Like many others, I’ve been both fascinated and exhausted by the recent political campaigns and elections here in the United States.
As I reflect on the past several months, I want to share a few thoughts and observations, which are characterized by a wide array of mixed emotions.
I’ll try to keep my remarks as objective as possible, in hopes of having readers from both sides of the aisle hear what I have to say.
First, I’m happy and pleased that some of the candidates I supported were elected. Conversely, I’m disappointed that others I voted for were not elected.
I found myself greatly troubled by the constant avalanche of inaccurate information, and in some cases, outright lies that were presented by candidates of both parties.
Even more concerning was to see how so many engaged and thoughtful voters blindly accepted this false information as truth and allowed it to influence who they voted for.
It’s worth noting the difference between misinformation and disinformation. “Misinformation” is false information that is spread, regardless of intent to mislead, while “disinformation” is deliberately misleading or biased information, or propaganda. Certainly, media presented by political candidates can reflect either or both of these terms.
This pattern of accepting inaccurate information as truthful is disheartening on many levels. We do a disservice to the public when there are no easy ways for voters to know if the important information they are receiving about political candidates is true or false.
I imagine you may be thinking, “That’s just politics. You can’t change it.”
Perhaps we can, but it would indeed be a very tall order.
Incredibly, political ads are not covered under truth in advertising laws, and telling lies in public discourse, including political speech, is actually protected by the First Amendment.
A significant first step is to shift our collective mindset regarding how we interpret information from political media.
Instead of automatically assuming, “What the candidate says must be true,” we should adopt the more cautious (and accurate) response of “What the candidate says is often biased to promote themselves or to disfavor their opponent.”
It’s highly unlikely that campaign reforms will be enacted to limit what candidates say about themselves and their opponents, or to police the accuracy of candidates’ statements.
Therefore, a more fruitful approach may be to assist voters by providing resources to help them make more informed decisions about the candidates.
Some examples of this approach already exist. Fact-checking websites provide analyses of media information and may offer factual evidence to support or dispute the claims. But these resources are not widely used by most voters.
Perhaps there could be a neutral, science-based coalition of political analysts and other experts to not only provide unbiased fact checking of political statements and ads, but to “push” this information out to voters more directly through emails, TV ads, social media, and other news outlets.
We have already come to rely on Google and other search engines as our automatic go-to for information of all kinds. Wouldn’t it be great to have one or more reliable online sources for factual information about political media?
One promising example of such an effort to provide a clearinghouse of ways to identify and fight media disinformation is an initiative sponsored by the RAND Corporation. As part of their “Countering Truth Decay” initiative, they provide an extensive compilation of online websites and tools to fight disinformation.
Examples from this terrific list of resources include codes and standards to guard against mis- and disinformation, credibility scoring tools to grade the accuracy of sources, education and training programs to combat disinformation, and fact-checking tools.
On a larger scale, more can also be done in terms of educating children, teens, college students and adults of all ages in critical thinking skills, how to evaluate the accuracy of media statements and online information, and how to search and find credible sources of information.
Let’s all consider how we can actively promote efforts to fight inaccurate political media. By enabling people to find and use factual and accurate information, we can all be better equipped to make important decisions that affect our families, our nation, and our future.
Here’s a question: What additional steps can we take to combat misinformation in the media? Please leave a comment. Also, please subscribe to my blog and feel free to follow me on X (formerly Twitter) or Instagram, “like” my Facebook page, or connect on LinkedIn. Finally, if you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend.