October 22, 2023
Dear editor;
This opinion concerns media disinformation.
With the escalation of disinformation, both political and social commentary, morphs into propaganda, while credibility plummets like a free-falling safe.
Kaitlyn Tiffany, writing for the Atlantic, October 21 in an article subtitled, “Unconfirmed Atrocities are turning into memes”, she reports that after the deadly hospital explosion in Gaza City, “Anybody checking social media for news would have immediately seen conflicting stories about what had happened.” Initial stories blaming the Israelis while counter stories blaming the terrorists, went viral. The U.S. presently claims a malfunctioning Islamic Jihad rocket caused the horrific carnage, with detailed analyses still pending; “but the broader meaning of the hospital story is well established.” She writes: “It is misinformation one way or another, circulated cynically to slander Israel or Palestine, depending on your world view.”
Many “shared stories” about the violence in and around Gaza are knowingly or unknowingly out of context and misrepresented, but they are debunked by open-source intelligence groups such as Bellingcat; she writes: “Take the claim circulating just after the Hamas attack (October 7) that the terrorist group had beheaded as many as 40 babies” … Sound familiar? “This assertion was made on front pages of tabloids and in Instagram posts from celebrities with millions of followers”. It was referenced by Joe Biden and walked-back by his staff later. Data collected by disinformation researcher Marc Owen Jones showed the claimed was reposted more than 100,000 times on Twitter.
Apparently, “the story was a rumor treated as fact”: An Israeli journalist at a television station reported that soldiers told her of the deaths of 40 babies and children; efforts made by numerous news outlets and the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) were unable to substantiate the horrific claims. Stories were debated back and forth, conspiracy theories sprouted, and some participants argued that fact-checking the specifics of how babies were murdered was “beside the point”.
The images of unspeakable crimes against humanity that grab headlines tend to stay with us long after the stories are unsubstantiated or even disproved. Desirous of news items to fit a personal narrative or agenda, commentators can be easy prey, susceptible to those cynical, less credible, sources of disinformation that plague social, broadcast, and print media, and they can become purveyors of mass disinformation. As credibility dissipates and disinformation escalates, let us consumers of the various media remain attentive.
Dave Hoehne, Aurora