Confronting Disinformation
10 Ideas for Re-establishing a Common Truth
Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash
Last week’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol laid bare the root of our political dysfunction that has escalated to unimaginable heights: we have a disinformation problem. From the most peaceful protestors to the most aggressively violent rioters, everyone who turned out in support of Trump on January 6 shares one thing in common -- they believe they are right. They believe they are patriots protecting America, when, in fact, they are the opposite.
They believe this because of disinformation. Because of an elaborately constructed counter-narrative, counter-reality, in which the media is the "enemy of the people," government is the "deep state" and courts are ruled by "activist judges.” People don't commit acts of sedition, insurrection and violence when they think they are wrong. Whether it's Nazi Germany, Communist Russia or Islamic fundamentalists, people commit acts of sedition, insurrection and violence when they think they are right. And the reason they think they are right is the propaganda that has radicalized a significant segment of our population.
From “stop the steal” Facebook groups spreading doctored “evidence” of election fraud, to robotext fundraising solicitations, to Trump’s own now, thankfully, unplugged Twitter account, Republican voters have been fed a non-stop torrent of disinformation since the election. Not opinion, not spin — blatant, deliberate, premeditated, conscious, provably-false disinformation. It’s no wonder they felt entitled to ransack the Capitol like it was a trip to the local mall — every message they heard was telling them this was the righteous thing to do, their patriotic duty.
Of course, this propaganda machine is nothing new. It’s been nurtured and subsidized for well over thirty years. The henchmen of these heaps of lies — Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Berry, Matt Drudge, Glenn Beck, etc. — have been doing this for so long that it’s now a well-oiled machine. From the people who brought you Pizzagate and Birtherism comes Stop the Steal.
This crap used to be the sole domain of the National Enquirer, New York Post, and other dismissible tabloids in the grocery store line. Now QAnon is practically a mainstream news source among Republican ideologues. Three critical things happened during Trump’s presidency that unleashed this abomination to democracy:
First was Trump himself. A president with no moral compass, no ethical boundaries, no guilt or conscience, not only obliged but amplified any claim that supported him, no matter how outrageous. No lie was too shameful. No conspiracy too far-fetched. This air cover, this willingness to do and say anything no matter how preposterously untrue it may be, opened the disinformation floodgates. If you’re a right-wing blogger, why not push the boundary of outrageous fabrication when the president himself is apt to retweet it and drive audience and revenue to your site?
Second was Trump's Republican enablers. The very people in the party who started with the cry “Never Trump” immediately abandoned their ethical and political ideals and jumped on-board the Trump bandwagon. For four years, they turned the other way — they downplayed, they coddled, they normalized. The most opportunistic among them embraced the lies, echoed the counter-narrative, and exploited it for their own electoral and fundraising goals, lending legitimacy to whatever Trump’s lie of the day was.
Third was the electorate themselves. Numbed from consuming an endless news feed of self-validating information, the average voter, both right and left, has lost their ability for critical thought and to appraise what’s real. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become the daily entertainment source of a huge segment of our population, feeding us what we want to hear. Confirming the veracity of the ostensible “news” on these platforms is simply not done by most people. It’s a pure, continuous dopamine hit — I’m right, you’re wrong.
Given these factors, the machinery of disinformation is now so established, so self-perpetuating, that it no longer needs to be fed or controlled. Indeed, it feels out of control. It has run so far amok that it may not be possible to dismantle. But we have to try. "Post-truth is pre-fascism," Yale historian Timothy Snyder wrote this week. "Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves."
I realize that confronting disinformation is wading into a tricky area, a slippery slope. Free speech is so foundational to our democracy that it is enshrined in the very first amendment, after all. But it wasn’t the intent of the First Amendment to protect the Koch brothers, Alex Jones, and Vladimir Putin. Quite the opposite. In fact, what I’m talking about here is not free speech at all, it’s paid speech — paid by corporations, paid by politicians, paid by advertisers, and monetized by media sites that only want to inflame you to click. Further, the blatant disinformation that is radicalizing mobs in our streets doesn’t fall into a free speech gray area. It’s precisely because of our inability and unwillingness to confront lies, to distinguish between opinions and facts, between political discourse and disinformation, between protest and sedition, that we find ourselves in this mess. As the late Senator Patrick Moynihan famously said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
So here are ten practical ideas for how we might begin to combat the scourge of disinformation and re-establish a well-informed, fact-based political dialog.
Amend the First Amendment — If I hear one more a-hole spouting blatant lies under the banner of “Freedom of Speech," I’m going to throw up. The First Amendment has never given us the right to "falsely shout fire in a theatre and cause a panic” or, as Trump did, commit acts of sedition that inspire “imminent lawless action.” The framers of the Bill of Rights didn’t envision Twitter. It’s time to codify what freedom of speech actually means in the modern era with access to modern technology, rather than leave it to judicial precedent.
Regulate social media — Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites have been a font of disinformation. Anyone can post anything. The more outrageous it is, the more likely it is to be liked, shared, and re-posted. Relying on community moderation is a flawed approach. Terms of use are insufficient, particularly when they are not enforced. The move to shut down Trump’s Twitter account (and YouTube account) is not only appropriate but long overdue. If misinformation, defamation and sedition are illegal in real life (see above), they should be equally illegal online. Social media companies cannot be trusted to enforce this themselves. They should be subject to strict regulation, with criminal punishment — just like any other mature industry.
