America, "we have us a situation," to paraphrase Tom Hanks in Apollo 13. America is going to have great difficulty surviving as a free and democratic society, at the rate things are going these days. We have a disastrous state of widespread disinformation: black and gray propaganda (black is defined as outright lies done intentionally, and gray as the spread of unverified information that can serve the spreaders' interests), many originating in chain emails.
Those statements of disinformation, or pieces of them, get picked up in various media that come across as credible, and echoed repeatedly. Pundits hammer the points, and politicians often take them up too.
What are citizens to think when something is repeated in a bunch of sources? That it must be true, of course. But many times it is not. Repetition can be a propaganda tool.
It serves the interests of some powerful segments of society to have us citizens be fooled or at least confused. If conflicting information is presented, we are left doubtful of what the truth really is. That confusion keeps us from speaking out in favor of policies that will benefit many of us, or has us speaking against policies that in reality would be ones that would help the majority of society.
The manipulation of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the public is a science that has been studied and gotten increasingly effective over time. Advertisers, people in public relations, and politicians are some of those who make use of what the research shows.
Some purveyors of these lies profit financially from the sale of books or DVDs and from speakers' fees. Others benefit by having their power enhanced, and then profit financially too. Still others who turn to propaganda do it from ideology. They may believe it is in the best interests of the country to win at all costs, and that they are saving us from something.
That is just wrong. They harm the life we have together in America. The tone has gotten ugly and political violence is rising. People have already died (the part-time census worker in Kentucky, the Holocaust museum security guard, Dr. George Tiller and others), and in my judgment, widespread distortions of truth were behind those acts of violence. At the very least, the perpetrators and those who support them are hearing just one side, for the most part.
We have had twenty or more years of largely one-sided coverage of issues in vast and influential segments of our media, through cable news channels and radio stations that lack consistent fair reporting on the pros and cons of issues and events. Brain research shows that unused parts of the brain lose abilities and connections, and the evidence suggests that when we don't hear and have the opportunity to weigh the evidence on both sides of issues on an ongoing, regular basis, our brains end up losing the capability of thinking complex issues through. How will the nation survive if that becomes more and more true of the vast majority of us?
I urge you to do lots of fact-checking from disinterested sources. I judge a source as likely to be fair when it criticizes statements from either side, and doesn't claim every statement by the party I prefer is truthful. I have found FactCheck.org (from the Annenburg School of Communication) at the University of Pennsylvania) and PolitiFact (from the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times) to be two that fit that definition. Both allow you to subscribe, which I have done. I get emails perhaps once a week from these organizations. (Snopes.com is another helpful fact-checking tool.)
Also, start getting your news from sources that regularly present a full picture of complex issues and don't spin information to favor one side or another. I highly recommend National Public Radio and PBS. Because both do not depend solely on corporations to fund them, they do not have the same degree of pressure to avoid certain types of coverage or spin things a certain way. Since corporations profit from particular political decisions, many of them act in ways that promote their bottom line regardless of truth or fairness. They regularly use the clout of their advertising dollars to steer the political discussion in ways that serve those interests.
A good rule of thumb to have is to doubt all chain emails and check them out, especially if they seem designed to make you angry, afraid or upset. Even if a small portion of the content ends up being true, don't assume it all is. That is one propaganda technique. The credibility of one piece of information transfers to other information in the same email, article, or broadcast.
Try to keep aware of the financial interests of particular sources. Where is their paycheck coming from? Are they a "pundit" (a dealer in opinion) or a reporter (a dealer in facts)? Wikipedia is a good quick way to check up on sources, although it can be manipulated and should not be relied on too much.
Not that I think the profit motive makes every corporation or person lack credibility, nor do I think they all try to steer us away from the truth, by any means. But it helps us to know that as we attempt to weigh the credibility of sources.
I am praying (hard!) that we can turn things around. It looks discouraging right now but other things that seemed impossible to overcome (like apartheid and the Iron Curtain) eventually ended, so I have hope. And I'm speaking up. Feel free to share this with others if you think it has merit.
