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How To Identify Misinformation
I’m surprised I’m only finding out about this just now. Somebody just clued me into a hilarious webpage over at the US State Department website. The page is titled “How to Identify Misinformation” and it is an absolute blast to read. Dated July 27, 2005, the page opens:
How can a journalist or a news consumer tell if a story is true or false? There are no exact rules, but the following clues can help indicate if a story or allegation is true.
- Does the story fit the pattern of a conspiracy theory?
- Does the story fit the pattern of an “urban legend?”
- Does the story contain a shocking revelation about a highly controversial issue?
- Is the source trustworthy?
- What does further research tell you?
This is certainly one of the most ironic things the government has ever published. WOW! Holy shit! They actually have a whole section of the State Dept. website dedicated to (countering) Misinformation. Check it out! They even have a navigation section labelled “conspiracy theories”! This is amazing. They answer the question “Did the US ‘create’ Osama Bin Laden?” and also something about the tsunami. Amazing!
Looking at this stuff, you really have to wonder just how inept these people are at handling information, if this is their feeble attempt at plugging the gaps of bad information. Conspiracy theorists are always claiming that the government employs all kinds of disinformation agents, but where are they? They certainly aren’t working in this section of the State Dept.
I’d also like to repeat my offer made earlier, in case anyone from the State Dept. is reading this: I’d love to have a job where I got to write up stories to confuse conspiracy theorists. Assuming such jobs exist, I think I’d be really great at it. So shoot me an email, or swing by my house with a black helicopter and we’ll talk. (Oh shit, wait, black helicopters are soooo 90’s. They probably don’t even use those anymore. Now I’m never gonna get the job!)
[Found via Intellishit which has an alternate version of the State Dept. page on identifying misinfo]
September 6th, 2005 at 9:45 pm
Heh, that’s a good one.
Tim, I dunno if they’d give you a job. You seem to fit some of their criteria for misinformation - they may not think you’d be a good candidate for a job.
September 6th, 2005 at 9:46 pm
No, I’m not talking about the State Dept, per se. I’m talking about the secret shadow factions of the government that conspiracy theorists are always saying employ hordes of disinformation agents.
September 6th, 2005 at 9:50 pm
One ironic thing about CT is that most things that are considered “disinfo” or “misinfo” seem like very sincere attempts by non-artistic people to create art. An element of narcissism and ego is evident in these examples. Ever read one of E. Howard Hunt’s fiction novels? No, and I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t: they’re intolerably bad.
Likewise, William Cooper’s claim that JFK was shot by his limo driver piqued my interest, until I actually watched the Zapruder film again. (for the record, I couldn’t finish “Behold A Pale Horse” or whatever it’s called because it bored me)
With the exception of the Deep Throat guy, who only cashed in recently on his notoriety because his family urged him to, everyone wants to embellish history even further by adding their two cents, but the CT stuff that survives the test of time is the stuff that is well-written, executed finely, and waterproof in terms of picking apart. In other words, it’s only bad disinfo if you can easily disprove it or dismiss it.
btw: “The X-Files” did a great episode on The Smoking Man and his attempts to get his serious historical fiction published, only to find his stories were sold to a porno magazine.
If someone like Robert Anton Wilson turned out to be a disinfo agent, it wouldn’t take away from the quality of his writings. He has talent to fall back on if the whole sabotage-the-counter-culture thing doesn’t pan out. But if it was discovered that someone like, say, John Tesh worked as a disinfo agent, I’d have to wonder what his job was and if he did it well.
September 7th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
behold a pale horse was the book that made me realise that people with mental illness could get book deals. is william cooper dead? there is so little about him around, no websites, no audio files, no other book titles. actually behold a pale horse woke me up to the “whole layers of human behaviour” in culture. i lent the book to my brother years ago. i should read it again. his story of the giant ufo rising up out of the sea and shooting into the sky blew my mind. alan orford wrote a book called gods of eden which had a similar effect on me. maybe these guys are government disinformation agents too. shit, once the paranoia starts it never stops.
actually i did hear a lecture by william cooper once, ranting about how the government was ruining america and that we had to rise up and stop it. sort of alex jonesish.
September 7th, 2005 at 4:28 pm
Cooper was shot dead by the Feds shortly after 9/11 under fishy circumstances. This juicy morsel of info either serves to paint him as a true patriot/rebel, or as a disinfo guy who made the wrong moves. I lost all interest in him after seeing the JFK lecture tape– on it, he showed a copy of the Zapruder film to a group of people and, indeed, it does look like the limo driver is turning around and blasting JFK in the temple. But when I found a copy of the whole Zapruder film online, with better image quality, it was so obviously a shadow that I turned red. I was disappointed greatly, because the limo driver angle never held water with me until a neighbor turned me onto this lecture tape.
But that’s why I make an effort to corroborate what people are spreading. Maybe my neighbor was the disinfo agent– he certainly didn’t like it when I told him the lecture tape was BS after I’d done my research.
Ironically, I never found that link with the quality-image Zapruder film again.