“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
America and Misinfo/Disinfo
For years now, American pundits have put forward the proposition that we must needs create some form of “Civics” curriculum to inoculate our minds against disinformation. And year after year, no “mind vaccines” arrive. As AI advances at a breakneck pace and all sorts of crackpot theories about Hunter Biden’s laptop multiply online at bacterial velocity, it might be instructive to examine how we are doing in combatting the rot in the information ecosystem.
So — Why hasn’t a “Civics” curriculum sprung up? Does America simply lack the sustained will to fortify itself against the great enemies of our 246-year old democracy? Our global adversaries, we cannot fail to note, have no such limitations.
The simple answer is — No President can, by fiat, declare a national curriculum in the United States. If only that would be the case, Biden could appoint a panel of respected (Moderate) thinkers on the subject. Education, however, is legally a states rights issue, so any kind of “Civics” curriculum that defends the citizen against disinformation must come from media outlets, which is again problematic because our adversaries are actually using government resources in their opportunistic adventurism against us.
Take COVID, for example. Our adversarial competitors are not above weaponizing the gravest of public health issues — a global pandemic — through information manipulation. Their shamelessness is astonishing. According to a nine-month investigation by AP and the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, China, Russia and Iran — geopolitical competitors all — drew on each other’s online disinformation campaigns to amplify false theories that COVID originated in an American bioweapons lab (!) or was designed by Washington to weaken their countries.
And it goes so much further than COVID.
Big Tech and Misinfo/Disinfo
It is easy — almost too easy — to put the blame all on Big Tech. And the shameless, even disgusting profiteering of Tech Bros and their enablers makes it even easier. But if it is our authoritarian geopolitical competitors that manufacture the misinformation, it is Big Tech’s social media planforms that broadcast the information ecosystem rot to the four corners of the globe. Ben Smith’s 2021 New York Times column on the Misinformation Wars, published at the height of the pandemic, seems to capture an uncomfortable truth about Trump’s followers and the seeming inability of the media class to explain to them that their Emperor was a liar:
It’s more comfortable to reckon with an information crisis — if there’s anything we’re good at, it’s information — than a political one. If only responsible journalists and technologists could explain how misguided Mr. Trump’s statements were, surely the citizenry would come around. But these well-meaning communications experts never quite understood that the people who liked him knew what was going on, laughed about it and voted for him despite, or perhaps even because of, the times he went “too far.”
Harper’s Magazine recently published a broadside against “Big Disinfo,” contending that the think tanks raising money to focus on the topic were offering a simple solution to a political crisis that defies easy explanation and exaggerating the power of Facebook in a way that, ultimately, served Facebook most of all. The author, Joseph Bernstein, argued that the journalists and academics who specialize in exposing instances of disinformation seem to believe they have a particular claim on truth. “However well-intentioned these professionals are, they don’t have special access to the fabric of reality,” he wrote.
Further, these “professionals” often debate topics such as this on CNN, MSNBC, at Harvard and Princeton, in the pages of CJR and Harper’s and — God help us — Davos. They were well insulated, with pensions and 401Ks, they didn’t mind working from home during the pandemic and had far more than enough saved to take care of their children at the heights of the pandemic and inflation. What if the appeal of misinformation is precisely the fact that it inspires such handwringing in the halls of academe and The Aspen Institute? What if the appeal of misinformation, of Trump is sticking it to the elites?
There is no question that Big Tech amplifies misinformation/disinformation. And that must be addressed and soon. Russia is all over Facebook; top political podcasters high on Apple’s recommendation system, like Steve Bannon’s War Room, are super spreaders of false information. But what if the larger problem is that a certain percentage of people — the left behind people, often in so-called “flyover country” — were just so sick of elites able to work while videoconferencing that they threw their lot behind online misinformation precisely because it spoke to their grievances.
I honestly don’t know the answer, but if that is indeed the case, Big Tech would be more of a mirror of pernicious attitudes than the actual cause. Some studies cited in the Harper’s article seem to support this possibility. “Not that these studies should be taken as definitive proof of anything,” Joseph Bernstein writes. “Despite its prominence in the media, the study of disinformation is still in the process of answering definitional questions and hasn’t begun to reckon with some basic epistemological issues.”
Steve Bannon and Misinfo/Disinfo
And now lets circle back a little to Steve Bannon. In 2018, Steve Bannon was invited to The New Yorker Festival of Ideas — then quickly disinvited. The backlash against such an odious, anti-democratic man like Bannon was extreme. So much the better.
