Misinformation

 

The following piece is an essay that I submitted to the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal on March 11, 2021, in the hope they will publish it.

 

Over the last few months, we have been told about violent protests that were "mostly peaceful" and a truly mostly peaceful protest that was called a "violent insurrection".

There has been much talk about “misinformation” by the media and by government. I find this both ironic and disturbing. Ironic in that the primary sources of misinformation are those two sources as exemplified by my opening sentence. And disturbing in that both are working together to use this as an excuse to strip us of our right to Free Speech.

To illustrate unequivocally what the irony is I will use a metaphor; this is like allowing the fox (the government) to oversee the hen house assisted by the weasel (the media). We, the chickens will end up being their next meal. As such we must make sure this does not happen!

Even so while misinformation is part of life as some people are always trying to misrepresent something, whether it be items offered for purchase or the truth, we must be vigilant in protecting ourselves. As such I wish to share with you tools that I have found particularly useful. You may decide to integrate them into your toolbox or find others that do an adequate job. The important thing is that the onus is on you to protect yourself from those trying to dupe you by using misinformation.

The first thing we need to get straight is that misinformation is just a form of propaganda. It is done with the sole purpose of disguising the truth so that you become susceptible to a false narrative. Tools used by those who work to misinform include smearing and the improper application of words to deceive you as to what the meaning of the message is. So, let us start with those two to understand our adversary.

A “smear” is defined as “an unsubstantiated charge or accusation”. In that definition is the clue to identifying this object whole sole purpose is to misinform; “unsubstantiated”. If a person is accused of something yet no justification for that charge is presented, that is a smear. Once a smear has been detected you can be assured that the rest of what follows is not honest and therefore should be ignored.

Next is the improper application of words. This is far more difficult to detect as the English language is rife with words with many meanings, some of which are at times contradictory. It is therefore important to validate the use of key words as the context establishes whether the word is being used properly.

I prefer to use a hardcopy dictionary rather than an online one. The latter are updated far too rapidly, usually to support a particular bias, a problem exemplified by Wikipedia. This “semantic shift” has altered the meanings of words in such a way that, on purpose, you are now led to believe the opposite.

Here are several words that over time now have the opposite meaning:

Senile – used to be mean anything related to old age. Now it refers to dementia.

Hussy – used to be a term for a housewife, and how the word came about. Now it refers to a disreputable woman.

Egregious – used to mean distinguished or eminent. Now it means someone, or something is conspicuously bad.

So, what can we do to prevent ourselves from being sucked in by the disinformation that is all around us? I personally have several tools that I use that likely will aid you too. The first is to be skeptical, especially anything that is meant to generate an emotion. Such as an adjective in a news piece that is not factual. For example, not too long ago I came across a short piece on monitoring caribou, an animal we know little about because they are living primarily where we do not. In the very first sentence of the piece was the phrase “fragile caribou herd” where the word “fragile” is totally unsupported. This was done on purpose to try and elicit an emotional response rather than a reasoned one. It was disinformation.

Another is to find trusted sources. This one is harder in that it requires work on your behalf to fact check on your own. Which reminds me, I do not trust “fact checking” sites as they typically were set up to help encourage narratives. A case in point was my brother sent me a piece a while back whereby Snopes, a popular fact checking site, had “debunked” the use of hydroxychloroquine along with zinc to fight viruses. I was skeptical and so did my own search and quickly found references to research that confirmed that zinc, activated by hydroxychloroquine does aid the immune system in attacking the early onset of viruses. So, it turned out the claim had merit! So much for “Snopes” and so they are not on my trusted list.

And a third is to just check out other sources. Read or listen to other views. Watch and listen for the citing of facts, an incredibly good sign that source is more likely to be trustworthy. But the skeptic will verify that those “facts” are true. Name calling and other means of trying to debase a point of view is another excellent sign, in this case that they should not be trusted. Those who hide behind slandering words have themselves something to hide.

There you have it. Some simple rules to help guide your way through what seems to be ever growing onslaught of disinformation, too much of which is politically motivated. Free speech really is not about having the freedom to say what you want. It is the ability to listen to many different viewpoints and then be able to judge for yourself what is the truth. Do not let the worst offenders be our guardians.