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2020-05-23 Home Front: Politix
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Misinformation, Disinformation, and Lies
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 [American Thinker] It is obvious that people cannot make a serious judgment about anything if the information available provides only half of the truth and not the rest, or if the media present stories in a way that makes it difficult to tell the truth, or if the media express only one side of a disputed issue, or if, as Daniel Boorstin argued, an "image" is presented as a replica of reality.
Misinformation may spread if no clear official information is present. The underlying problem is that there is no simple way to prevent that spread, nor is there a single root cause behind it. Different motives and goals contribute to that spread and to the discussion of the policies, competition, and legitimacy of public authorities. The internet has brought important changes in how information is spread and how communication occurs. What is more certain is that prominent public figures play a considerable role in that the spread has regrettably been shown in the context of discussing the responsibility and activity of officials to deal with the pandemic, COVID-19, such as the transmission and the accuracy of reported mortality rates in various countries.
A difficult problem is that much of the misinformation is not completely fabricated, but is the result of spin. There is no simply way to prevent misinformation, and there is no single root cause for the appearance of misinformation, and there are different motives for it. Yet it is evident that prominent public figures play a large role in formulating and spreading information, as in the present case about COVID-19. Attempts to check statements about actions or policies of public authorities are difficult, since they are spread not only in the media, but also in emails, private channels, and above all online. According to one survey by the Institute for the Study of Journalism, misinformation accounts for 87% of social media interactions while fabricated ones amount to about 12%.
In the modern age it may be difficult to ascertain the truth with the overabundance of information and the mix of half-truths, falsehoods, and state sponsored information. Misinformation can take different forms. The most frequent is misleading content, containing true information but with altered details in ways that make it false. Another form is to describe images as something different from what they are.
There is no direct connection, but it is engaging to note the interest of fiction-writers in misinformation, disinformation, and even lies regarding themselves. They may be taking advantage of the fact that human beings are often fascinated by evil and fear of the unknown, and are titillated by accounts of extreme behavior. What else can explain the years spent by Truman Capote, writing in In Cold Blood, the story of the murder of a family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, or the obsession of Stephen Sondheim with Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street?.
Bestselling French writer Stéphane Bourgoin, author of more than 40 books of fiction, many about serial killers, has recently confessed he faked his biography and invented his own experience, including his job as a professional football player and the story of his wife who was murdered in 1976 by a serial killer who confessed to the crime. But he was not a ball player, nor did the "wife" exist, but was a fiction drawn from a young woman he had met briefly in a bar in Daytona Beach, Florida. This story is even more strange because the young woman was in fact later murdered, in 1975, by a serial killer. Bourgoin claimed he had trained with the FBI in Quantico, Virginia and had interviewed 70 serial killers, including Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. His explanation for his lies and the disinformation was that he was not really loved, but he had now arrived "at a balance sheet time." 
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Posted by Besoeker 2020-05-23 08:52||
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Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-23 09:33||
2020-05-23 09:33||
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