Lots of news about disinformation coming out now. Let’s tackle the most imminent threat first, especially since TaMara has already told you to read the articles.
Chuck Todd.
He was interviewed in Rolling Stone and seems to have issued a mea culpa on his “naivete” about Republican disinformation. He is planning a program on December 29 to talk about it. I fear this program will be disinformation of another sort.
Disinformation is information that is intended to mislead. Misinformation is information that is wrong. So misinformation includes disinformation. The interviewer asks about disinformation. Todd consistently replies about misinformation. He is suspending judgment on whether that information is intended to mislead. The US intelligence community left no doubt about whether the Internet Research Agency had that intention. It is hard to believe that Republicans repeating Russian talking points on Meet The Press lacked that intention.
So, by saying “misinformation” rather than “disinformation,” Todd is adhering to the both-sides standard and marking his intentions for the December 29 debacle.
He also refers to social media as the problem. His comments allow for the possibility that mainstream media are the problem, but I think I know where to expect his emphasis to be.
He says his guests will be “such as”
Marty Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post; Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times; The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen; and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.
We. know. what. Dean Baquet. thinks. And it’s not good.
Marty Baron may have more useful things to say, but he is also likely to try not to offend his colleague.
Masha Gessen writes an interesting column and knows Russia well, but I’ve found her takes on disinformation jumping to 1984 a bit too quickly or dismissing the whole thing.
Michael McFaul is on the dreaded social media, so Todd probably thought he could be helpful. When McFaul was Ambassador to Russia, he talked to everyone – people in the street, dissidents. It was a good thing to do, and Putin hated it. It is why Putin persuaded Donald Trump to say he’d send McFaul over to Russia to give testimony. Fortunately, that was rescinded, but it gave McFaul a scare. I have personally tweeted at McFaul that he was engaging with a bot, as have many others. He’s gotten better about that.
And we have the qualifier “such as,” which gives Todd wiggle room to change the lineup.
I’ll watch, if it’s possible for a non-cable person to do that, but I expect the whole thing to be an exercise in the MSM’s own brand of disinformation, so that Chuckie can say later, “I’ve dealt with that,” as he rolls out more from both sides.
Now if one of the guests were Jay Rosen…
zhena gogolia
Cheryl, what would you recommend as sources on disinformation that would be interesting and fruitful for undergraduates to read? I’m considering overhauling a frosh writing course to include this subject, but I’m not sure where to start.
Baquet and Gessen are terrible choices. As you say, Rosen would be so good, also Ornstein, any number of other people! If you wanted to go conservative, Tom Nichols irritates me but he has a head on his shoulders.
wjs
I believe that informed people gave up on Chuck Todd almost immediately and have had no expectation for him to do anything useful for at least the entire time he has been at NBC. You might as well wait for the resurrection of David Broder and hope he’ll admit that both sides really don’t do it.
Cheryl Rofer
@zhena gogolia: Great question on what to read.
I can’t think of any books, but I’m vaguely recalling some articles. Will share them if they turn up, or if new ones do.
The best thing undergraduates can learn to distinguish disinformation is what they should be learning anyway – questioning sources, looking at framing.
TPO
Gessen usually confuses me. I’d like to see someone do a story about her
Baud
https://youtu.be/HMqZ2PPOLik
Cheryl Rofer
@TPO: She’s written about her life story. Try googling.
ETA: I think it may have been an NYT op-ed.
zhena gogolia
@TPO:
She wrote about herself in the New York Review of Books.
zhena gogolia
@Cheryl Rofer:
Maybe I should just gather some news stories and have them analyze them.
Baud
The thing about Chuck Todd is that, even if you believe he’s learned his lesson and plans to change, you have to wonder whether his organization and his professional network will appreciate and reward the new Chuck Todd, and how he will react if they don’t.
TomatoQueen
I want to twitterbomb CT good and hard. Maybe it would make him blink. NYer has been running Gessen on gay & dissidents in recent weeks & she seems consistent. McFaul seems forthcoming & I wish for more of him usually. Baquet can do one. Marty Barron hasn’t violated my trust yet. I wish however that they’d all just shut up and let Norm Ornstein talk.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: Send me an email. I’ve got a library of pdfs and links covering the entire gamut of information warfare, including as a part of political warfare. This includes a number of the old KBG manuals. Also, links to former KGB information warfare officers explaining methods and procedures. I’ll also send across the transcript of my keynote for the US PSYOP Regiment’s 100th anniversary regimental dinner.
