Spreading Like Wildfire: Fighting Misinformation with Empathy

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How do you communicate with someone who has different views from you? How do you find empathy and wade through those difficult conversations? In any business, misinformation is a make-or-break thing. Most believe that, “The customer is always right,” but does that mean that the customer's truth supersedes reality? In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom share their insights on the spread of misinformation across different industries, especially in politics. Listen in as Bill and Tom tackle what has become of our beliefs and how to cultivate empathy and compassion amidst skepticism.



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Spreading Like Wildfire: Fighting Misinformation with Empathy

Our anniversary, January 6th, brings up a lot of things to think and be concerned about regarding language and communication. Before we get into some of that, we wanted to talk about something not as controversial, nonetheless, very relevant, regarding how people have perspectives. I had a very difficult conversation with a customer of my company that was so shocking. This customer had established beliefs that certain things about websites are true that are quite simply not true. To me, it was as if this customer was looking in the sky at 12:00 noon and seeing that bright spot of light in the sky and saying that is the moon when it is the sun and saying to me, “Isn’t the customer always right?”

It is putting me in a very difficult position because, at that moment, the customer was not right. Telling the customer that the customer is not right is not helpful in that situation. It was always a very difficult conversation. It took all of my language and communication skills to get this customer off the ledge of jumping off a cliff and ending our business relationship, which wouldn’t have been good for either one of us. The perspective was shocking in terms of how far away from the truth it was.

How do you communicate with somebody who looks up and sees the sun and calls it the moon? Even closer to perspective, they might even look at the moon and say it is made out of cheese or there is a secret moon base up there. There are different beliefs and experiences that human beings bring into their consciousness through language. There was no communication anywhere on the planet about aliens flying on an alien ship that looked like a disk until the 1950s.

The 1950s was the first time news media had that this looked like a saucer in the sky. From then on, people started reporting dreams and started saying, “I was picked up with a disk.” Before that, no one ever reported a disk in the sky. Why is it that a word, phrase, or belief gets into our culture or planet as a human being? What winds up happening is we start speaking and dreaming about it and making it real, but there is a problem with that because we spread our thoughts and beliefs very similar to the common cold or Coronavirus. It seems like it is easy to spread, whereas other diseases are not as easy to spread.

The disease of misinformation or disinformation, depending on what information is, has spread like wildfire.

The spread of a wildfire is a great belief because we have a metaphor about things, and then you realize that any image associated with the behavior gets more traction, which is called good marketing. If somebody in the 1970s says the phrase, “The customer is always right,” as a form of customer service, that means the customer’s truth supersedes reality. Your customer had some beliefs about the internet, websites, marketing, or what podcasting was going to do for them, and they were sure fighting for it.

What you didn’t do in reference to the thing that you should have been doing and they are slugging it out in their head, and it’s taking them down a well-worn thought path starting with the fuse. Beliefs are like a fuse towards a stick of dynamite. It’s like she has a belief that the customer is always right. There is no self-reflection in that. If I have to believe the customers are right, I get to be a spoiled 4-year-old as an adult or a ranting 12-year-old as a congressman. A belief has that, and with complex issues like America. A phrase called “Make America great again,” can stick, or, “Stop the steal,” or, “The big lie.”

This is the tough thing that we thought was threatening our democracy in 2021 as this interaction happened, and people were driven to take action in the form of violence to stop counting votes. Even though there are over 700 people that have been prosecuted, are in the process of being prosecuted, have been convicted, a combination of all, this movement continues to grow. I was looking at the statistics in the news that in 2021. Less than a majority of Republicans believed that the election had been stolen, and Donald Trump won the election. In 2022, 75% of Republicans believe the election was stomped. This thing has grown.

You keep the messaging going and the voter to take, “The customer is always right,” to the phrase, “The voter is always right.” You don’t have to change the voter’s belief. You got to get the voter to vote for you. Your job as a politician or newscaster is not to inform the consumer about accurate facts. It’s to get advertising revenue. That is the job. A person says the ratings on CNN are terrible because people don’t want to watch the truth and deal with a complex issue. Who wants to watch some of the shows that CNN puts up 24/7 covered by whoever is speaking of wherever? It’s like you are capturing this person, and it gets boring because there is a realization that the person is not saying anything, the person is not able to make a point, and I voted for an illusion. This person is ranting, and I can’t listen to this person rant.

There is a lot of ranting and opinion in this 24-hour news world we live in. I agree with what you said about that accurate reporting of the news and the facts is a lost art, from the point of observation of me looking at a lot of news. The former CEO of Theranos, this company in Silicon Valley, was revolutionary. Elizabeth Holmes was considered the next Steve Jobs. There is a whole HBO documentary on it. You have to see which about the Silicon Valley startup, which was valued at about $9 billion in its heyday, and it was all built on a lie.

