Disseminating Disinformation

This past holiday season I was forced to watch many networks that I do not normally watch.  When you are the guest you watch what others want to see.

I was taken aback as the relatives watching Faux News believed what was shown as absolute truth.  The Faux news bobble heads referred to their reports as the "official" stand by Israel for what is happening in Gaza.  That alone is not surprising as Faux often claims to have the definitive account of any subject.

What caught my attention was how they "warned" their viewers not to "believe" the reports from what they termed "unreliable sources about the casualties inflicted as reported by other networks", because they (the networks) seem to report numbers from the Arabic stations and those are perhaps ideologically inflated for effect. 

In fact, Faux News reporters went on to say that the figures are much lower, than reported and surprisingly so for this sort of assault (my word, not theirs) and viewers should understand what is happening.  While they occasionally showed images of the ground incursion, most of the footage was of rockets firing into Israel.  This tactic was clearly another form of newspeak designed to influence and misinform -- almost no footage showed Gaza.

My sense of surprise is not that Faux News takes this position, but that so many will  believe uncritically what is shown to them.  This country is not a literate country and so many do not totally understand the depth of the disinformation being promoted by Faux News. 

In this country we get our news in easily digestible sound bites and most don't subscribe to critical news sources.  One reason for a lack of response by anyone at the higher levels of government (aside from the obvious power elite explanations) is because for the most part -- like off-shore drilling -- poll numbers reflect that relatively few understand the complexity of issues when presented with efforts to cloak the truth with jingoism, far right millenialism, and absolutism. 

So the challenge is not just how we speak to each other, but how we manage to challenge systematic disinformation on this and other pressing matters before this country and the world.