I’m also available to do a guest seminar on the topic via FaceTime or Skype. I’ve done this for other folks.
kindness
Chuck Todd doesn’t give a shit if what he is saying is straight from Putin’s most cherished wishes. Chuck Todd only cares if you are discussing Chuck Todd.
Adam L Silverman
The issue with the choice of guests is there isn’t one person on there that has any significant experience working on information warfare, psychological operations, and/or political warfare. Or with the communities that do.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: How does one counter misinformation outright hatred and online targeting and harassment when it is coming directly from the ruling party.
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman:
I wrote you.
CaseyL
Maybe we should be glad he’s not going to have KAC on the panel. Though the “such as” gives him wiggle room, so she might be there after all.
Note that I don’t intend to watch the show, but will likely follow on Twitter – or here or Wonkette, if anyone decides to liveblog it.
(Yes, I do live in a media bubble of my own – but it’s not about ideology; it’s about not wanting to waste time on media shows that make you dumber for having watched them.)
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Because that’s not what Chuckles or his bosses want. Otherwise you might be led to question what you hear and see on NBC, and we can’t have that, can we?
Cacti
Chuck Todd said years ago that it isn’t his job to report facts.
I believe him.
mad citizen
Funny, I was just reading the Jay Rosen piece and was going to suggest a thread on this. I think for Chuck Todd and the rest of the mainstream press, I can only say WTF?
Rosen: [The nature of the Trump government would be propagandistic. And as Garry Kasparov observes for us, “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” This exhaustion, this annihilation were on their way to the Sunday shows, and to all interactions with journalists. That is what Kellyanne Conway was saying that day on Meet the Press. But the people who run the show chose not to believe it.]
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: I wrote you back!
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: You have to attack the network. Basically adapting what we’ve done for other forms of low intensity warfare, organized crime, and applying it to the type of war and warfare we are now involved in. Otherwise you’re playing whack-a-mole.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Unfortunately.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman:Agreed.The nodes need to be attacked.
zhena gogolia
@Cacti:
Like Toni told you to!
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman:
And I wrote you back!
Cheryl Rofer
@zhena gogolia: I think that’s a good idea.
dr. bloor
The idea that Chuckster the College Dropout has suddenly developed the ego strength and intellect to shift directions and do real journalism is laughable. He’s trying to rebrand. Brands and horse races are the only thing he knows, and all he thinks he needs to know because he is rewarded so handsomely for those, uh, skills.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: yup
gratuitous
As the late Bartcop was wont to observe, if someone makes a “mistake” that benefits him, look for him to make that same mistake again and again until he is stopped. Is it misinformation or disinformation? chucktodd can’t say! He doesn’t know what’s in someone’s heart when he says something that’s factually incorrect, and rather than call it by the wrong name, chucktodd won’t call it anything at all. You, the viewer, can figure it out, while chucktodd pockets his very large salary, until such time as someone stops him from making that mistake.
Amir Khalid
@dr. bloor:
I wouldn’t make too much of Chuck Todd’s lack of a university degree. What makes one a good journalist is not credentials, but persistence, knowledge of one’s beat, and a keen eye for bullshit. And I think those things are what Todd really lacks.
Arm The Homeless
@Adam L Silverman: But the domestic nodes are covered by fairly robust 1A protections, so it’s not tenable to DDoS or push back on Cloudflare to delist them (FNC, Brietbart, Daily Caller et al).
Short of working on long-term plans at educating the willing and putting Thorazine into the unreachables’ milkshakes, where can normal folks find leverage to make these outlets stop propagandizing their viewers?
pat
Unlike Fox, the “msm” is not yet ready to demonize one side of every argument and issue. Because that is what is necessary to take on the unstoppable stream of lies and bs.