This company supposedly had developed technology to do all your blood analysis from the prick of a finger and a drop of blood instead of having to go in and put your arm and have them take vials of blood for all these different tests. It all ended up being a fraud and a charade. Very famous people like George Schultz, Former Secretary of State, and Warren Buffett invested in the company. Many big people invested. She has been on trial. This whole thing came crashing. It’s a wonderful documentary.

I’m interested from a business perspective. She has been on trial for wire fraud and all sorts of other frauds of investors. The verdict came down. Back to the point of news reporting, it made the news that she was convicted on a couple of accounts. She was acquitted on some accounts, and on some accounts, the jury couldn’t reach a decision, but the news did not report some basic facts like when she is going to be sentenced and what is the likely amount of jail time she is going to get.

You often hear these things in news reports, but the news did not care to report that. They wanted to report that she was guilty and that these famous people who invested in the company were defrauded. They leave these other useful facts on the sidelines. There is a casualty of the sensational part of the story. Something you said about the media reporting and not always reporting all the facts triggered something and reminded me because I was talking about that before.

If I’m looking at this from a business perspective, it’s better from a financial perspective for the media not to give all of the answers so they can drag out the story. I’m trained to take a half step back and empathize with the media, “Shall I give the listener all of the answers and get to closure because that’s what they need? Shall I give them this much and then say tune in tomorrow, and I’ll give you a little more?” They are withholding the resolution or truth either because they are hiding it or drawing it out. They would rather draw it out. Certain media outlets would rather draw it out than get it to a solution because they can get more coverage that way and fill more time. Certain media outlets would rather not deal with it because it is too complex for their listener.

That is part of why they don’t provide all the information that they would have in Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather’s day. Maybe they would have when it’s not a 24-hour news cycle, and you are watching only half an hour of news in the evening, and you are not going get it until the next day. Let’s come back to January 6th because it was very interesting in the run-up to this anniversary. I did see another piece on CNN, some video reporting where this correspondent and, ironically, the reporter is Irish or of various heritage. He has a nice thick accent, but he always goes into the lion’s den of Donald Trump rallies and Donald Trump supporters, not in a comedic way the way Jordan Klepper does, but in a serious way, trying to ask questions and see what people’s truth is.

He asks Donald Trump supporters, trying to get them to admit Donald Trump didn’t win the election. He talked to about ten people in this interview. It’s fair to say 90% have all said, “Donald Trump won the election. Joe Biden didn’t win the election.” At the very end, someone looked at it from more of a rational place. She was more of a supporter of Donald Trump and his policies but, “We should move on and admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. I’m not here about the 2020 election. I’m here about the next election and to support the candidate I want.” There was a perspective more aligned with the truth of what happened in the 2020 election, where most Trump supporters or Republicans have been polled. Seventy-five percent of the people in that poll said they believe the election was stolen and Donald Trump won in 2020.



The new head of the elections in Maricopa County, who was elected in 2020, finally buried or ended this issue that all the reviews and the cyber ninja stuff have been done. Their final report on the 2020 election said there was no fraud. The only thing that they found is that 50 votes were accidentally tabulated twice by a young election worker who made an honest mistake. That’s it. Joe Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes. They debunked everything. They reviewed it all and said, “There is no fraud. Joe Biden won in Arizona.” None of these Donald Trump supporters or Republicans that have been polled are paying attention to that. It doesn’t get any perspective in their minds.

There is no truth because there is no trust.

They were in a dangerous place in America because of this if both sides cannot agree that our election systems are sound, have integrity, and the answer to the truth about elections is to count the votes. That is the foundation of our nation.

The hard part about it is because so much of a person’s mindset if we adjust the metaphor a little bit and then get to a solution is what to do about it. In a football or basketball game, you can see if the person made the basket or scored the touchdown on the screen or live. You can watch it take place. At the end of the game, half of the fans, the ones who are for the team that lost, feel disappointed, and half of the fans are delighted because their team won that game. The idea is to be good about losing.

We lost because they had a stronger message, more skill, and talent. One of our guys fell. The ref made a bad call, but that is a part of the game. The 50 votes are that the ref made one bad call, not the ref made one bad call, which means that the whole game should be thrown out and replayed. Think about how that would work in the NFL. I’m a Saints fan. I’m going to go, “Play the game again. I want the game played. Recount the game. Fire the ref. Change the ref that is going to call the game in my favor.” That is the mindset that is being cultivated. The problem is the cultivation of the mind.

Let’s figure out if we could get away from this. How do you give compassion and empathy to somebody feeling the simplest feeling of all, disappointment? How do you give empathy to them? How do you console that person? The person feels disappointment and then has a judgment. The judgment is that, “Our team should have won. We have better players. We have better policies. I don’t like the policies of the person that won.”

“I don’t like the policy of the state that allowed people to vote by mail.” They have a belief that that is not fair.

