Tag: disinformation

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At Large Opinion

Keepers of the Flame

Photo: Evgeniya Leonova | Dreamstime.com

The presidential inauguration in the Capitol rotunda on Monday marked the return to power of the most controversial and scandal-plagued president in American history. It felt a little like when the second plane hit the tower on 9/11 — the moment when we knew it wasn’t an accident.

Monday was also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and here in Memphis — the city where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 — the celebration of his life takes on a special significance. The NBA’s annual MLK Day celebration featured the Memphis Grizzlies hosting the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the National Civil Rights Museum held a day of events called “Community Over Chaos,” which seemed a most fitting theme.

But before it fades into history, buried by the noisy deluge of Trump drama, I want to take note of former President Biden’s farewell address of last week. As might be expected, he cited the achievements of his administration — the record job-creation numbers, the long-desired ceasefire in the Middle East, the strengthening of NATO, and the ongoing resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — but his real purpose in his speech seemed to be to deliver a warning, to address, as he said, “some things that give me great concern.”

Citing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, in which he warned the country about the dangers posed by the “military industrial complex,” Biden decried the rise of a new threat, one he called the “tech industrial complex.”

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden warned. “The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.” No errors detected.

The tech industrial complex was on full display in the Rotunda on Monday, including Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, The Washington Post), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Threads), and Elon Musk (X, Tesla, Starlink, xAI).

Never have so few had so much unbridled power to influence public opinion and so much money to invest in doing so. And it doesn’t help that they’re supplicating themselves (and giving millions of dollars) to the new president to curry his favor. It’s called obeying in advance, and it’s worrisome stuff. Journalism is in danger of being put out of business by “content providers” that have no ethical qualms about ignoring the truth in favor of whatever makes a profit — or makes the president happy.

CNN, ABC, and even MSNBC have also made at least token moves to ameliorate relations with the new administration. CNN buried Trump critic Jim Acosta in a late-night slot. ABC settled a libel lawsuit with Trump that it easily would have won in court. Facebook eliminated fact-checkers. Companies are getting rid of diversity hiring programs. Macho (“masculine energy”) is all the rage among the tech bros. Women’s healthcare rights continue to be eroded in red states.

Biden called it “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people,” and cited the consequences “if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” What Biden was describing is an oligarchy. Merriam-Webster (remember dictionaries?) defines it as “a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.”

Can there be any doubt that an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power, and influence is moving into power in the United States, one that threatens our democracy and our basic rights and freedoms?

Democracy depends upon the will of the people, and if the people are misinformed, disinformed, or uninformed, they can be manipulated. As we well know, public opinion — and elections — can turn on well-funded, broadly circulated lies and propaganda.

Our social media platforms are already permeated by disinformation, mostly via bots that skillfully imitate real people and overwhelm legitimate content by their sheer numbers. Artificial intelligence is now upping that deception to previously unknown heights. Biden called AI “the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time.”

The former president concluded by saying to his fellow Americans, “It’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keepers of the flame.” That doesn’t feel like malarkey, folks. 

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At Large Opinion

L.A. Hot Takes

Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to ashes. (Photo: MMPhoto21 | stock.adobe.com )

And the lights of L.A. County
They look like diamonds in the sky … 
— Lyle Lovett

As I write this, devastating wind-fed fires have killed at least 25 people and swept through 40,000 acres in the greater Los Angeles area. If you’re looking for a size comparison, that’s equal to a fourth of the acreage of the city of Memphis burned to the ground — an area equal to Downtown, Uptown, and everything inside the beltway. Thousands of people have lost their homes. Hundreds of schools, churches, businesses, studios, and iconic architectural structures are gone. Entire neighborhoods are reduced to ashes.

Los Angeles County officials characterized the fires as a “perfect storm” event in which hurricane-force gusts of up to 100 miles per hour prevented them from deploying aircraft that could have dropped water and fire retardant on the drought-ravaged neighborhoods when the fires first broke out. The combination of the winds, unseasonably dry conditions, and multiple fires breaking out one after another led to the widespread destruction.

But as L.A. firefighters battled the flames, disinformation was spreading like, well, wildfire: One theory pushed by right-wing media was that the blazes were raging because fire-fighting personnel were led by a lesbian fire chief and the department utilized DEI hiring criteria. X account Libs of TikTok, known for spreading anti-LBGTQ rhetoric posted: “DEI will get people k*lled. DEI MUST DIE.” Donald Trump Jr. said that donations the Los Angeles Fire Department sent to Ukraine in 2022 were somehow related to its response to the current fires.

