How the Media Structures News: Disinformation vs. Misinformation
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Is the media tailoring the news to misinform or disinform? In today’s episode, Bill Stierle and Tom discuss how information is being portrayed in light of the recent events with Florida’s COVID surge and the decision not to implement mask mandates. Information is all around us and is something that constantly circulates. But whether or not the information we receive and give out is truthful is harder to discern. Bill and Tom dissect the difference between misinformation and disinformation using statements made by public officials in recent news as prime examples. They also discuss the importance of structure and narrative and how it can create distance from the truth if done poorly, whether strategically or not. Keep your ears glued to hear more about their views on what’s happening and the media’s responsibility in spreading information.
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How the Media Structures News: Disinformation vs. Misinformation
We decided we want to put some definition on two terms that are being thrown around left and right in the media and in all kinds of reporting, written, video and audio. Put some definition on it, try to understand it and discuss some examples. That is the difference between misinformation and disinformation. I almost feel like these words have been used interchangeably and that's not very helpful.
One of the hardest parts about our discussion is going to be doing some scary honesty about people that don't want to admit mistakes, talk about things that go wrong or there's something they don't have, something they're bad at or something they don't have skill at. They'd rather pump themselves up and say, "I can do that. I have that thing. I didn't make that mistake. I didn't spill the milk." Misinformation and disinformation are practiced/hard baked into our way of doing things because if you can't face the truth safely, then you learn strategies of disinformation.
This is not about politics or just about business. This is about family and human interaction. Even though our show has a political piece to it, this has to do with, "What do you say or how can you make mistakes not be catastrophic?" On a sports team, we're forgiving of, we don't like it when a player makes a penalty at the wrong time but because we're loyal to the team, we learn how to get over it and say, "That player is just doing the best they can on our team," rather than just saying, "Get rid of them. Cut them."
If they keep doing it, you might do it but we're trying to work with the skill and the mastery of the player. Regrettably, the window of being able to talk about disinformation, misinformation and making mistakes is tiny. You do it and social media will jump all over us. That's why I'm excited to talk about it because it's not just about how politicians can't tell the truth but it's like there's no room to do it.
What occurred to me as you're saying that is on the disinformation side of things and we haven't defined it yet, we're getting there, there would seem to me to be a scale of disinformation, almost like we have the truth scale that we've talked about. There are levels of disinformation. For instance, loyalty to family. How are things at the family? Everything's great.
There's going to be a level of disinformation that, "We're not going to reveal that we have a couple of problems going on in our family. They're private. They're family stuff but to the world, we're going to say, everything's great." In fact, in business, that's one of the early lessons I was taught too, especially a company that is a rival, a competitor or to anybody you interact within business. "How's business?" "Better than good." That was one response that I always thought. "Better than good or businesses great." Even if business isn't great, you don't want to get a rumor mill going out there that, "That business is struggling. They're having trouble." There's some disinformation that's the little white lie equivalent maybe.
You're still positioning yourself for confidence, strength and command. I've got this little ship of mine, this business, whatever level I'm playing in. I'm doing good about housework. It works fine. There is this range of information, disinformation and misinformation that you're not going to disclose the range of truth because that's one of the challenges. It winds up happening both in business, politics and our personal life. "My truth is this. The good reason why I took the car was because and I didn't ask you because you might have said no. That's the truth."
That’s the I-would-rather-apologize-than-ask-permission strategy.
I have seen that done in business, in politics and in personal life, all three. There's the disinformation and information in regards to that and the ownership. A disinformation getting back to the definition is using unknowingness to keep a person distracted. It's loyal and reinforcing towards a false belief. I'm going to give information over here. Ron DeSantis did that. There's a problem with immigrants in the law at the thing because of Florida's COVID thing and the answer is, "That's 1,000 miles away and it's really not true but the disinformation is that the last president got elected on demonizing immigrants. I'm going to do the same thing." That's disinformation.
Are there problems with our immigration laws? Yes. Is there a path to citizenship that is viable in our country? No. As soon as you solve one of those things, it doesn't give a party or a group something to rally their voters on. For example, when Ronald Reagan started the clean slate with immigrants and said, "Everybody that's here, you're now Americans. We're all starting from things." That was a Republican that led all immigrants up to that point in and said, "We're going to process you. You're now part of the family. We're bringing you into the fold." The next, it didn't give them an ability to run on. "We're doing something about the immigrants because we solve the problems."
