October 5, 2016 | No Comments
Anytime a network microphone is live, disinformation can pour into the nation’s living rooms. It poured freely Tuesday night during the vice presidential debate, as Mike Pence repeatedly disinformed viewers about the positions taken and the statements made by his running mate, Donald Trump—at times flatly denying Trump had said things he clearly had said. All the fact-checkers rose to bust him in their postmortems, but Pence largely got away with it; commentators generally gave him the win in the debate.
Pence’s personal disinformation campaign is part of something much bigger this year. Political campaigns have always peddled bogus rumors and told lies in hopes that their mendacity will take root and hobble their opponents. These efforts don’t usually go very far because most reporters—even those of the pliant, gullible sort—resist being used by sources who traffic in lies.
But in campaign 2016 these disinformation efforts have become rampant, and they are gaining currency as never before thanks to the pick-up they’re getting from traditional media. Traditional media once shied from repeating stories they hadn’t confirmed, or that hadn’t been confirmed by their peers. But as so much of cable television has devolved from news to discussion about what people read in the news, that’s changed. It’s not that the old news gatekeepers aren’t doing their jobs. Most are. It’s just that the fences have been breached.
Earlier this week, Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly provided a prime-time example of how to inject unsubstantiated rumors into the news flow. In a brief segment on her show, she allowed Fox News correspondent Trace Gallagher to promote three spurious Clinton rumors. One was about Hillary Clinton’s health, picked up from a story in the always dubious Daily Mail online, which was an excerpt from Ed Klein’s new book Guilty as Sin. The second was a two decades-old-plus supermarket tabloid allegation, resurfacing in a Drudge Report headline, that Bill Clinton had a son by an Arkansas prostitute. And the third cited a report from the super-dubious True Pundit website citing “sources at the State Department” alleging that while serving as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton asked of Julian Assange, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”
“OMG,” Kelly said twice after Gallagher’s segment, making little effort to arrest the chunky stream of likely hokum flowing like an open sewer through her show. Now, all three of these tales may be eventually confirmed. The smart journalist never says never. But until there’s more to go on than hearsay, it’s bad practice to repeat somebody else’s tips as if they’re news.
Other choice bits of disinformation inserted into the news stream this season include the allegation that Clinton and President Barack Obama were charged with terrorism in Egypt, that the 2016 election is rigged and that a Hillary Clinton indictment is around the corner (usually sourced to Assange, who claims to have evidence that will end in her jailing). The main disinformation perpetrator, of course, has been candidate Donald Trump, who churns a wretched wake of unproven accusation where he speaks. One of his “tells” is prefacing a new line of BS with the statement, “A lot of people are saying ….” Writing in the Washington Post, Jenna Johnson explains:
Trump frequently couches his most controversial comments this way, which allows him to share a controversial idea, piece of tabloid gossip or conspiracy theory without technically embracing it. If the comment turns out to be popular, Trump will often drop the distancing qualifier—“people think” or “some say.” If the opposite happens, Trump can claim that he never said the thing he is accused of saying, equating it to retweeting someone else’s thoughts on Twitter.
Trump implied earlier this year that Ted Cruz’s father helped Lee Harvey Oswald whack President John Kennedy. He has called the suicide of Vince Foster “fishy.” He sought to link Obama to terrorists. And this is only the beginning. As documented by POLITICO and other outlets, Trump’s market of moonshine has gotten only worse in the general election: He has relished in placing half-baked and slanderous comments about Hillary Clinton into the public record, and the media, especially the cable news channels, have released his sham allegations into civilized society.
As dangerous as Trump’s disinformation is, fact-checkers in the press have challenged it all the way. The Snopes website has bird-dogged it, too. Any literate, rational and inquiring person can see the campaign’s disinformation demolished by making a few clicks. But the political disinformation storm can be intercepted only if readers are determined enough to double check the crap produced online, repeated on TV or propelled out of Trump’s mouth. A fact-check accomplishes little if few people read it.
Some of the disinformation can be easily dismissed by considering the source. RT and Sputnik, sponsored by the Russian government, distinguish themselves with low truth-value stories. (See this New York Times story about Russian disinformation at work in Europe.) True Pundit and Alex Jones’ Infowars routinely run debunkable stories. But they provide an echo chamber that can eventually amplify stories to the mainstream conversation. They’re helped by a pro-Trump network of Twitter accounts—often “bots”—that has given lift to many illegitimate stories this year, praising Trump and knocking Clinton, as Ben Schreckinger reported last week in POLITICO. “In the case of pro-Trump bots, a favored tactic is to muddy the waters around the candidate’s most controversial statements by broadcasting contradictory messages about them,” Schreckinger writes. The technique, he continues, is favored by Putin’s Russia to spread disinformation. (For a genuine through-the-looking-glass feeling, check out this Alex Jones Infowars segment alleging that Clinton is running a disinformation campaign against Trump.)
What is the press to do? Obviously the fact-checker must soldier on. But the real weak point is cable TV news, which either allows the false stories to be repeated or allows Trump to spew without correcting him in real time. Brian Stelter has distinguished himself during the campaign by cracking on Fox News Channel for amplifying disinformation stories. He ripped Fox’s Sean Hannity in August for running bogus stories about Clinton’s health. (Hannity returned fire.) In August, Stelter also battled the disinformation beast by denouncing Hannity and Fox for promoting Trump’s rigged election thesis. Trump is “trying to delegitimize our democratic process without proof,” Stelter said.
As 2016 shapes up to be the disinformation campaign, there may be no easy and elegant way to stem the flow of fallacious TV stories, Web pieces, Trump speeches and Twitter blasts in these digital times. The dirty tricks of disinformation have always been part of politics and won’t be banished by decree. Nor will calls for a news quarantine of suspected disinformation work. Besides, news quarantines are antithetical to journalism. Good journalists have traditionally combated disinformation with real information, always knowing that in taking down the phony you run the risk of inadvertently giving it a boost. It’s a paradox we must live with, because the alternative of just letting candidate and information outlets to do their thing unchallenged is much worse.
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The Clinton true believers at Media Matters for America have aggressively critiqued anti-Clinton disinformation. Send your critique via email to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. My email alerts have been known to contain misinformation. In the early a.m., my Twitter feed has the whiff of disinformation (or at least that’s what a lot of people are saying!). Meanwhile, my RSS feed stocks nothing but information.