Not to be outdone, the president-elect himself posted a deluge of misinformation on Truth Social, including this: “Governor Gavin Newscum [sic] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snowmelt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.” 

And what’s a good tragedy without a trash take from Alex Jones, who posted that President Biden had grounded firefighters and that the fires were being spread as part of a “globalist plot to wage economic warfare”? First Buddy Elon Musk responded to Jones’ tweet in a now-deleted post with one word: “True.” 

None of it was true. The level of diversity in L.A. Fire Department personnel is typical of most urban fire departments in the U.S. The Southern California reservoirs were full, above historic levels. Water intended for the city was not diverted to save a fish called the smelt. Some hydrants went dry because they were intended for use against urban fires — houses, buildings in a self-contained area for a limited time — not wild-blown wildfires spreading over many acres for many days. 

Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said, “We are fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is an unprecedented kind of event.” Quiñones added that experts have seen wildland fires move into urban areas only in the last 10 to 15 years and that they’re still figuring out how to address it.

“The way that firefighting has traditionally been, there are wildland firefighters and agencies, and then there are urban firefighters and agencies,” she said. “Are we having wildland firefighters fighting fires in urban areas or the reverse? Sometimes the approaches are really different.”

All this brings to mind an interview with Denzel Washington I saw last week. When asked about today’s media, he said: “If you don’t read the newspapers, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you’re misinformed.” 

He went on: “What is the long-term effect of too much information? One thing is the need to be first. … We live in a society where it’s just, get it out there, be first! It doesn’t matter if it’s true, who it hurts, who it destroys, just be first. So what a responsibility [the media] have — to tell the truth!” 

To which, I would add: What a responsibility you and I have — to seek out the truth, and to learn not to blindly swallow the first piece of information offered, no matter who offers it, no matter how it tickles your confirmation biases. A hot take is seldom the best take. 

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At Large Opinion

Information Overload

“Covid met January 6th. They slept together and gave birth to the anti-Christ of anger, fear, distrust, disinformation, and trauma that plagues America to this day.”

That was an X/Tweet on my timeline last week. I hope it was written by a human and not a bot because it reflects a very human feeling I’ve been trying to get my head around. I think we’re in the midst of one of the most disordered eras in the history of this country, comparable to our great wars, our Great Depression, our presidential assassinations.

We are riding a chaotic chariot of change with no idea of where or when it stops. We have come to a place where we can’t even agree that the sky is above us, that day follows night. Facts are fungible. Everyone is entitled to their own facts because you can “prove” anything. Politics and religion have become intertwined and irresolutely tribal. Disinformation is the currency of the realm, a bloated ratatouille of content — true, false, and irrelevant — that overloads our brains. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, Truth Social, even such presumably benign sites as Nextdoor have become infiltrated with the madness of our political discourse. Every commenter is a pundit or a cynic or an expert … on everything. Crime is everywhere. Democrats are pedophiles. Trump shits his pants. Biden can’t walk. Trump has dementia. Be very afraid. Be very confused.

Former President Trump’s rally in New Jersey last Saturday provides a perfect template for what I’m talking about. Prior to the event, Trump touted that there would be 80,000 people there, so that number became the focal point. When Trump began speaking, pictures from Trump supporters, mostly taken from the stage area or from the crowd, were cited as evidence that Trump had drawn at least 100,000 people. “Let’s see Biden draw a crowd like this!” they said.

Then photos from anti-Trumpers appeared that purported to show a much smaller crowd. Next came photos of a full Michigan football stadium and of a Taylor Swift concert. “This is what 100,000 people looks like,” said these posters. “Compare this to photos of Trump’s pathetic rally. Hah!”

Not to be outdone, an aerial photo of 400,000 people appeared under the headline: “Trump Draws Massive Crowd to New Jersey Rally.” Roger Stone and lots of other Trump supporters retweeted it. But the picture turned out to be an aerial shot of a 1994 Rod Stewart concert in Brazil. Boo! Fake news! Then video appeared of Trump speaking to a small crowd, possibly near the end of his speech. No way, said his supporters. It was “AI-generated and put out by Antifa.” Or something.

So how many people came to hear Trump speak? Pick a number. There’s “proof” of everything, so everything is meaningless. And maybe that’s the point: Flood the zone with so much conflicting information that none of it can be trusted, that it all can be discounted.

How did we go from a country that elected a centrist African American 12 years ago to one that actually appears capable of reelecting an amoral, foul-mouthed, self-absorbed misogynist who took away women’s bodily autonomy, stole federal classified documents (and probably sold them), slept with porn stars, botched the handling of a pandemic that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, and, oh yeah, tried to overturn a presidential election?

What. The. Hell?

Normally when a time of upheaval is over, a country will celebrate. There are parades, a coming-together, a time of kumbaya. Americans have had no downtime in the past eight years, no room to reflect — just unrelenting chaos. The Covid pandemic continued implacably, even as the 2020 political campaign unfolded. People were still dying by the thousands, while two major party candidates debated and campaigned in the midst of it. Remember the masked appearances and debates? Even masks and vaccines became political. So exhausting.

Then the election happened and Trump lost (really), and as most predicted, he claimed it was all rigged. Phony Venezuelan voting machines! Mule teams! Crooked election workers! A minute later and it was January 6th, and we all watched an attempted insurrection in real time. It’s all been too much. Too many bad actors, too many alternate facts that created an information overload, one that allowed a man with no moral core to attain the highest office in the land. And to possibly do it again.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Learn to Discern

Gov. Bill Lee stands with Tennessee National Guard for a photo op. (Photo: @GovBillLee | X.com)

“As America faces the most severe border crisis in decades, TN is showing the rest of the country what it means to lead. Today, I joined TN National Guard members who will soon deploy on a voluntary mission to secure the Southern border as the federal government fails to act.”

The quote is from an X post by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee last Friday. He was pictured standing in front of 20 or so camo-clad warriors who were apparently going to Texas to … stand along the border somewhere? No word on who would be giving them orders. The Texas governor? The Texas National Guard commander? President Biden? Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t about governing or policy or real life. It was political theater. A photo op.

Judging from the responses to the post, lots of other people besides me saw it as empty grandstanding. Many pointed out that Tennessee had plenty of problems of its own — gun violence, education, healthcare — that ol’ Bill could be paying attention to instead of doing Kabuki theater in a local gymnasium.

Others responded on X, correctly, that House Republicans had declined to support a border bill that could have done much to improve the situation just a week before. Here’s LGilmore: “Good grief. What a freaking waste of time and taxpayer money for political gain. We see your two-faced perpetuation of a problem you refuse to help solve.”

But there were also positive responses to Lee’s post. Here’s one from LITizen JEFF: “Thank you, Sir, and especially, thank you to the patriots in the TN National Guard.” He probably had tears in his eyes while he typed that.

What forms the differing attitudes of LGilmore and LITizen JEFF? Well, assuming they’re not ’bots, it would be a fair guess to say it’s the sources of news they consume. According to a Pew Research study, conservatives like JEFF head to the right-wing buffet table, where they can get a steady diet of Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, Joe Rogan, Epoch Times, etc. Progressive/liberal thinkers like LG are more likely to be consumers of CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS NewsHour, and The New York Times.

When it comes to news, what we consume quite naturally shapes what we believe. A great example of this is the current exchange of video-fire over which old guy running for president is in worse shape. Call it “Dueling Dodderers.” My social media feeds are now filled with clips of Donald Trump’s verbal miscues. He is slurring a lot of words in his stump speeches these days and frequently losing his train of thought. And every time it happens, a clip of it gets posted and amplified in all the liberal media. I consume it gleefully because I think Trump is an evil clown and it gives me hope that he may yet disintegrate into a gooey orange puddle of bile.

Likewise, there are lots of clips of President Biden misspeaking or turning the wrong way or stumbling on a stairway that make the rounds in right-wing media. I don’t see as many of these because I don’t visit those sites much. That’s mainly because the algorithm gods have learned I prefer not to consume right-wing stuff.

That’s how it works: You pick your news, then your news picks you. So, here’s some good advice: Learn how to pick news sources that are trustworthy. Don’t amplify news stories, quotes, memes, or even videos unless you are certain they are legitimate. That juicy clip of Trump being unable to pronounce “Venezuela” may tickle your schadenfreude, but don’t forward it unless it’s from a legitimate source. AI video is real — and, increasingly, a source of disinformation.

