Brendan Nyhan wrote recently about the proven playbook of getting misinformation (lies, really) about Obama’s birth certificate and about some details of the health insurance reform actually get into the media rotation:
1. Take a complicated issue that people don’t understand (e.g. presidential citizenship reqirements and Hawaiian birth records or the complex health care reform bills pending in Congress).
2. Advance a disturbing hypothesis about the issue that will appeal to your side of the aisle (e.g. Obama isn’t a legitimate president; the health bill will take away your freedom).
3. Misconstrue available evidence to construct arguments supporting your point.
4. Promote these myths widely. If you are successful enough in doing so, the media will feel obligated to report on them. Coverage will then frequently be presented in an artificially balanced “he said,” “she said” format, giving further credence to your claims.
5. When your arguments are debunked, claim that the media is trying to silence you to prevent the truth from being revealed.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 until various elites (e.g. John Boehner on health, Lou Dobbs on Obama’s birth certificate) start claiming you have raised legitimate questions about the issue of interest.
See how easy? And you should recognize lots of this since the local wingnut crew are here working this strategy at every opportunity. Nyhan has lots to say about this and notes that this tactic would actually lose much of its utility if the media would stop just repeating and treating these folks as good-faith players. What do you need a J-school degree for if you pretty much just write down what gets said? Even from folks you already know have a reputation for mis- and disinformation?