They solved one problem but didn't prepare for the perpetual problem that's continuous.
They did not. Disinformation plays into that.
I liked your example of Florida around the census. To put it a little simpler for our readers, he said, "Our problem with the surge in COVID infections in Florida is because the Joe Biden administration is just letting anybody through the border and these immigrants are coming over the border with COVID. That's why we have COVID in Florida."
That's a good talking point for his base because Reddit plays into the same thing that Donald Trump ran on and got to The White House on but the reality of that border is over in Texas way around the Gulf. Is everybody coming across from Mexico in boats to Florida? I know there are a few people doing that from Cuba but not really. Not only that but if you peel back the onion, you'll find out that the Joe Biden administration, in fact, especially because of COVID is turning away adults at the border. They're only letting unaccompanied children in.
If you look at the stats of how many of them have COVID, it's very low and the protocols for what to do with them if they do have COVID is very strict. None of those people coming in in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico are getting to Florida. That is disinformation because Ron DeSantis is stripping away context. With the daily wire, he's taking partial truths of some immigrants coming across the border have COVID. There's a partial truth there but then saying they're coming to Florida and they're the cause of our COVID surge, that is on the truth scale pretty far down away from truth.
There's going to be a scaling of things. Observation is the closest you can be to truth, then evaluation, judgment, labels, criticism, blame and shame. All of those things are as far away from truth as you can get.
He was in the blame and shame area saying it's the Joe Biden administration's fault that we have this surge in Florida.
It's like you're not doing your part in relationship to science, you and your citizens aren't doing your part for social responsibility. You would like to tout freedom, independence and choice as the values that you are portraying at the expense of person's life, wellness and healing. It's very unsettling. That leads us into what's the definition then for misinformation.
Misinformation as a definition is that there is the person has the fixed belief already in their head and is ignorant of the truth. All you got to do is drip a little breadcrumb in front of them and they'll get on the path. Coming back to our premise at the beginning, whether it's politics or business, nobody wants to admit a mistake. A few years back, Toyota had a problem with their cars and it caused deaths. They needed to get through that problem with truth, fixing, recalls and integrity. The owner admitted, "We had a problem. I apologize. We're going to fix it and look to restore our brand."
That's the path to take. Take your lumps early. Don't keep taking a stick hitting your head overhead and go like, "No. We're not wrong. We're great. We're the best party ever." It's like, "You're not." By the way, you're doing brand damage to Republicans because they're leaving. They can't vote. They'll sit out because you aren't providing something that's energized and vital to your voters to come back out and vote for. You're not in that space.
With the Toyota, the thing is that you use an apology but you're backing apologies up with actions that are trustworthy. Not you're just giving an apology, moving on and then not holding the next person accountable. Defending and fighting for a person, company and party or a sports team, all go into that same, "Too bad. I apologize. That was a mistake." You're not backing it up with truth.
Misinformation can resolve from somebody just being ignorant of the facts or the truths. There are a couple of good examples of that. One of which does not mean to be political, although it involves a political figure but it's an example that is helpful. I've seen this happen with a few other people as well. A reporter asked Marjorie Taylor Greene, Representative to the House of Representatives from Georgia, if she'd had the COVID-19 vaccine. It's a pretty fair question for a reporter to ask. It wasn't meant to be a gotcha question. Just a matter of fact, "Are you vaccinated?"
I would think if she's not vaccinated, she would be proudly saying she's not vaccinated or if she is vaccinated, also just making it more of a matter of fact. She says to the reporter, "Why are you trying to violate my HIPAA rights?" Rather to answer the question, she attacks the questioner and throws the word HIPAA rights out there, the phrase and avoids answering the question.
Unfortunately, what that revealed is that Marjorie Taylor Greene, US House of Representatives, is ignorant of what the HIPAA law does and means because it doesn't say, "Me, as an individual, person, you as an individual person or her as an individual person can't answer a question of whether they have received the COVID vaccine or not." I'm over simplifying it but what it does is says, "A health care provider, worker, doctor, a doctor's office and such cannot disclose your personal health records or information without your permission, the patient."