Media literacy is a course that should be taught in every school in America from the seventh grade on. Knowing how to discern reliable sources in the flood of information that deluges us — and our children — needs to be a top educational priority.

For starters, here’s a list of the 10 least-biased news sources, according to Pew Research: AP News, Reuters News Service, BBC News, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg.com, New York Times, C-Span, NPR/PBS, Forbes.com, NBC News. We need to be vigilant. If we consume disinformation and spread it, we’re nothing more than vacuous propagandists. Like Bill Lee.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Shouting Fire, Playing Telephone

Stuartbur | Dreamstime.com

Last week, the Flyer editorial staff had our regular Wednesday meeting in the office. We crowded around the big table in the “fishbowl” (so called because of its glass wall) conference room and dared to breathe the same air. In person! I don’t typically use exclamation points, but I feel the previous sentence warrants some excitement.

Michael Donahue, our inimitable food and party writer, author of the popular “We Saw You” column, made the mistake of saying he would see everyone at next week’s meeting — on Tuesday. I corrected him, but he somehow planted that little bit of misinformation in everyone’s brain, where it took root and bore poisoned fruit.

Why would we meet on Tuesday morning — before the issue has gone to press? It makes no logical sense and flies in the face of a Flyer editorial tradition that long predates my time with this estimable publication. Nonetheless, a third of the staff remembered and seemed to take as gospel Donahue’s slip of the tongue.

I spent the last week fielding emails, texts, and in-person(!) questions about our untimely Tuesday meeting.

My intention here isn’t to tease my editorial staff — well, not only to tease them — but to point out in practice something that has been clearly demonstrated in studies. Gossip, rumors, and misinformation travel much faster than proven fact.

After an analysis of 126,000 rumors spread on Twitter over a period of 11 years, a 2018 study by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that false news travels more quickly and reaches more people than true news. Rumors and false news were found to be 70 percent more likely to be retweeted and reached people up to six times faster than actual news. Of course, this study is limited to stories spread on Twitter, but what is the bird app if not society’s rumor mill?

Of course, I am once again referring to the propagation of vaccine-related misinformation online. (I don’t want to talk about it anymore, folks, but for the moment it seems to be one of the more immediate dangers disproportionately affecting our region. We’re a hot spot again, one of the top five states for increases in case counts.) But I’m not just thinking of vaccine and coronavirus misinformation.

There’s also the Big Lie, the belief that the most recent presidential election was stolen, and all of the dozens of smaller lies it’s spawned. There’s a crisis at the southern border. President Joe Biden will soon give the signal to the Chinese army (currently hidden in Canada) to invade. Or, as Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted on Monday, President Biden is using his political power to silence his opponents. Well, Marsha, he’s doing a downright terrible job of it if that tweet is still up. All of this — these flurries of fearmongering tweets and email blasts and news spots, the needless trips to inspect the troops at the border, this grandstanding — serves only to distract from real issues affecting real people. Our neighbors and friends and family and coworkers aren’t being served by trips to the border between Texas and Mexico. I’m much more concerned with the bridge that spans the border between Tennessee and Arkansas, thank you. Or with the way certain county borderlines seem to demarkate a dramatic difference in vaccination levels.

Disinformation is deadly. I’m not up in arms about a difference of opinion, but spreading patently false information for political credit is another thing entirely. “Almost all the patients that get admitted to the hospital and admitted to me in the intensive care unit are unvaccinated patients,” Dr. Todd Rice, the director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s COVID-19 unit, told Nashville’s WKRN last week.

I wish we could get past all this. It’s like we have our own 21st century version of Vichy France, with outposts in most communities in every state, remotely governed from Mar-a-Lago. (And yes, I am aware of all the xenophobic, authoritarian, and Nazi-collaborator connotations of my reference to Vichy France. Can you honestly say it doesn’t fit?)

Look, there are no Chinese troops stationed in Canada waiting on an order from an American president to give them the signal to invade and subjugate Tennesseans. The level of coordination that would take is, put simply, beyond the realm of possibility. If anyone is that put together, it flies in the face of the evidence of every meeting I’ve ever tried to schedule.

See you next Wednesday.