinformation.
I expect that Jursnich will dispute this label of misinformation, though. In another opinion piece of his, “Understanding Misinformation”, he argues against use of the word based on a definition of it that, also, appears to be an error. In the article, published in The Montage’s February 2025 issue, he contends that the term “misinformation” is overused and unfairly condemns certain political views without actually engaging with them or knowing the intentions of the people supposedly peddling it: “More often than not, these words are used as bad-faith insults that assume someone’s intent. If someone said that my article was ‘misinformation’ then they’d have to know or assume that my intention was to misinform people, but since that is not my intention, it’s a blatant overstep to just call it ‘misinformation’.” However, he seems to be confusing misinformation with disinformation—similar words, similar things, but distinct in a way relevant to Jursnich.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), misinformation is simply falsehoods and does not necessarily entail an intent to deceive. As they put it, “it’s just someone getting their facts wrong, which we do all the time.” Disinformation, however, is inaccurate information with the intent to deceive, which is what Jursnich is describing. FIRE’s explainer is, albeit, similarly critical of labels of misinformation and disinformation—especially when wielded by the government—however, they do acknowledge the crucial difference between the terms and conclude, “in a liberal democracy, there’s only one solution to the problems of misinformation and disinformation, and that’s an informed citizenry who can separate fact from fiction for themselves, without the heavy hand of government regulation.”
I ask that Jursnich, a paid student journalist, uphold this vision of an informed population and recognize, honestly, when he purveys misinformation, rather than eschewing the word entirely. To me, especially when Jursnich very clearly makes egregious editorial errors, it is a very negligent position for him in his role at The Montage to ignore real concerns of misinformation. The difference between misinformation and truth is the difference between getting a vaccine or not, storming the Capitol building or not, invading Iraq or not, and children’s hospitals receiving bomb threats or not. It’s important, especially for people in our positions, to recognize it.
I believe that journalists, even student journalists, even opinions editors, should hold themselves to certain standards of accuracy and context. I’ve accidentally published falsehoods myself before, and while writing corrections is not fun, it’s an important part of building trust and transparency between a news publication and its audience. I invite Jursnich to review his most recent articles and to submit necessary corrections on them for printing in a timely manner. To me, this is important to build confidence in The Montage, a publication that I and many others have come to hold in esteem.
– Vienna I. Austin, Student Editor of The Forum Newspaper
