The problem of government disinformation goes back to the Cold War days.
The claim that government can publish lies “just to influence foreign hostile governments” with zero blowback to the American public was absurd then and is insane now.
Censorship then became necessary to protect the existing disinformation.
This was totally predictable and was of course predicted by books like Orwell’s “1984”.
Operation Mockingbird. This time it has full government approval.