And then came the backlash-against-the-backlash. Of course, The Economist's editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, took full advantage of the situation to score points against its print competitor. "The future of open societies will not be secured by like-minded people speaking to each other in an echo chamber, but by subjecting ideas and individuals from all sides to rigorous questioning and debate. This will expose bigotry and prejudice, just as it will reaffirm and refresh liberalism," Beddoes said in a statement. "That is the premise The Economist was founded on."
Such high-faluting language, Zanny, over an unremarkable interview with a fascist. And such high-faluting language for someone accelerating the virus’s progress in the democratic bloodstream.
Steve Bannon’s War Room was crowned the top peddler of misinformation among political podcasts in today’s study by the Brookings Institution.
Africa and Misinfo/Disinfo
Lets briefly circle back to Russia, Africa and false information. Africa’s Sahel is the transitional region on the Continent between the North and South, the semiarid region of western and north-central Africa extending from Senegal eastward to Sudan. Sanctioned oligarch and Putin crony Yevgeniy Prigozhin is hoping to increase Russian influence in the Sahel through, among other ways, misinformation. “The Prigozhin effort across the Sahel purports to support Pan-African ideals, such as greater brotherhood and collaboration among peoples of African descent, but in reality the effort allows for support of Wagner’s unrestrained exploitation of African resources, notably gold, diamonds, and timber,” writes the US State Department on its website on Disarming Misinformation.
What is to be Done?
Dr. Anya Schiffrin wrote an excellent post on Columbia Journalism Review on Fighting Disinformation with Media Literacy — in 1939. That’s right, 1939. You see, we have actually been here before, after World War 1, in the run-up to World War 2. Fascist governments were projecting their propaganda in much the same way they are doing it today. Back then they were utilizing relatively new media forms like radio and film. And there were in that time willing participants in the propaganda, like Father Coughlin on the radio, the grandfather, if you will, of the Steve Bannons (Would Zanny Minton Beddoes have interviewed Father Coughlin in the 1930s).
Journalist turned editor Clyde R. Miller founded the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) in 1937, funded by department store magnate Arthur Filene. Dr. Schiffrin explains the mission:
For its part, the IPA, under Miller’s leadership, maintained that education was the American way of dealing with disinformation. “Suppression of propaganda is contrary to democratic principles, specifically contrary to the provisions of the United States Constitution,” Miller said in his 1939 speech. “Counterpropaganda is legitimate but often intensifies cleavages. Analysis of propaganda, on the other hand, cannot hurt propaganda for a cause that we consider ‘good.’” In other words, analyzing propaganda for a good cause would not undermine the cause itself—but analysis of “bad” propaganda would allow audiences to dismantle its effects.
Education in the form of media analysis of “bad propaganda” was and still is a very pragmatic way to inoculate Americans against fascist, right-wing propaganda. No President can, by fiat, declare a national curriculum in the United States. States, school districts and national associations can require or recommend that certain standards be used to guide school instruction. But it would be illegal if, for instance, or the Department of Education were to attempt to supervise or direct any curriculum.
Media analysis geared towards a large audience appears to me to be the most important, pragmatic and rapid antidote to misinformation/disinformation. The Global Disinformation Index is doing a good job as an independent organization in educating the public. The aforementioned State Department’s Disarming Disinformation page, similarly, is quite good (but not referenced nearly enough by media organizations). Journalists are deeply concerned, according to a recent Pew study, on the nexus between press freedom and misinformation. And there are many prominent journalists and commentators focused on the misinfo/disinfo beat nowadays.
But we need more good journalism focused on analyzing bad propaganda. And we need more concerned citizens looking for this type of journalism.
RIP, Burt Bacharach
Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving premier, described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “surprisingly friendly,” and a fan of dark humor. (SEMAFOR)
Mitt Romney to mull Republicans’ ‘slide toward authoritarianism’ in biography (Guardian)
Journalists Remain on Twitter, but Tweet Slightly Less (CJR)
“After 13 years of an uphill struggle, Mo’Nique’s emphatic return to Hollywood promises to be a new chapter for the comedian as she rebuilds her career — and reassesses her relationships.” (Variety)
“During Gimil-Ninkarrak’s lifetime, the major power in Mesopotamia was a kingdom called Babylon. You may be familiar with Babylon from the Bible, when Nebuchadnezzar II was king, but that story would not unfold for more than 1,100 years. Gimil-Ninkarrak’s era was what we call the Old Babylonian period, when the city of Babylon was just beginning its almost 1,500-year domination of what is now Iraq.” (Aeon)