I wonder how many people in April 1993 realized how greatly the Internet would facilitate the distribution of propaganda? I certainly didn’t and I’ve been using it almost since then. Now we are positively deluged with information from every source imaginable. The signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low and an enormous amount of it is propaganda of one form or another.
For example, how many people have the IDF killed in Gaza? If you answer 30,000, you are repeating what is materially Hamas propaganda. Is it true or false? We have no idea. We also have no idea how many of those killed were civilians and how many Hamas fighters (also civilians but let’s not mince words).
Here’s another example. Practically everything you know or think you know about what’s going on in the war in Ukraine is somebody’s propaganda. Russian, Ukrainian, U. S., British. There’s very little we can really rely on other than that Russia invaded Ukraine and a lot of people on both sides have been killed.
How propagandized information has become (or maybe always has been) is what caught my attention in this passage from Lee Fang’s piece on pro-Ukraine propaganda at RealClearInvestigations:
American influence in Ukraine’s media environment stretches back to the end of the Cold War, though it has intensified in recent years. Since the outbreak of the war, USAID support has extended to 175 national Ukrainian media entities.
Over the last decade, efforts to crack down on speech have been increasingly justified as an effort to protect social media from disinformation. The U.S. helped set up new think tanks and media watchdogs and brought over communications specialists to guide Ukraine’s approach. Nina Jankowicz, the polarizing official whom President Biden appointed to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board to police social media content, previously advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on its anti-disinformation work.
In response to questions about the U.S.-backed anti-disinformation groups in Ukraine targeting Americans, the U.S. State Department provided a statement saying it defines disinformation as “as false or misleading information that is deliberately created or spread with the intent to deceive or mislead.” It added, “We accept there may be other interpretations or definitions and do not censor or coerce independent organizations into adopting our definition.”
but
Last September, journalist Jack Poulson reported on a leaked report from the Zinc Network’s Open Information Partnership, which helps coordinate the activities of several anti-Russian disinformation nonprofits around Europe backed by NATO members, including Detector Media.
The lengthy report defines disinformation as not only false or misleading content but also “verifiable information which is unbalanced or skewed, amplifies, or exaggerates certain elements for effect, or uses emotive or inflammatory language to achieve effects which fit within existing Kremlin narratives, aims, or activities.”
In other words, factual information with emotional language that simply overlaps with anything remotely connected to Russian viewpoints is considered disinformation, according to this U.S.-backed consulting firm helping to guide the efforts of Ukrainian think tanks and media.
The emphasis is mine. That definition of disinformation is in direct conflict with the State Department’s (quoted above). Or, in other words, organizations whose mission is to identify and counter disinformation are themselves spreading disinformation. Talk about a wilderness of mirrors.
What then is a person to believe? My general strategy is to view just about everything skeptically but especially statements that are contradicted by the actions of people making them and to place special credence on declarations against interest.
“My general strategy is to view just about everything skeptically but especially statements that are contradicted by the actions of people making them…”
That’s a sure sign. Witness: claims about “Republicans threat to democracy” while lawfare is being conducted, the DOJ weaponized, the Supreme Court being ignored on student loan forgiveness, or standing immigration law ignored. I could go on.
But its also possible to do valid analysis. Let’s look at the jobs reports, touted every issuance by the White House. The numbers get revised (downward, when the news cycle has moved on), the number of part time, government and immigrant recipients ignored. The White House cites the unemployment rate, but not the drop in those seeking jobs. Zero Hedge pulls them apart at every issuance. Not so rosy.
I understand the White House. That’s just politics. But where is the 4th estate? In propaganda land. Any wonder people are losing faith?
The more I learned about how the jobs reports were prepared the less seriously I took them. I have grave problems when the adjustment factors are larger than the numbers actually measured.
” I have grave problems when the adjustment factors are larger than the numbers actually measured.”
I had to chuckle. An observation I, and many others, have made. Its absurd on its face.
But that’s the genesis of the constant restatements. Print a good number in the white light of the day. Dim the lights, stare at the floor and shuffle your feet when the restatement comes out.