And if chuckles can’t invite Jay Rosen on, he is not at all ready to admit his abject failure as someone who presumes to present “news.”
my two cents
Tom Levenson
I’m going to be very curious to see how this goes. I’d love Baron to coldcock Baquet on national TV, and it’s not entirely out of the question. (I know some Boston Globe folks and they don’t have universally loving things to say about Baron, but they all say he’s a take-no-bullshit kind of editor (and they do give him many more props than dings.))
I know Masha Gessen…not that well, but we’ve had a bunch of back and forth. I have enormous respect for her — admiration that began before I met her, when I read her book that wrote about genetic diagnosis and its discontents from a starting point of her own BRCA status. If I were to guess (I haven’t talked about this with her) I’d say it took her a bit of time to calibrate her sense of American political derangement from the overt and imminently physically violent danger of doing political journalism in the Russia she left only recently. But even when I strongly disagree with some argument of hers, I have to think it through carefully, as she’s a formidable thinker and researcher.
Yutsano
@Arm The Homeless: Channel lock the elders in your life out of Fox News and anything like it.
Martin
Democracy has baked into it the assumption that the electorate acts in sufficient good faith that it can overpower the actors that are acting in bad faith. We have no concept of how to deal with the case where that breaks down – where evangelical publications are gloriously supporting the least moral President in US history, where one party has signaled that foreign attack on US elections is fine.
Everything about political dialogue in the US assumes that broad statements of policy are made in good faith. That’s the difference between dis- and mis- information. We can’t accept disinformation by a major party, because fuck, there’s no remedy to that. It just can’t happen, so when it does, we can’t identify it as such. It’s a declaration of defeat.
catclub
This is always the issue with discussions of anything out side of DC politics. The experts on DC politics – who are regulars on the talk shows – are called on discuss whatever else has happened, whether it is Tamil Tigers or Japan’s preparations for Tsunamis. Calling on actual experts in something new ( on the big news scene) is never the first thought. Calling on someone you already know – that’s gold Jerry.
piratedan
well I certainly don’t believe that the elevation of useful idiots like Mr. Todd and Mr. Gregory are mistakes, or the granting of shows to guys like Brian Williams and Tweety are mistakes. They are the result of rich media corporations doing their best to game the system since the folks over in at the GOP evil empire have instituted their plans to gut the free press to ensure that a good many of us are stupid, ill-informed and continue to have our biases played to.
It appears that the lessons that the GOP “learned” post their Nixon debacle isn’t to play fair and abide by the rules but rather, fuck the rules, fuck the game and fuck you too….
I don’t like being lied to on the whole and all of this bullshit in not calling out a whole swath of our population for following their lowest common denominator has had the type of consequences that are galloping at breakneck speed to social Armageddon all at the same time when we should be doing our level best in combating and adapting to climate change and curing social ills instead of watching who the fuck the Masked Singer is.
Amir Khalid
Totally off-topic (like I care) but Leicester City trail 0-1 to visitors Liverpool in the first half, with Roberto Firmino heading in a
corner kickcross by Trent Alexander-Arnold. If Liverpool maintain this lead, and their dominance so far today suggests they could, they will extend their lead in the English Premier League over second-placed Leicester to 13 points with a match in hand. With the season just shy of its halfway point, that would look like an all but insurmountable advantage.laura
I’d like to see good old Driftglass such as. Pretty sure Chuck has him on permanent twitter ban.
Bill Arnold
@Arm The Homeless:
More abstract than that re nodes. And also attacking the RW communications networks/infrastructure is also kinda illegal, so one shouldn’t advocate for it publicly.
But many of these outlets have comment sections, so one way is to spin up gmail addresses (or whatever) and nyms and engage. Whatever techniques you prefer. Just stay sane.
Arm The Homeless
@Yutsano: YouTube and Facebook are the top vectors for this shite. The problem is that if you cancel your accounts to avoid feeding the beast, you abandon the field to the fascists and nihilists
Cheryl Rofer
@Tom Levenson: I agree with you about Gessen. She’s a good analyst of what she knows, but she hasn’t had enough time and context of American political derangement to be helpful in this subject. I suspect Todd thought only of the Russian connection in naming her.
He also misses, by having two American editors and two Russia experts, that it’s not just Russia that’s messing with our information environment. It’s Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and many others too.