They are voting by mail, which means there can be fraud in the mail system. This has been gone over and over again about the systems that are taken out. The other side is going to listen to me and go like, “You believe a false narrative.” How do we know that there is no monkey business going on? That needs empathy to it. It doesn’t need problem-solving to it. You would trust in your elections. It sounds like you would be a person who would need to go and experience what trust looks like by seeing how the voting process is doing and being a good citizen by being a part of the vote-counting team. “Would you be willing to be a part?” “It’s rigged.” “Why don’t you go check it then?” “I trust Sean Hannity. I trust these people. They are telling me it’s rigged.” “Why don’t you go check? Why don’t you do what you can?”

That doubt and skepticism that has been sown into voting by mail have been from a marketing perspective done masterfully, even before the 2020 election, either within the context of the 2016 election or 2018 midterms in the run-up before 2020. There were two senators from Oregon, one Republican, and one Democrat. I remember the interview where they were talking about, “What we have done in our organization is a model for the nation, every registered citizen eligible to vote, gets a ballot in the mail and they all vote. The system works incredibly well. You can find if there is fraud by checking the votes that come in against the list of voter registration, and it’s so easy to do.”

Eventually, California went the same way as we got into the pandemic. It didn’t happen right away. Since the pandemic, every registered voter in California gets a ballot. You can mail it in or carry it into the polling place, vote, turn it in, and vote on the machine if you want to. All of this stuff should be apolitical and nonpartisan. The Republicans, especially Donald Trump and his team and supporters and many supporters in the National Office of the House of Representatives and senators are all jumping on this bandwagon. “We need to make sure every vote counts and there is integrity in the voting system,” which is sowing seeds of doubt that there is no integrity in the voting system and casting doubt on the results of the 2020 election.

It is a non-story, and how you cover a non-story because it doesn’t make you any money. A story makes you money. A non-story doesn’t make you money. A fact does not sell well because otherwise, you and I can stare at the moon and go like, “That is the moon up there. The moon has these features to it. That’s what is in the moon.” What sells is that, “There is an alien base on the dark side of the moon, and it’s only been uncovered by these hazy-looking pictures. The moon is hollow, and there is a base inside the moon's dark side. You can see some spaceships flying off of it if you look hard enough.” Without any evidence, I polluted our minds with a story about the moon and there is a base on the other side of it that is hollow.



When your guy lost the election and didn’t want to leave the White House and uses all of this disinformation of election fraud, he whips everybody up into a violent mob that does what happened in 2020.

Concede and try again next time, but what he is doing is he is stirring it up and bringing that thing there. He gets more mileage out of canceling something than he does about doing something. He gets more impressions. They were going to counter the program.

He was going to have some event.

They did in Mar-a-Lago and said, “We are going to cancel it.” He did that to him to hold the media by the nostrils. He is yanking the media around by the nostrils, going like, “We are going to do something in Arizona.” All of a sudden, they are going to do something in Arizona. It’s moving to the next marketing opportunity and trying to build momentum that way. What is going to happen in Arizona is something we got to see because that is where more will be revealed. There is no more that is going to be revealed. I feel concerned because this leaves their devoted followers, and it’s good to be a devoted fan. Many teams in the NFL have never made it to the Super Bowl.

I feel disappointment and sadness about how the need for truth and trust can’t be met because of doubt and skepticism. Those two molecules dominate this space. Where we can stick the landing here is that the person needing empathy about how the need for truth and trust is not met and then doing something about truth and trust. It is a part of the feeling that many Americans feel that they are invigorating is the feeling of helplessness about their circumstances. They are helpless about the experiment because the world, economy, workplace, our behaviors, and habits are changing, not just because of the economy, pandemic, and various influences from the world.

People are going, “I want to shrink back to something I know. I want the 1950s and 1960s to be back again. I want that sweet spot between 1953 and 1963. I want that thing. That was when America was great again. There was the racist thing and social unrest that came after that, but I want that experience of post-World War II when we could feel good about we did something good because the truth was that there was a fascist regime that killed millions of people.



We were on the side of fighting for, and the sacrifice was one of respect, honor, and loyalty to country and loyalty to an ideal.” We can talk more about how we, as a nation, restore respect for the things we do well and pride in the things that we contribute that add value to ourselves and others. We have to get back to leading, and this is not leading. This is not leadership. This style of leadership doesn’t go anywhere.

It is bringing us closer to offertorium.

That style of leadership has a whole other set of problems that looks good to start, but it gets worse as it goes. There is plenty of history to look at this. It’s not like I’m making this up. It doesn’t go as well there. It goes better when people collaborate, cooperate and participate. It goes better when there is a common agreement on facts and a common set of rules and laws that apply evenly to others. We are not getting on multiple levels.

There is more to come on this as we go forward.

It is having compassion and empathy for the person that bought into the marketing and sales. Politics has become very financially valuable for news outlets. You make more money out of conflict than you do out of honesty. It’s better to stretch the truth rather than stand for the truth. It’s something we got to get back to, and that is my hope.

Thanks very much. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us.

Thanks, everybody, for reading.

Important Links:

• Elizabeth Holmes – Article