The Disinformation Age

I am not saying that this is not a way for some people to experience a much-needed change in direction. I am saying that there are other ways to reach the same point. Other ways that are legal and do not compromise your health or safety in any way.

This point is for others, not for you. Your story is what it is, and everything that you have experienced is nothing more than your starting point for today.

 

It's too bad this discussion of "disinformation" got diverted to the subject of drugs.

 

I put out a similar thread a while back after Walter Cronkite died, questioning the state of journalism. Someone pointed out that what we're seeing a lot more of now is commentaries and propaganda, seemingly disguised as news. Good information is out there, if anything more accessible now than ever due to the internet, but the key is filtering fact from opinion, and as Skip points out, following the money trail. A red flag should pop up when the disinformation the health insurance lobby puts out is fueled by 1.4 million dollars a day, money they could be spending on health care for their clients.

I'm not as concerned about the disinformation our so-called "journalists" are handing us as I am about the ignorance of the American people who are too lazy to question it.

Well put.

 

Sorry for side-tracking.

 

Are you sure you read the previous posts in this thread? The concept of "disinformation" is not about you disagreeing with news commentators, or about what you think journalists are "handing us."

By "disinformation", I mean deliberately faked video, or deliberately planted rumors. It's mostly done by individuals trying to dupe the public, but it can also be done by organizations, which was the case with the faked Michael Jackson video. A quick surf of YouTube will find you hundreds of videos of faked events.

For examples of fake rumors, you need go no further than this very forum. You've surely seen threads about new "laws" and other kinds of rumors, intended to further the agenda of the poster, but which are totally false. And yet people fall for them.

The point I was trying to make in this thread is that as video technology becomes more and more sophisticated, this kind of disinformation (faked video and false rumors) will become more and more prevalent. We run the danger of creating a society where no one believes anything, or believes everything.

Such a society would be severely crippled, because people wouldn't know what was true and what wasn't.

 

Placing your complete trust in information that you cannot verify has always been a risky proposition. Distribution of disinformation is a practice that goes back to the earliest days of human language.

The drug issue can be viewed as a modern example of this problem. Parties for/against use and legalization have chronically understated/overstated the health risks and consequences of drug use. Impartial sources of information are hard to come by.

 

I did, but evidently I took it out of context as a result of my biased perspective from my earlier thread, sorry.

True, but the technology to generate and distribute disinformation has advanced immensely while the integrity of news sources has declined. The bottom line is that media providers are driven by the profits they make from their advertisers, which are driven by ratings. Accurate, impartial reporting doesn't necessarily factor into this, so all we can do is boycott the bullshit as Skip suggests, assuming we can see it for what it is, and seek information from multiple sources and multiple perspectives (liberal and conservative).

I don't put much stock in youtube.

 

Exactly. That was my whole point. The problem of disinformation is only going to get worse in the future. It is going to become more and more difficult to know what's true and what isn't. It has nothing to do with the integrity of the news organizations, per se. They will be the victims of disinformation, too.

It's not difficult for political organizations (or anyone with their own axe to grind) to produce video footage claiming to show almost anything they want, and pass it off as "facts". These videos don't have to go through the traditional news outlets ... you simply post them on the internet.

You are absolutely right. This is why arguments about a "liberal bias" or a "conservative bias" miss the point, except in obvious cases like Limbaugh or Hannity or Olbermann.

It's not necessarily that simple. Consider a scenario like this ... suppose a conservative pro-gun organization produces a video allegedly showing a pack of timber wolves attacking a child on a camping trip with his parents. It's not difficult to produce such a video, and it can be made to look very realistic.

Suppose they post the video on YouTube. Several thousand people watch it, and believe it. They, in turn, pass on the story to their friends around the office or neighborhood. The story soon takes on the status of "fact", because there it is ... they've got video of it.

This scenario is not far-fetched at all, and while many people will recognize it as false, many will not.

So who do you boycott in a situation like that?

 

The line is kind of blurry, disinformation having so much to do with bias, as to how deliberate it is. Viewing others as equals perhaps is the antidote. It's pretty easy to determine where a bias lies -- I'm pretty good at discriminating fact from fiction when I see it.

 

True, but that brings us back to the importance of questioning the credibility of the source, youtube being a medium that anyone can post to without the repercussions of being proven false. Contrast that with a network news station, which has a reputation to uphold, and will lose it's credibility with the public if it regularly airs false information. Of course, credibility doesn't seem to matter anymore, some folks will buy into anything if it's consistent with their beliefs, and that's really scary, because now you've got a population of ignorant gun toting rednecks believing a youtube video because it promotes their agenda. By the same token, I have to question the left wing liberal media I buy into, lest I find myself being misled by the "facts" that suit my ideology.

Perception is everything.

 

Right, but the problem is in determining that something is credible. That's what I've been saying over and over throughout this thread.

If there's video of some event, how do you know that it's real? If it's a clever enough fake, how do you go about deciding if what it shows really happened or not? Maybe it is real. Maybe it really happened, and it's something you should be concerned about.

But maybe it's not. How do you know about the event itself, if you have no way to know if the video in question was faked?

That's the whole issue with disinformation.

 

One of the best examples of misinformation comes out of the 19th century in the form of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” fabricated by the russian secret police for the purpose of strengthening the position of Czar Nicholas II against those who would join the jews in their quest for world dominion


Hotwater

 

A little off topic,but a comment-- I am always amused(actually not amused, it's really disturbing) when people 'mistakingly' think because of the internet and so on ,it's the information age.Alot of people are more 'dumbed down' now.People think they are so informed nowadays,when in reality they are NOT--.As a matter of fact, alot of people are less informed than people were 10,20,30+ years ago.----It is BECAUSE of the internet,24 hour so-called 'news' stations,nonsense anybody can post on something like you-tube etc . that we already are in the disinformation or misinformation age.--A sidenote:misinformation is worse than no information.----I realize my post was a little poorly worded,but I think you get the basic idea.

 

So true.--Just think of all the 'modified' or in other words fake videos and photos people already view on the net.I don't even view videos on the net.I agree it's a big problem,and I don't know what could be done about it.

 

Exactly! I think too many people consider the problem of disinformation to be a news media problem, and it's not.

I mean, I have my gripes with CNN and their brethren too, but I don't suspect them of faking video footage, at least not at this point in the state of the world. You have no such assurances with YouTube videos.

To categorically reject the news media and instead draw your reality from YouTube or, worse, from something like other HipForums posters ... good lord, that's to take complete leave of your senses.

 

This sums up about 1/3 of the people who argue politics here.

 

I wouldn't consider either YouTube or the news media as credible sources. They're both filled with liars and people more interested in ideology than truth. Most of the 'alternative media' is the same. I just find it funny that you (caliente) treat people's rejection of the organized media as an issue, as if they're any more reliable than any other source.

 

As I have pointed out several times in this thread, this has nothing to do with the news media. You are completely missing the point.

 

I'm not missing the point at all, I'm addressing your point about the media. I know it is part of a larger point, and one which I would tend to agree with, though I think we'd differ a bit on the specifics.

And, going against my own code of conduct, I didn't read the whole thread before replying. So I'm not sure what has been said on pages 2 and 3.

 

Well, yes you are, because for the 50,000th time, I wasn't making a point about the media. And yes I can tell that you didn't bother to read the other posts ...

Ok, I'll bow out of this thread now. I've said what had to say.