Overturn Citizens United — The Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that wealthy individuals, corporations, labor unions and other special interest groups could pour unlimited money into elections, so long as they don’t “coordinate” with a candidate, has distorted our political process for a decade. This ruling unleashed the full force of super PACs, anonymous donors, and foreign adversaries who have channeled dark money into the very influence operations that spread disinformation and discord. Congress must restore appropriate campaign finance restrictions, including, in particular, transparency into contributions.
Fund Fact Checking — In our modern digital world, misinformation can simply move faster than fact checking. Anyone can create a lie. Debunking that lie takes time, effort and resources. That is why fact-checking sites are so critical. Whether it’s private organizations like Snopes or nonprofits like FactCheck.org these sites are a critical counter-balance to misinformation, providing nonpartisan rebuttals to both right-wing and left-wing misinformation, as well as the perpetrators posting fake stories. These organizations need to be funded the same way public broadcasting has been funded — with both tax dollars as well as corporate and individual donations — to do their critically important work at internet speed.
Enforce defamation and libel laws — Everyone is entitled to their opinions, and elected officials and business leaders, more than anyone, should be subject to scrutiny and criticism. But when you’re spreading an obviously fabricated story that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a D.C.-area pizza restaurant, you should be put out of business. Opinions are fine. Demonstrably false, deliberate defamation needs to have legal and financial consequences — not only civil but criminal as well.
Invest in Cybersecurity — One of Trump’s many shameful legacies has been his kneecapping of federal cybersecurity. We remain perilously exposed to cyber attacks from foreign adversaries, in particular foreign disinformation campaigns like those sponsored by Russia, China, North Korea and others. This is the battlefront of modern warfare. Congress must appropriate funds and DHS redirect resources accordingly to defend against this threat.
Restore the Federal Election Commission — As Trump has done with other federal agencies, the FEC has been hobbled under his administration — failing to appoint directors, declining to review cases and effectively allowing campaigns to violate laws with impunity. One thing Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on is fair elections. Any contest with no referees is chaos. We need to restore the bipartisan arbiter of those elections with the FEC, in particular to ensure deliberate disinformation is not a political tool available to either party.
Shut Down Disinformation Sources — Fraud is not freedom of speech. Incitement of violence is not freedom of speech. We know the people, sites and sources of this misinformation, yet, too often, we fail to act — caving to the right’s so-preposterous-it’s-parody assertion that “conservative voices are being silenced.” The decision by Google, Facebook and Amazon to finally shut down Parler was long overdue. Gab should be next. In fact, all these sources of hate speech and radicalization should have been shut down by the FBI, rather than relying on private companies to act. If the perpetrators of this dangerous disinformation used television, radio or the postal service to commit their crimes, they would be prosecuted. The same standard needs to exist for online hate speech.
Break Up Media Monopolies — Two other federal agencies asleep at the switch have been the FCC and FTC, which have shirked their regulatory responsibilities by allowing intense concentration of media by right-wing companies, including Sinclair in television, Cumulus in radio, and Brian Timpone’s online media empire. Masquerading as sources of local news, these entities exist solely to spread coordinated, commercialized misinformation — the very concentration of opinion these federal agencies were established to protect against. The same applies to Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp and Google/YouTube, although these companies do not openly espouse a political agenda.
Care about Truth — Most of all, if we are to end this era of disinformation, by both extremes of the political spectrum, we the citizens need to care about Truth. We need to believe in facts. We need to seek corroboration of what we see, hear and read — particularly before we share that information with others and become unwitting pawns in the spread of disinformation. We need to regulate our own behavior. We need to re-establish our own integrity, decency and respect.
Although it is easy to feel cynical about the spread of disinformation, easy to feel that any attempt to re-establish truth and facts will be demonized as a violation of free speech, I actually believe we are entering an age of unparalleled transparency. I believe that, with the guardrails outlined above, the empowerment of each of us as individuals to not only be consumers of information but creators, corroborators and dispellers — armed with smart phones, cameras, instant messaging and social media — will be great for democracy in the long run. It will make the manipulation of public opinion by the privileged few more difficult. It will make the powerful more accountable. It will provide checks and balances on individual human behavior.
Although, in my admittedly biased perspective, I see this problem as more prevalent on the right than the left, liberals commit plenty of disinformation as well. Any disinformation counter-measures need to be strictly nonpartisan. This problem is not rightwing or leftwing, it’s a human problem. As with every new age of technology and information distribution, we need to temper its unwieldy side, tame its potential for abuse. With nurturing, nonpartisan regulation, we can realize the positives while mitigating the negatives.
While we’ve seen the costs of disinformation under a Republican president, Trump’s actions have exposed vulnerabilities that could just as easily be exploited by a leftwing demagogue to mislead his or her base into acts of violence. As the House votes to impeach this president for a second time, we can no longer pretend this problem doesn’t exist or can’t be addressed. We need to confront it before a more malicious actor with a more extreme ideology does even greater damage to our democracy.