Misinformation Opinion

The eyes do not lie. I know when I am being lied to most often, but I usually don't call them out on it. Eventually, they'll fall in their own webb.

I cannot tell when people lie. They have to be bad liars for me to catch on to their distorted message.

I think just about all politicians embellish, lie or whatever you want to call it.

They do ... but it bothers me when it is taken to the nth degree.

Why, in of all places where it is most prevalent, Washington, DC, is it some kind of unwritten law to never call anyone a liar?

Good Question ... but in DC - Sacramento - Albany - Lansing etc. they seem to feel it is their job to twist things around.

You also have to realize that there is a false dichotomy at work among the "popular" media -- creating a fake choice for information consumers. It's the old Hegelian dialectic where they (or gov't) create a problem and then offer a (fake) solution. Then when the "solution" is passed it just makes things worse, or it gives people a false sense of security. Also consider that there are a lot of supposedly-reputable "truth sites" that are actually affiliated with a very-partisan think tank / candidate or politician. Like Obama has used things like that. So you definitely have to look behind the curtain wherever you turn nowadays! Thanks for posting this.

We always did have to be critical thinkers and learn to sift through bias.

I do not always have the physical energy to do that type of thinking.

One of the ways lies are perpetuated is when the mainstream media take a "balanced" approach by putting on two people with opposing views. If one of those people out and out lies, they leave it to the other person to point this out... or not, depending on what rhetorical hare the other person is pursuing at the time. This is made much worse by the fact that the only divide along which the media collects opposition points of view is the right / left division.

What ought to happen is that the media should interview people with a wide variety of perspectives on an issue. Instead of collecting political pundits to talk about, for instance, health care reform, why not collect doctors and patients with different situations that bear on the issue?

Furthermore, when someone outright lies in front of the camera, he or she should be immediately called on it, and by the journalist. Anderson Cooper occasionally does this. Other than him, I cannot think of a journalist who makes it a practice to call out outright lies.

A lot of these ideas are really well expressed in this interview of Jon Stewart by Rachel Maddow.

Rachel said "...when someone outright lies in front of the camera, he or she should be immediately called on it, and by the journalist".

They might not realized they are hearing skewed facts.

No, I said that. (Can't blame Rachel Maddow).

If journalists are any good, they have done some fact checking (or their production team has) before the interview goes forward.

Journalists are supposed to report facts. That means they are supposed to do research.

On the flip side is the buzzsaw

Journalism is almost dead in the US. What we have are talking heads who simply repeat things others have said, sometimes in the form of a question, or spin data to benefit their corporate owners. Real journalism (aka real ferreting out of truth and facts and presenting it in a non-partisan manner) requires hard work and money. If the owners of these channels/media outlets want to continue to make more and more money, they need to:
1. cut costs; and,
2. increase viewership.

The easiest way to cut costs is to cut out all that expensive, long-cycle journalism and replace it with young, blond, buxom babes who can simply read the monitors and do what they are told because they have dreams of celebrity. The easiest way to increase viewership is to create more and more sensationalized programming, akin to rubber necking on the highway.

Thanks for the URL, Anita, and your interesting piece.

The CNN newswoman may have said that both Republicans and Democrats engage in telling lies, but that is patently a "gift" to the Republicans. Fox News and Limbaugh have tilted the lie-meter way, way, way towards the Republicans - and, FOX especially, is supposed to be factual. The "news" channel's influence is unfortunately great while its veracity is low, which means a big sector of our society is misinformed (to join with the big segment that is completely uninformed).

This largely explains how the top 1% is able to control what is supposed to be a democratic society... God help us...

Power over the mass ... by any means!

Demagogues are among us..... but so easy to understand ...

"Iraqi oil will pay the war expenses!"

Dave is so correct on this ...

Thanks for reminding us of yet another Iraq-related lie.

This one has become even more interesting, Gilbert, since the bulk of the Iraqi oil contracts went to BRITISH Petroleum, Royal DUTCH Shell and some CHINESE companies, while the U.S. taxpayers will, in the end, be stuck with between $2 and $3 trillion in the war-related costs, including the veterans' ongoing medical expenses...

As far as I know, GWB, Cheney and Rumsfeld were upset because Saddam was dealing with China for most of the oil licenses. Therefore they decided to "revive" the old ARAMCO (made of the British (BP) and Standard Oil).

Blix reports that every time he was handling a report on Iraq and WMD to this group of 3, the report was simply denied.

Lying has become the status quo and people in general no longer expect anything else ... sad, very sad.

The problem though is that the first lie was that truth is absolute and ultimate "in this realm" ... and it is not, it is relative, being only absolute when the nature of UNIversal Truth, the WHOLE is concerned (the realm of GOD (not God and gods)) ...