It's a patient bill of rights of sorts. Certainly, the HIPAA laws don't prevent you, the patient or the individual, from disclosing your own medical history, facts or anything like that. Marjorie Taylor Greene intentionally was misleading in answering that question. I don't think that she was intentionally giving false information. I think she just didn't know. She was ignorant of it. That's a big difference. Misinformation is more when you make a statement that is incorrect but not necessarily with the intent to deceive but disinformation involves intent in trying to propagate a partial truth or use a partial truth to your advantage to achieve some other goal.
It's to cover something that has to do with our uneasiness with mistakes, our inability to have integrity, to fall on the sword and to be in alignment with truth instead of being alignment or propagating. I did that but you had it coming. It's like, "You did this but it's not my fault. I did this but here are the good reasons why I did this." Suddenly they're like, "I did this thing and it was out of integrity. It's part of who I am but it doesn't make it right. People were uncomfortable."
To pick on somebody else, this is where Governor Andrew Cuomo's getting himself into trouble. He's saying, "I'm this type of affectionate person." He needs to go further than that. "I am this affectionate type of person.” People feel uncomfortable with that. They have filed a complaint about their uncomfortableness about my physical affection towards them. As a person who had that affection with others, that Italian nature of mine and this, I could see how that level of physical touch affects others, as well as the things, the comments that I've made that went too far.
I will take ownership of those comments and those things. "I've taken those eleven complaints because there are eleven pretty solid ones. These are valid. Those people's point of view, their truth about touch, physical stuff and comments that I've said and done were unprofessional of me. Those people get to complain. Not those people need to give me a pass because I'm a touchy person."
Approaching it from a place of taking accountability for something would have been maybe better than to try to say the Inigo Montoya defense, which is, "I don't think this means what you think it means."
It's the disinformation information. It's like, "I'm not sure if that word inconceivable means the word inconceivable."
Bill and I having a little fun here, readers. We're referencing the movie, The Princess Bride. There's this character that keeps using this word inconceivable at all sorts of times. If you haven't seen the movie, I'm sure a lot of you have. At times when it doesn't fit, finally this character, Inigo Montoya looks at this character and says, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
That's a good way of talking about what is becoming the debacle in the New York governor's mansion. It's disappointing and disheartening because for a governor that was seen as a model of leadership years ago, managing the crisis of COVID 19 and one of the biggest states in the country, he and his people, whoever's left around him, are doing a horrible job of managing this other crisis of personal behavior and character.
When a group or an individual picks a certain set of values or needs over truth, it doesn't tend to go well. You need to set truth next to it. It's like we have this COVID surge and this messaging here next to it is a partial truth but we're still talking about the truth of what I did and what's happening, if you talk about what's happening honestly. Even Ron DeSantis could do a better job of this. "We are the state with the highest infection rates and that's impacting our hospitals." Start there.
Admit some facts that you can't deny anyway.
At least he's telling the truth. "We believe the economy is more important than these viruses." All of a sudden, you're picking a side. Other people would say, "This virus is not going to affect me until it does affect me, it's not affecting me. We're building immunity up to the virus by allowing a certain set of population to die." It is a choice when you don't have medicine.
I don't know if that's going to be a long-term or a good choice.
It's not a great sale but it is a choice that they're making. That's also the Democrats argument. Anybody that's running against Ron DeSantis or Marco Rubio got to go after that with the very simple sentence. It's clear what they're choosing. They're choosing the death of their citizens over, setting aside of medical proven numbers for the economy and for the belief that independence, choice, freedom from any kind of control is what they're interested in the state of Florida. It's not the safest place I'd like to be but it is what they're choosing.
I agree with you for a long time and maybe still. The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has been choosing the economy over the health and safety first but most lately because schools are starting to back up and people are going back to schools, he's taking a different choice and that's interesting. He's saying he's lining up with freedom for parents to choose whether their children wear a mask or not over mask mandates. In fact, it's gone to the point of issuing an executive order that says, "Schools cannot issue a mask mandate." I don't think that's going to work out very well long-term for the governor the way things are going.
