Media literacy is the term that has come to be applied to
the ability to make sense of the multiplicity of information sources available
on the Internet and elsewhere in the 21st century. It has many definitions, but most embody some
form of the one agreed on by participants at the 1992 Aspen Media Literacy
Leadership Institute: “Media Literacy is
the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of
forms.”[1]
One key aspect of being media literate in the digital age
is the ability to differentiate between the reasonable questioning of
conventional wisdom and the irresponsible distortion of reality.
My personal experience in researching, analyzing, and
attempting to debunk false narratives surrounding the September 11 attack on
the Pentagon has led to my discovery of many techniques and tactics that are
used to mislead. There is no single form
of deception. Some inaccurate information is inadvertent and perhaps inevitable
– what we might call honest mistakes – but other cases involve intentional,
malicious or mischievous misrepresentation.
My examination of 9/11 truther texts and videos have led me
to identify the following common forms of flawed information.
Misinformation: Unintended mistakes of commission or omission.
Disinformation: Intentional deception, knowingly misrepresenting facts to
fit a flawed premise.
Incomplete
information: Well-meaning but sloppy
reporting that leaves out key facts.
Speculation: Educated or uneducated guessing that jumps to a conclusion
without enough information to draw an accurate assessment.
Unreliable
accounts:
Honest confusion, such as eyewitness descriptions. Eyewitnesses are
notoriously undependable. Study after study has shown that people who witness a
traumatic or spontaneous event rarely have the completely accurate recollection
of it after the fact. [2]
Uninformed
opinion: Many subject areas, such as
science, require specialized expertise or study to understand. The layman may
be easily confused by “junk science” that sounds convincing but touts
conclusions which are outside the mainstream of scientific consensus.
Malice: The deliberate intent to produce harm or generate
mistrust.
Mischief: Pranks, hoaxes, often aimed at revealing gullibility of
the public, such as websites calling for the banning of “dihydrogen monoxide”
as a dangerous chemical. Dihydrogen monoxide is just a fancy name for H2O,
or water.
Propaganda/Agitprop: A campaign designed to advance a political, social, or
other agenda, to create social unrest and mistrust.
Popular Myths: Things generally believed to be true that aren’t true,
such as the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from space,
or water drains in reverse in the southern hemisphere.
Apocrypha: Stories too good to check, but which appeal to our sense
of humor or outrage, and fit a predisposed belief or stereotype about the
ironies of life or the capacity of humans to do dumb or remarkable things.
Preying on
mistrust of government: Using real
examples of government misdeeds to sow doubt and confusion. Many people are
already predisposed to believe the worst about government; so reminding them of
real abuses in the past can lay the groundwork for disbelief.
Selective use of
facts: Using accurate, verifiable facts to
create an inaccurate picture by leaving out the mitigating factors or the non-obvious
explanation for events.
Quote mining: Using only part of an actual quote to completely change
the meaning of the thought. That’s different from an out-of-context quote,
which may be technically accurate, but not give the complete thought or the full
shade of meaning. Quote mining generally turns the original statement on its
head.
Non-expert
experts: featuring people as experts who
are not subject to peer review, or are otherwise unaccountable for their
assertions.
Fabrication: Knowingly creating a fictional narrative, or phony
evidence.
Production
values: Spending money on graphics,
special effects, music to make the presentation look polished and
professional. This can give specious
claims an aura of authority.
Celebrities: Getting a famous person to endorse a view can lend
credibility to a false argument.
False Balance: Giving equal weight to unequal evidence. Undermining the
accurate account by “balancing” it with a dubious opposite view, portraying
both as equally valid, even if there may be no real evidence to support it.
After Popular
Mechanics, a 100-year-old journal about science, engineering, car
maintenance, and home improvement, tackled the thankless task of fact-checking
and debunking 9/11 myths, it was soon buried under a torrent of angry comments
and emails, which Editor-in-Chief James B. Meigs described as generally
featuring a “tone of outraged patriotism… apocalyptic rhetoric, and the casual
use of invective.”[3]
Meigs, in much the same way I did, began in the course of
the magazine’s investigation to identify and catalog some of the methods that
in his words, “give conspiracy theorists their illusion of coherence.” Meigs
cites the following:
Marginalizing
Opposing Views: Portraying the mass
consensus as the product of a small coterie of insiders.
Argument by
Anomaly: The mistaken belief a handful of
unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory.
Slipshod Handling of Facts: From mere sloppiness to a deliberate
disregard for the truth.
Repetition: Assertions that have been debunked or false impressions
that have been corrected get repeated hundreds of times, with no acknowledgment
of the subsequent correction.
Circular
Reasoning: Evidence that supports the
consensus view is dismissed as suspiciously “too convenient.” Physical evidence
linking the hijackers to the attacks must have been planted to further the
conspiracy. The plane wreckage witnesses saw at the Pentagon crash site? One
commenter suggested a truck bomb, loaded with plane parts, was more likely responsible.
Demonization: Many experts have lent their expertise in efforts to
debunk the specious claims of the 9/11 Truth Movement. But to the “Truthers,”
anyone disputing their theories must be in on the plot, or patsies of the
government. When I posted a story explaining that my “no evidence of a plane”
comments were grossly distorted, a common response was the “government got to
him.”