Because people INtuitively know deep down inside that they have not the truth and that the truths presented to them by "so-called authorities" leave much to be desired, they just pick what works best for them to stand by when truth is sought and grasp onto it to repeat and defend much like religious faith demands of those with an egoic "investment" into it. "My truth is truth and your claimed truth is a lie" ... claimed by both sides where there supposedly must be a good winner and a bad loser ... always conflict because no one wants to be considered the bad loser and a liar to boot.

The Real Truth of things is that Truth is Relative ... because there are differing perspectives in the same place and time where differing people in their differing places see things differently, and each may have a valid relative truth based upon their unique perspective ... subject to change of course moment by moment as all is change in this UNIverse.

If people could just realize and allow that, then they could understand each other and allow such differences without judgment and conflicts about it all ... then they could be comfortable that the truth they hold in one moment may well change in the next as information changes so as to not have to hold so tightly in the "investment" to the degree they conflict with each other in defending it ... IMnsHO

"Lying has become the status quo and people in general no longer expect anything else ... sad, very sad."

I would add to that, Jerry, that people in general no longer WANT anything else. Americans have fallen into a blissful state of accepting lies simply because they support their personal ideology. Rabidly against abortion and want to believe that 90% number? Done! No checking required.

Truly, we do pick and choose our news to bolster our viewpoints. Rarely does one do real listening and discerning. Some of that is due to learned patterns seek to be assured. Some of it is we cannot afford to overthink our daily lives and need to filter information quickly -- so our brain edits into --- sounds about right ... doubtful ... intriguing but no time to analyze ....no way ..... if this then maybe that .... hmm.

Into The Buzzsaw: 18 Tales Of Media Censorship


by Michelle Goldberg



Audio: Kristina Borjesson interview
(Interview starts just after 1:00:00, after the 1st hour)



Between them, the authors of the incendiary new book "Into the Buzzsaw," out this month from Prometheus, have won nearly every award journalism has to give -- a Pulitzer, several Emmys, a Peabody, a prize from Investigative Reporters and Editor, an Edward R. Murrorw and several accolades from the Society of Professional Journalists. One is veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration and a best-selling author, another is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

And most of them are considered, at best, marginal by the mainstream media. At worst, they've been deemed incompetent and crazy for having the audacity to uncover evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by government agencies and corporate octopi.

Edited by ex-CBS producer Kristina Borjesson, "Into the Buzzsaw" is a collection of essays, mostly by serious journalists excommunicated from the media establishment for tackling subjects like the CIA's role in drug smuggling, lies perpetuated by the investigators of TWA flight 800, POWs rotting in Vietnam, a Korean war massacre, the disenfranchisement of black voters in Bush's election, bovine growth hormone's dangers and a host of other unpopular issues.

Borjesson describes "the buzzsaw" as "what can rip through you when you try to investigate or expose anything this country's large institutions -- be they corporate or government -- want to keep under wraps. The system fights back with official lies, disinformation, and stonewalling.

Your phone starts acting funny. Strange people call you at strange hours to give you strange information. The FBI calls you. Your car is broken into and the thief takes your computer and your reporter's notebook and leaves everything else behind ... The sense of fear and paranoia is, at times, overwhelming."

The majority of the eighteen pieces in Borjesson's book are about hard-working mainstream journalists, dedicated to the ideals of their profession, who stumble into the buzzsaw and have their careers and reputations eviscerated. Though the subjects and personalities involved are wildly diverse, the stories echo each other in disturbing ways. Journalists are sent by their bosses to do their jobs -- in the case of Borjesson, to investigate the crash of TWA Fight 800 as a producer for CBS news. Sometimes what they find is impolitic, other times it brings threats of corporate lawsuits. Suddenly, editors kill the story, or demand changes. In some instances, like that of TV reporter Jane Akre, who was investigating the use of Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone, reporters are ordered to insert outright lies in their pieces or face firing. Other times, like with Gerard Colby's book about the Du Pont family and Gary Webb's San Jose Mercury News series about the CIA's role in the crack epidemic, the bosses are spooked after the fact and withdraw their support from work already published, hanging reporters out to dry.

In the aftermath of Enron, plenty of journalists came forward to publicly wring their hands about the press's failure to catch the story before it destroyed the life savings of thousands. Since then, though, there's been little sign of renewed vigilance towards malfeasance at other companies, even though many have written that Enron's business practices weren't particularly unusual. Without addressing Enron directly, "Into the Buzzsaw" makes it pretty clear why this is by showing how journalists who took on companies like Monsanto and Du Pont were abandoned by their own editors and publishers and embroiled in lawsuits.

When they speak out, buzzsaw victims are usually treated as paranoid conspiracy theorists. Competing outlets valiantly defend the status quo --The New York Times, The Washington Post and the LA Times launched concurrent attacks on Gary Webb's series, eventually derailing his career and causing his paper to print a retraction (though not of any specific facts mentioned in the story). Writing of this episode in is book "Whiteout," Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair said, "From the savage assaults on Webb by other members of his profession, those unfamiliar with the series might have assumed that Webb had made a series of wild and unsubstantiated charges, long on dramatic speculation and short of specific data or sourcing. In fact, Webb's series was succinct and narrowly focused."