Arm The Homeless
@Bill Arnold: most of their comment sections are farmed out to Facebook or Disqus, so clogging their tubes doesn’t do much to stop the publishing of propaganda–hypothetically ;)
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Looks like the Reds are keeping our man in KL awake at an hour I very (very) seldom encounter in person these days.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I stayed up for this match. Because Liverpool are playing. YNWA!
Bill Arnold
@Arm The Homeless:
This is true. (I refuse to do facebook, impossible to use safely vs trackers without a sandbox or a dedicated computer.)
Gin & Tonic
@Yutsano: I am perhaps fortunate in that the only elder in my life these days is my acidic 95-yo MIL, who never watches Fox and still occasionally surprises me with some new and creative invective directed at Trump.
sab
@Amir Khalid: I agree with you about the lack of degree not a big deal.
Nina Totenberg at NPR dropped out of college and never went to law school, but she is a well-regarded legal reporter.
Chuck Todd just doesn’t seem interested in learning. It’s all access. How can you be a good reporter if you are trying to be best friends for life with the people you are reporting on.
Also too, I am certainly not naive enough to believe he was ever naive about what was going on. He is simply cynical enough to think that we are all naive.
Gin & Tonic
@catclub: Exactly. I can easily count on one hand the number of Ukrainian journalists or politicians I’ve seen on US TV this year.
Bill Arnold
@Arm The Homeless:
Yes. Not talking about the platform; talking about engaging the readership, and dueling with trolls/bots.
For a while in the GWB era I was a regular on a few RW web sites. People really yearned for arguments pushing against their narratives; they actually said so. And it was good practice since some of them were smart. Different era now, but not completely.
Amir Khalid
BBC liveblog reports an interesting stat: this match is only the second one this season where Leicester City ended the first half without even a shot at goal. The first time? The reverse fixture at Liverpool, which they lost.
Amir Khalid
Liverpool are maintaining their stranglehold on this match, and a second goal seems very likely. With better finishing, they could have been 0-3 or 0-4 up by now.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Isn’t that what is known as cognitive thinking? Actually being aware of the facts and details about a subject.
patrick II
Some years ago I watched the lead broadcasters from the networks, led by Tom Brokaw have one of these self-analysis shows about the leadup to the Iraq war. The consensus was that they were not perfect but had done an overall fine job of reporting the facts leading up to the war. Upon further analysis these millionaires decided that the biggest problem facing America was the deficit and entitlements. I expect about the same again.
Arm The Homeless
@Gin & Tonic: My antennae went up when I started seeing KyivPost start popping up on the news aggregators in the past month. That is usually indicative of not activity fluffing their reader numbers.
These–usually op-eds–are generally not kind to Trump and his Putinism, but I feel like this is not authentic activity, and I am certainly not comfortable jumping on a bandwagon with masked drivers and no clue where it will end up.
Ruckus
@Martin:
It may well be so, an unexpected situation, an untenable situation, but it is where we are. Do we throw up our hands and give up? Or do we attempt to fix it?
It seems like there are more of us than them, and we can get back to at least semi normal. And quite a few of us seem to be not quite ready to accept defeat.
Amir Khalid
Leicester 0-2 Liverpool! Leicester defender Caglar Soyuncu handles the ball in the penalty area while defending a corner kick. James Milner scores from the spot, handily beating Leicester keeper Kasper bin Peter al-Schmeichel.
ETA: And Bobby Firmino makes it three, off yet another brilliant assist from Trent Alexander-Arnold!
ETA: Alexander-Arnold himself makes it 0-4! Assist from Sadio Mané.
Patricia Kayden
@wjs: After Todd stated that journalists are just stenographers, there was no reason for serious people to pay attention to him. I won’t watch any program he is on. If I want Republicans to lie at me, I could just watch Fox News.
zhena gogolia
@Amir Khalid:
You might like this virtuoso version of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocTa-8rJAE0&feature=em-uploademail
James E Powell
@Baud:
If he were to emerge as Chuck Todd v2.0, the actual journalist, the right wing would begin an all out attack on him, his show, and his network. They would stop appearing there and they wouldn’t give him any insider gossip to use. They’d likely cut off everyone at his network. They would not let up until he was
replacedgiven a new show. This would take less than three weeks. Everyone knows this. Most especially Chuck Todd.bucachon
@Cheryl Rofer: propaganda written by Jaques Ellul back in the 60’s is good
MomSense
@mad citizen:
Jay Rosen was the guest onthe professional left podcast with Driftglass and Bluegal a week or two ago. It was an excellent conversation.