It was historian Richard Hofstadter who in 1964 published
his now-famous essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” in Harper’s Magazine. [4] His exhibit A: paranoid
style was the example of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whom he quoted from a
1951 speech on the “parlous situation of the United States:”
How can
we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this
government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product
of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such
venture in the history of man… What can be made of this unbroken series of
decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be
attributed to incompetence…[5]
McCarthyism is now a noun in the dictionary. Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines it: “McCarthyism is a mid-20th century political attitude characterized
chiefly by opposition to elements held to be subversive and by the use of
tactics involving personal attacks on individuals by means of widely publicized
indiscriminate allegations especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges.”[6]
Among the tactics McCarthy shared with today’s 9/11
truthers – aside from making unfounded allegations – is a vilification of the
news media. For a full, nuanced, and authoritative account of McCarthy’s
perfidy, there is probably no finer book than Haynes Johnson’s The Age of Anxiety, in which the author
details how an ineffective press corps, along with the weak standards of the
day, helped McCarthy spread his venomous conspiracy theories about “traitors
and communists” co-opting U.S. policy at the State Department. Like the 9/11
truthers, McCarthy demonized the mainstream press, repeatedly singling out the
news media as part and parcel of the phony Communist conspiracy. Johnson wrote:
“McCarthy’s message – that the American Press was infested with biased liberals
and, of course, Communists and Socialists – has been a source of political
divisiveness and public distrust ever since.”[7]
Now to be sure, McCarthy had a much more deleterious effect
on American society than today’s 9/11 conspiracists, who are generally ignored
by the public at large. But the same factors that allowed McCarthy to
successfully raise doubts about the loyalty of government bureaucrats are
employed by the purveyors of pernicious false narratives that undermine both
the government and traditional journalists.
McCarthy is an example of what I have come to believe is a
root problem in the fight against conspiratorial fantasy. Call it McIntyre’s
“First Law of False Beliefs,” to wit: “Very convincing arguments can be made
for things that are not true.”
Perhaps the simplest illustration of this theorem is a
criminal trial. Two sets of lawyers take the same facts, and try to convince a
jury of two radically different interpretations. Prosecutors argue the
defendant is guilty. Defense attorneys build a case, with the same facts, that
he’s innocent. Marcia Clarke says O.J. Simpson killed those two people, and
Johnny Cochran convinces the jury, “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.”
Two very convincing cases are argued. But only one is right.
Early in my career I experienced this firsthand, when in
the 1980s I covered the trial in Montgomery County, Maryland, of Timothy
Buzbee, dubbed the “Aspen Hill Rapist.” His defense team did a masterful job,
even inviting the reporters covering the trial to the scene of the crime to
show how it was inconsistent with the evidence given at trial. As a rational
person, with an open mind, who had heard all the evidence in court, I was
convinced. It didn’t add up. Timothy Buzbee didn’t do it.
But then, in a moment not unlike the classic Perry Mason
television shows of the 1960s, there was a dramatic courtroom revelation.
Blowups of credit card receipts taken from the victim after the crime revealed
Buzbee’s signature underneath the forged version. He had accidentally signed
his own name, and then written over it. He was guilty. There was no other
explanation. The defense case collapsed with the smoking gun, and Buzbee went
to prison. And in 2009, with advances in DNA technology, he was linked to three
more rapes dating to 1977.[8]
I learned a lesson: “Very convincing arguments can me made
for things that are not true.”
An even more obvious case for how we are easily deceived by
sophisticated techniques of deception is magic, by which I mean magicians and
their illusions. We don’t see how magic tricks are done, but they appear to
accomplish the impossible. Magicians saw people in half, make lions disappear
and read our minds.
Yet we are not fooled into thinking the magic is real. As
superstition expert Stuart Vyse writes:
The
magician’s act is made up of tricks, and there is an understanding between the
performer and the audience that nothing supernatural is involved. No one is
more aware of the tacit agreement than the professional stage magicians.
Although members of this unique group guard their secrets jealously, most
clearly identify themselves as entertainers, not priests.[9]
When it comes to magic, we are amazed and delighted to
discover that seeing is not believing, but it may not be as obvious when others
who practice to deceive are also employing legerdemain, but of a more nefarious
nature. If fact, it may be the case that when it comes to deliberate deception,
journalists and scientists are not the best equipped to detect sophisticated
trickery. Some professional magicians,
such as noted skeptic James “The Amazing” Randi, have made an entire career
showing how what appear to be psychic or supernatural phenomena are basic magic
tricks. It takes a magician to spot a
magician.
But the characteristic that seems to separate the
conspiracy theorist from the con man or the phony mind reader is that so many
have been willing to suspend their own disbelief – out of fervent belief that
they must be right, even if for the wrong reasons.
So what can be done?
[1] “Media Literacy: A Definition and More,” Center for Media
Literacy, accessed Sep 18, 2014, http://www.medialit.org/media-literacy-definition-and-more.
[2] Hal Arkowitz and Scott O. Lilienfeld, “Why Science Tells Us Not to
Rely on Eyewitness Accounts,” Scientific
American, January 8, 2009. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/
[3] Dunbar and Reagan, Debunking 9/11 Myths, 92.
[4]
Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” Harper’s Magazine. November 1964. http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/
[5] Hofstadter, Harpers,
1964, 2.
[6] "McCarthyism," Merriam-Webster.com.
Accessed September 18, 2014.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/McCarthyism
[7] Haynes Johnson, The Age of
Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism (New York: Harcourt, 2005), 139.
[8] Dan Morse, “Three decades later: Confronting the ‘Aspen Hill
Rapist’” Washington Post, March 1,
2012.
[9] Stuart Vyse, Believing in
Magic, The Psychology of Superstition, Updated Edition (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 7.
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