There have been several principals that are on the news that say the following sentence. They go, "Schools are run by adults. When my adults get sick, I can't run my school. I can't have kids come in here and infecting my adults because my adults run my school. I've already had two custodians die over this. I am not putting two more people's lives in jeopardy when I've lost two adults. I can't run my school. I have to hire two custodians that want to come to a school.
They're not going to come to a school that's unmasked. I now have an employment problem." If that principal had that narrative and then just cap it off with, "I could see what the governor is going for. He's going for freedom and independence for Americans to choose. Not in my school. It's not a good fit for us because I need adults to run my school. I need to protect my adults."
That's one way to go. The other way to go would also be we need to meet the needs of health, safety and protection for all the students attending the school. Meeting the need for freedom at the expense of people's health and safety is not something that we're interested in doing.
That would be something to follow up with. We've got to be able to stick the landing here because there's got to be some solution to this. If somebody speaks to a misinformation or disinformation, creating an alternative narrative by going like, "Here's a complex issue that cannot be distracted or misinformed. We've got to face it straight and making it honest, direct and having compassion towards what that choice is."
I have compassion for the state and businesses in Florida. I have relatives in Florida. They have businesses. I don't want their businesses to shut down and then have to receive more money from the federal government in six months. Their governor is going to face all these evictions and things like that because he wants to say, "Too bad. Go back to work. Take your chances. You don't have to wear a mask and neither does anybody else." It's so short-sighted.
What you and I do once in a while is that we make light or fun of it to show how that kind of thinking has that short-sightedness to it. It's going like, "You've got that other thing and we could see that it's costing your people's lives. We need to talk to the people, have them wear masks and have conviction inside the floor." It's not until the people of Florida face down their fellow citizens and go like, "I got a sick person at home. A family member of mine died of COVID." "Get out of this store. You can take your independence, individuality and choice. You can stay at home and do that, not in public around me." Americans are not in the place because we don't like confrontation except if that brings up a bigger issue. Except for foreign wars, we're okay with that.
Let's not go down that rabbit hole. I've seen a lot of different memes or infographics circulating social media saying, "You are an American and you have certain freedoms." Certainly, you are free to not wear a mask if you don't want to but that doesn't mean you can wear it coming into my restaurant, going into that store or all these other things because each individual private business can make its own rules about those things. To me, it's interesting that Ron DeSantis has picking freedom of parents to make decisions. He's tried to take a stand of individual rights over at the expense of the needs of the greater population of the community.
It's unsettling because a big part of why Florida works the way it does is low taxes and people can retire there but at the same time, they're going to retire there just to get sick with COVID and die. You're messing with the bigger elements of the economy when you do it that way.
Especially with tourism, it is one of the number one drivers of the economy in Florida with Disney, Universal, cruise ships, all the beaches, the coastline and hotels all over the entire state. It's travel and tourism. This is huge.
There are three cruise ships that I know of that are getting dismantled, torn apart, broken apart because it's cheaper to scrap them than it is to keep them running for 2022. Carnival Cruise sent three ships to be broken. That's the economic consequence. All of those ships with all of that furniture and all of those different things are better if they're in parts than if they're staying because it's more cost-effective. The industry is going to wait and see when they can rebuild the ships to build it back. Their whole industry has been set back two years, minimally. They're 3, 4, 5 years before they become viable. As soon as you mess with truth, you mess with trust.
I like what you're saying about creating an alternate narrative that's compassionate to the needs of whoever is creating the disinformation or misinformation. You can also make fun of it or you can be compassionate toward it. Bill, all roads do come back to empathy and compassion. We talked about this a lot in terms of effective communication.
The people at Toyota didn't want to make a product that happened to kill somebody because the car shut off, the steering went out and the person is going 30 miles an hour, hit something and then the person died. They don't want to make that product but at the same time is that we've got to have compassionate towards a person that's thinking in a way that has a tragic consequence that causes that level of disconnect with the truth instead of facing the mistake and the truth.
It's more about how media applies to this and what can be done in media and social media in order to turn the tide because we've got to turn the tide but also not lose our freedom of expression. When a piece of misinformation or disinformation comes up, we've got to face it in a brand new way. We'll talk about that more next time.
Sounds good, Bill. Thanks so much.
Thanks, everybody.
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