As a policy matter, its inexcusable. As a political matter, its evidence that politicians and the intrusive government they control should be minimized. As a current political matter, and let’s look at inflation, no wonder the public ain’t buying Joe’s pitch. They actually shop for food, clothing and shelter and consume energy. Steves dismissals aside. I can’t imagine he really believes his BS. (Joe or Steve) But maybe he’s too far gone. But if, as I suspect, its just reflexive spewing of partisan talking points – what a crass fellow to essentially vote for the demise of the middle and lower classes in America.
Hey Kids!! The hits just keep on coming……….
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/literally-gas-lighting-hilarious-reason-todays-ppi-miss-seasonally-adjusted-gas-prices
I grew out of this negative cynicism a long time ago. No data is perfect. No analyst is perfect. What happens when you reject everything is that you end up selectively believing what you want to believe. Look at what Drew does. Or you become totally cynical, which is kind of fun for a while but not productive.
You just try to obtain information from many different sources. You especially look at data from sources you dont like. You disregard data/analysis from people who are provocateurs. When appropriate you use your own experience and/or direct observations.
So take the deaths in Gaza. You need to remember that both Israel and Hamas have interests in faking the numbers. However, there are other sources in Gaza. You also have direct observation of the destruction of buildings. Given the number of homes damaged/destroyed, hospitals damaged/destroyed and knowing that Israel has not allowed food and medical aid for the most part 30,000 is a reasonable number. Could it be 20,000 or 40,000? Sure, but it’s not a number out of line with what you can observe and what multiple parties who work in the area believe.
On economic data you dont hang your hat on one number (unless it’s inflation apparently). You look at lots of numbers and especially trends. There really is no truly accurate way to report numbers on stuff like employment in anything close to real time, at least not without allowing the govt to be much more intrusive than it is now, so you will always have revisions. Part time work? That’s good to know but how much of that is unwanted part-time? What’s it like on trend? ETC!
Steve
I think it’s more complicated than that, steve. How do you determine when you are actually consulting multiple sources? When you consult nine sources two of which quote an official with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, three of which quote a British official (whose source is an official with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense), and four of which quote an American official whose source is a British official whose source is an official with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, how many source do you have: one. The only sources that we can confidently consider different are conflicting sources.
WRT unemployment reports, I think they’re completely unreliable now. Not only are they weighted so heavily that they’ve become meaningless income inequality renders them even more meaningless. The issue is standard deviation. A 1% increase in the number of cardiologists employed is considerably different from a 1% increase in the number of strawberry-pickers employed.
In a recent comment about urban warfare in another thread, I pointed out the historical fact that wars in urban terrain occupied by civilians always end up with large numbers of civilian deaths – often larger than the casualties of both military forces combined.
But one thing I left out is that even after the conflict has ended, we often only have rough estimates of how many civilians were killed, much less broken down by the direct effects of fighting vs indirect effects like disease, lack of medical care, and starvation.
If you go to the Wikipedia entry for the battle for Mosul, for example, the estimates range from ~2500 to 40k civilians killed, depending on the source.
Counting during the actual fighting is clearly even more difficult. Hamas’ estimates are surely wrong and they are probably padding the numbers because they have the incentive to do so, but they also have the incentive to disguise their manpower losses. But it’s also a reality that they don’t know. They have no magical ability to count the dead; they are too busy fighting Israel, and they are currently not in control of most of Gaza. They may think they are padding the numbers, but in reality, they could be under-counting, and the actual number may be higher. We – and they – just don’t know.
I think the pro-Israeli side who needs and wants to believe that Israeli has not killed many civilians, and the pro-Palestinian side who needs and wants to believe there are magic tactics for immaculate urban warfare, both need to understand the reality of urban warfare when civilians are present. Lots of civilians will die and there is only so much that can be done to prevent it.
Both sides and the international community refuse to deal with this reality and its implications.
As far as Ukraine goes, the information operations environment is completely the opposite of Israel/Palestine:
– Ukraine has a much tighter grip on information generally
– Ukrainian units are much more disciplined about not letting embarrassing media leak to Western audiences
– There is a coterie of middle-men who curate and translate for propaganda and filter out information that makes Ukraine look bad
– Western audiences and especially media are pro-Ukraine and are much less likely to show information that hurts Ukraine for fear of being labeled as a Russian stooge. By contrast, there is very little, if any, problem with carrying anti-Israel messages.