Borjesson was subject to similar attempts at character assassination by her former peers. After Borjesson was fired from CBS, she was asked to develop a pilot for a new investigative series to be overseen by Oliver Stone. She gathered over thirty eyewitnesses who disputed the official government story, but before production even started, other journalists started sneering at the project. Newsweek called Stone the "latest conspiracy crank to delve into the mysterious crash." Time Magazine chimed in with an article headlined "The Conspiracy Channel?" The New York Times dismissed Borjesson's reporting simply because government agencies denied its truth (never mind they were the very agencies Borjesson was investigating).

There's something of an X-Files feel to a lot of these stories, though not in the way that condescending guardians of official truth think. Rather, their surreal feeling comes from the first-person experiences of people finding the institutions they've served all their lives suddenly turning on them. As Borjesson writes, "Walk into the buzzsaw and you'll cut right to this layer of reality. You will feel a deep sense of loss and betrayal. A shocking shift in paradigm. Anyone who hasn't experienced it will call you crazy. Those who don't know the truth, or are covering it up, will call you a conspiracy nut."

In fact, that's just what a lot of these writers have been called. Once a journalist has been tossed out of the inner circle, anything they write can be smeared as sour grapes or mere ranting. The media has already branded them unreliable, so their charges are extremely unlikely to be taken seriously.

A similar thing happens to other progressive media critics. It's not that the media isn't interested in media stories -- see the blanket coverage of Tina Brown's foibles at Talk. It's just that few are interested in critiques that challenge the very essence of journalists' romantic dreams of themselves as Robert Redford playing Bob Woodward in "All the Presidents Men." Right-wingers like "Bias" author Bernard Goldberg tend to get much more attention, perhaps because their insights don't threaten most journalists' cherished self-conceptions.

While most alternative press readers are familiar with Noam Chomsky's scrupulous documentation of the way government lies become the media's conventional wisdom and with Robert McChesney (who wrote Buzzsaw's conclusion) and Mark Crispin Millers' analysis of corporate consolidation, they are routinely written off by those policing the perimeters of acceptable debate. They hardly ever appear in major newspapers or on network TV. While not quibbling with their facts, most media people tar them as alarmists or unrealistic utopians.

Indeed, some of the writers in Buzzsaw say that, before their own experiences, they were among the scoffers. Webb writes, "If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn't work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite?"

But, like most of the contributors to "Into the Buzzsaw," he did his job too well and the powers that be hurled him onto the other side of the looking glass. "And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been," he writes. "The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress."

The routine maginalizing of media critics is one reason "Into the Buzzsaw" is so important. It might be possible to discredit one erstwhile insider, but to argue that more than a dozen veterans of organizations like CBS News, CNN, The AP, The BBC and The San Jose Mercury News are all crazy in exactly the same way would be to engage in conspiracy-mongering more far-fetched than anything these authors are accused of. And while plenty of lefty writers have excoriated media monopolies, rarely has the precise way that corporate ownership and intimidation warp newsroom values been made quite so explicit. The value of these testimonies is largely in their minute accumulation of detail (which occasionally makes for tedious reading but enhances credibility).

Borjesson is especially systematic, laying out every meeting, every conversation, every contradiction in government statements.

Some contributors aren't quite so convincing. The book as a whole would have been stronger without April Oliver's self-serving piece about her involvement in CNN's Tailwind debacle and subsequent firing. She doesn't bother to refute the charges made against her or defend the finer points of her work, which makes her essay seem like a self-serving screed. But that's just one weak spot in an otherwise appallingly convincing book, a book that suggests that the truth about our media-military-industrial complex might go beyond even our paranoid imaginings.

Beyond the specifics of each story, "Into the Buzzsaw" is about how the elite sector of the media to bestows the imprimatur of truth on its own interpretations of the world. In the current landscape, of course, these same outlets largely take it upon themselves to determine which books should be deemed serious. It will be interesting to see if "Into the Buzzsaw" gets any play in the outlets it exposes.

Don't count on it.

Michelle Goldberg is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn.

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12753

That sounds like just the way I have suspected "the system" operates for years now.

Excellent article, Anita. I recommend you read the article to which I link in my recent article on taxes:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979249582

(I'm not plugging my article, just think you would like to see that there are crusaders out there who are trying to get the facts out to people.)

As I stated above, I think many Americans like to have lies presented to them if they support their preconceived notions of reality and ideology. It's a very dangerous thing, and one that will tear this nation apart (we are already seeing it affect the way our representatives are working - or not working would be more accurate.)

Most schools do not teach different ways to think or even learning strategies or how to validate information.

I think we would be better off without textbooks with programmed lessons that can be 'taught' by anyone with the 'teacher's' edition.