JCJ
@Amir Khalid: scoring so fast you have to keep editing! Barring a complete collapse Liverpool is looking quite good to take the title. Looking forward to their Champions League matches as well!
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: AFAIK, the hosts don’t pick the guests on these interview/news shows. The Producers do that. The Producers are the ones with the rolodexes with numbers to call.
Get yourself on those rolodexes!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@Arm The Homeless: Kyiv Post is a long-standing and generally credible source.
Martin
@Ruckus: No, I’m not suggesting that, merely that if we’re frustrated that institutions aren’t dealing with it, this is why – we as individuals can break out of cultural rules and boundaries, but legacy institutions can’t – they are defined by their adherence to those rules and bounds, that’s how they have survived in the first place. So MTP and the NYTimes will never, ever, ever get there – basically by definition.
You have to turn to new institutions, not defined and bound by the old cultural rules to call this out, because they’re really the only ones that can. For Democrats, that’s been The Daily Show, and Last Week, and things like that.
zhena gogolia
@bucachon:
That does look good.
raven
I’m too wore out for all this mess.
Martin
Correct, which is why institutionally, they can never get there. They will drive themselves out of business before they make that transition.
Chuck may personally make that transition, but he’ll have to carve out that new space on his own. MTP will find someone who is more loyal to their cultural role.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Didn’t Gessen used to be good, or was I being snookered?
Yutsano
*tap* *tap*
Is this blog on?
debbie
@Yutsano:
The Fox station here runs its news at 10pm, so sometimes I’ll have it on in a “know thy enemy” kind of way. The way they shade things sometimes makes my jaw drop; I should pay more attention and use the same methods on my family members who voted for Trump
zzyzx
Yeah this can become cyclical. If a party (and especially the party in power) starts to push fake information, journalists have the option of presenting this as a legitimate news story or saying that the story is that the President and his supporters are lying. If they legitimize the bullshit, that’s an obvious problem. If they just state that the Republicans are lying, that drives more people towards Fox and makes a return to sanity that much harder.
I don’t see a winning strategy and it frustrates me. Ultimately nihilism and destruction are such easier goals than trying to create a civic society, that it’s really hard to win when 30-40% of the population just want to blow things up to piss off the libtards.
debbie
@James E Powell:
I don’t know. CNN and the Washington Post are both still standing, despite Trump’s bullshit.
Yutsano
@debbie: No one in my family will admit to voting for President Toadface. Of course any third party vote was useless in the state of Washington anyway. But I actually believe no one in my immediate family did.
But oh ye gods do they not like Pelosi. They scream she’s doing too much even though she’s done the whole impeachment gig already.
That reminds me: I saw a CNBC column this morning saying that Pelosi shouldn’t bother sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate. If she already knows there’s a foregone conclusion there would be no point. I’ll have to look it up later.
debbie
@Yutsano:
I agree. I think Pelosi should hold onto the articles and add to them as needed.
In fact, I nominate “Bribery” as the third article since Gym et al. are shrieking about it not having been included. All that would need to be stated is, “Because that’s part of the Abuse of Power article, you stupid shits!”
raven
@Yutsano: It’s blank on Safari.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
She’s good sometimes, bad sometimes, in my view. When she’s good she’s very good.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I thought that is what you meant, but a bit of clarity didn’t seem out of line.
Major Major Major Major
This is a test
ETA: weirdly successful, k
Martin
@Ruckus: Oh, I regularly need to be probed for clarity, so nobody should ever be shy about that.
oatler.
Send Chuck off on an ice floe, calling out “We’ll have to leave it at that.”
mrmoshpotato
@oatler.: LMAO Seconded.
“Sorry Chuckles! We have to go to commercial!”
Buckeye
@Another Scott: The producers do pick the guests. But Todd is also NBC’s political director, I find it hard to believe that he wouldn’t have some input on guests.
WaterGirl
@oatler.: Love that.