Just consider a couple of things. All militaries inevitably commit war crimes. All commit the kinds of mistakes that Israel committed with the drone strike on the aid agency. When was the last time anyone has heard of anything like that from Ukraine? No strikes that missed their targets, no inadvertent civilian deaths, no angry Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russians trying to surrender, or any of the other things that I’m positive have happened but have never made it to Western audiences.
Remember the Azov Brigade, the neo-Nazi unit? It’s still around but is called by its numerical designation. Ukraine has done a good job of stamping out the use of unit patches with nazi-related insignia, and limiting the distribution of forces wearing them. Those that get through are blurred by the middlemen I mentioned earlier before making it to Twitter and Western sources.
If you watch combat videos of actual fighting that have subtitles, you’ll see that the Ukrainians are said to be calling the Russian enemies “orcs,” but in reality, the word most often used is “faggots.” This is the middlemen purposely mistranslating what is said to not offend Western audiences.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I still think Ukraine are good guys in this war in the sense that I don’t want them to lose and Russia is the aggressor and the much worse actor here. And in war, soldiers tend to not GAF about niceties of language and will often create private but offensive “morale patches” for combat uniforms. We do this in the US too!
But the contrast between the two wars is a good illustration of how the information environment can be a huge strategic factor.
Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about you steve. You claim that you read and consider multiple sources. And yet I, as nauseating and sometimes laughable as it is, routinely read/view MSNBC, CNN, NPR, ABC etc, the Atlantic, Raw Story etc. I want to know what they are saying. But your commentary could be lifted straight out of any of those. Every day. Its formulaic. They all say the exact same thing – identical phrasing; coordinated. Most recently, on inflation. And you parrot it. I can count on your comments reflecting the Dem talking points of the day.
I actually want to know what the other side has to say. And in a hat tip, I’ve been persuaded numerous times by our host. Sometimes my views modified by sound arguments. Or sometimes not……..
But you, sir, signal your plain and simple partisanship daily. Its a robotic talking point-fest. Polly Parrot. Who do you think you are fooling?
The key criticism of the linked piece is that the U. S. government is conducting information operations (violating the law) on the U. S. population through foreign surrogates.
My own view about both Gaza and Ukraine is that there are no “good guys”. There are bad guys and worse guys. In Gaza the worse guys are Hamas; in Ukraine they’re the Russians.
“I want to know what they are saying. But your commentary could be lifted straight out of any of those.”
Actually, I dont always. I suppose sometimes it is easy to do, especially when you guys are so clearly wrong. But note what I said about Gaza deaths. You wont find any of that on the places you cite. As Dave notes most people use the 30k number without questioning it. I just said we dont really know and it could easily be 10k less or 10 k more. Note that back in February Israel claimed that it had killed 10,000 Hamas fighters. Is it reasonable to suspect that they have killed at least one or two civilians per Hamas fighter? I think so as that would actually be an incredibly low collateral rate.
On the economic stuff you focus like a laser on one or two numbers you like. I try to look at and offer lots of other numbers. When I am lazy I do copy them from other people though I do usually try to confirm them on BLS, FRED, Census numbers or similar.
Dave- They are unreliable if you want absolutely correct numbers, though I suspect not as badly as you claim. They do hire people with math skills. What’s important is that they remain fairly consistent in methods so you can follow trends. Also, you do realize your claim about being completely inaccurate is that the numbers could be much better or much worse than you claim. Why do you even talk about employment numbers then? You just make up any numbers you like and we can all do the same. Should be fun.
Steve
At one time in the recent past the media spoke practically with one voice, and the public took it as gospel.
When Walter Cronkite looked into the camera and declared “this war is lost “,
regarding Vietnam, was he reporting on a reality or creating one?
This would be a moment to remember that media is not the only sector with agency, political leaders who supposedly believe in their policies have an obligation to sell them to the nation.
If we continue to elect politicians who lack those skills and are too dim to develop them we will continue to drift and bicker for the lack of leadership.