This Is How It Gets Done
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?
Tags: Complicit Media
I love the liberal media’s role (#4). They are so good at it.
The best was the other night when ABC Nightly News play “Fact or Fiction” Healthcare Debate Edition. They “debunked” the dead panel bull, though still mentioning crazy side of the debate as if it were an actual side of the debate. After they finished the report, Charles Gibson actually said, “That’s the sort of thing we’ll be doing from time to time during the Healthcare Debate.” From time to time? Seriously, that’s your job Chucky, to point out to people what the truth is. At least he was honest in saying that he only does his job from time to time. By the way, the next segment that they went to was on cattle rustling. FML.
Charlie Gibson is the dead-opposite of Walter Cronkite.
What your side fails to acknowledge is the shrill and nasty approach you folsk took to Pres Bush is now being applied to Pres Obama.
You set the low standard on civility and now it is the standard.
Obama needs to revive the Wyden/Bennett plan and drop his too expensive (CBO) and ineffective plan (Mayo Clinic).
Mike Protack
We weren’t allowed within several miles of Bush. And there’s a world of difference between fury at an ill-educated, silver-spoon legacy pretending to be a common man and race-baiting white idiots identifying with their corporate masters. Other than that, great analogy!
Funny, but I don’t recall any liberal taking a gun to a Bush event..
…oh, that’s right, liberals were all in the “free speech” zone that was at least 3/4 mile away from the event…
And I don’t recall any liberal ripping up a conservative’s rally sign inside a Republic rally…
…oh, that’s right, it’s because you had to have Republic party clearance and be on the approved list to get inside the rally; only friends need apply.
But I do recall that anyone who even suggested that we shouldn’t go to war with Iraq was “UnAmerican” and probably a terrorist and hated the troops.
Yeah, civility: Republicans have always been known for their civility.
Republic talking point list, item #1: No matter what it is, Democrats did it first and worse (see detail under Kennedy, Sheehan, Soros)
i remember peeps gettin sent to jail fo wearen t-shirts dat da GOP dittnt agree wit
dat and a bumpasticka
i alsa see dat no one is maken Pratack answer da DV kestion
Sorry, Del Rep, but in keeping with the current trend here, I’m going to need some specific evidence of the “shrill” tone taken during the Bush administration (some examples from his first 6 months in office would be awesome). Until you do, I’m going to go ahead and ignore you. Sorry.
What repubs like to do is to forget that this tactic of blatantly lying probably goes back to Joe McCarthy and certainly Lee Atwater was one of its most vicious practitioners.
You can even see it is the posts that Mr. Shallow Bench makes here. Not a word of truth in any of them and it would not surprise me if it turned out that Mike Protack wasn’t his real name. And he is belligerently ignorant of the fact that no one here thinks that there is anything he says that is of any value.
You have no business criticizing anyone over civility if you spend your time deliberately lying to people. Lying is not civil behavior.
jimd ridin de accountabillatee train…toot toot
I’d like to put something to bed here. As if he has it permanently on his clipboard to paste, Protack keeps running out the “Mayo thinks the plan is ineffective” meme. He’s actually partly right. The Mayo Clinic (if you take their Health Policy Blog as being official) seems to agree with most people in that the current plans on the table are not the best possible ideal ones. I agree. What they seem to say (and where the GOP stops quoting them) is that it does not do enough.
Mayo prefers MORE reform, and thinks the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC or in GOPspeak “The Death Panel”) is not strong enough. They say:
“An independent Medicare advisory commission focused on defining value, measuring it, and finding ways to pay for value could have significant, positive impact on health care for the long term. While we think the proposal’s timeline of 2014 is too long to wait to see value-based reforms, we look forward to working with the administration on refining and strengthening their new proposal. This, and other, bold concepts have the potential to “bend the cost curve” in U.S. health spending without compromising health.
Kinda sounds to me like they want MORE oversight and government control. You in for that, Protack? I am.
PS — I can provide links for all this if needed. 🙂
Thanks Scott!
We did provide this to Mr. Shallow Bench some time ago, but he is having a tough time wrapping his mind around the fact that Mayo (and the other signatories to the letter) want a stronger reform than what is on the table.
And he won’t read this, either.
Sorry to be a redundant debunker. And I know I should know better than to fight delusions with facts. That one just got my goat, and NOBODY gets my goat! (It’s a very nice goat)
Every bit of debunking is welcome!
And it is irritating for people to pretend to facts that they don’t have and even to lie about stuff that you know is dead bang wrong.
And keep your goat to yourself…. 😉
Scott: very nice. Thank you.
(It is likely that Mr. Protack will not resurface on this thread, however; I have noticed that’s usually the way it works. Look for him to repeat the phrase on another thread)
He already has.
O-o-oh,…you caught it, Scott! I was just going to tell you to go over to the “2 loud mouths” thread at around 3:08 to find the same words. This is pretty standard operating (pun intended) procedure for Mike.