These are Meera's draft minutes of the THIRD Session of the recent conference on the media at St Brides: Next Century Foundation / The St Brides Forum / The International Communications Forum; XENOPHOBIA AND DISINFORMATION IN THE MEDIA; Thursday 14th September 2006; Venue: St Brides - Fleet Street, London EC4; Session three: “Disinformation Today”
• Chair: Mrs June Jacobs, International Council of Jewish Women; Trustee, The Next Century Foundation
• Keynote speaker:
Mr Todd Leventhal, Office for Countering Misinformation, U.S Department of State, Washington: "The impact of disinformation on journalists".
• Panel:
Rev Larry Wright, Director of Religious Affairs, Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre
Ms Karen Dabrowska, Director, The Other Iraq Website
Mr Tim Pendry, Chairman, TPPR Public Affairs & Communications
Todd Leventhal: I’m talking today about the impact of disinformation on journalists. I have worked for thirteen years at the State Department, and I’m an expert on facts – but I have seen how little they count for. There are four phenomena we need to look at - disinformation, deliberate falsehoods spread by people for political purposes; misinformation, which is unintentional; urban legends, which are widely believed by untrue, such as the story about someone microwaving their cat; and finally, conspiracy theories, which suggest that there are dark forces manipulating events behind the scenes. The latter three are more important since they tell us about how people think. For example, 36% of Americans thought that there was some US Government involvement or complicity in the 9/11 attacks. It goes to show that people believe crazy things.
One variable diminishing this was if they read the mainstream media. We might even look at reversing the title of this talk – journalists have a great impact on disinformation. Most journalists are very good, but occasionally stories do slip through. AIDS was one of them; we now know that a specific chimpanzee in Africa transmitted it in the 1930s, but we know the Soviets spread the story it was invented in the Pentagon. Variants on the story about ‘baby parts’ even won journalism prizes in France and Spain: it was a great story, too good to check. But it impacted on international adoptions and organ transplants. Peter Arnett did a story in 1998 on the use of nerve gas to kill defectors in Laos, for which CNN had to apologise.
There have been a number of other fabrications, such as the one about depleted uranium – a fantastic substance and a perfect weapon, but people associate ‘uranium’ with ‘radioactivity’, ‘atomic bombs’ and ‘Hiroshima’. If it was ‘depleted tungsten’, nobody would worry about it. Various books about 9/11 have emerged debunking myths. For example ‘9/11 revealed’ by Popular Mechanics debunks the idea that it was somehow a controlled demolition.
The interesting question is ‘why’. There are high percentages of people in Turkey, Indonesia and Jordan who don’t believe that 9/11 was carried out by Arabs. People are fearful when they are upset, worried about dangers and are prone to come up with conspiracy theories. It’s not a rational issue but an emotional one. A good clue to spotting a conspiracy theory is their picking up of a seeming anomaly – Thierry Meyssan asks why there was no imprint of the plane on the building, but in fact it shattered against the building. We are susceptible to false lines of argument and these are convincing books, even though they are crazy. When people have fears, they are more likely to believe them.
Ann Leslie: Might I suggest that Todd Leventhal is believed to be a disseminator of disinformation or misinformation on Weapons of Mass Destruction? People like you are very good at disinformation yourselves.
Leila Faramarzi: If it is crazy to say that Bush planned 9/11, why is it ok to say that Iran is a threat? Is it not just as crazy?
Todd Leventhal: On the issue of WMDs, it was the US Government, rather than me in particular. The intelligence communities didn’t get this right. Though after the war, Saddam’s generals admitted that they thought they had WMDs. You can’t always get it right. On the question of Iran, the threat is a subjective judgement; some countries will feel a threat. For the US, Iran has been involved in terrorist activities against Americans, so it is a threat.
Leila Faramarzi: A threat to America’s expansionism?
Todd Leventhal: I think the embassy incidents and well as other terrorist activities are the threat.
George Pitcher: Forgive me if I am misrepresenting you – you seemed to be saying that conspiracy theories are propagated by people with interests. However, post-Enlightenment we seem to have lost the ability to convey profound truths through myths. The stories revealed a ‘mythos’ truth rather than a ‘logos’ truth. If this is correct, conspiracy theories might be a way of telling stories that tell a mythic rather than literal truth. They might be to reveal what people feel America is like.
Todd Leventhal: I believe people adopt conspiracy theories for non-rational reasons, but the problem is that ‘mythos’ aspect. People have hatred, xenophobia, fear, and they tell stories – it’s the drama of human life. The workaday world can be boring – it’s a reflection of primitive mind imprints.
June Jacobs: I think one of the problems is that some Jews are taking myths very seriously at the moment.
Adel Darwish: We went to war on the issue of WMDs. We are seeing it again with Iran, the neo-Ahmed Chalabis feeding information. Does the US have information on the ground? Now stories are being built up around Iran, which might lead to another war.
Bobby Syed: For me the whole issue is a question of spin.
Larry Wright: I tend to be brief. George has highlighted an important issue. I work with asylum and immigration policies. There are huge controversies around how foreign nationals are treated and problems of xenophobia, the fear of strangers. Over lunch I went down to the crypt, where you can see the archaeological digs exposing the foundations of this place. The challenge for the media now is to re-examine the foundations of the great faiths. It is believed that the need for religion will diminish as people become more rational, though this is clearly not true. The media need to deal with it. The power of the Word in the scriptures of Christianity, Islam and Judaism has meant a great deal of respect for words and the Word. You ladies and gentlemen have a great deal of responsibility in using words.
Tim Pendry: I’m probably here because I earn a living correcting disinformation for clients. In my experience, correcting misinformation or disinformation is much harder the more high-ranking the journalist. We try to convince journalists that they have been misinformed (or supplied with disinformation). Disinformation needs to be seen as a political and commercial tool. Disinformation is something conscious. It happens on both sides in the Middle East. The US’s public servants are generally of the highest quality, but some do produce disinformation which I have to clear up. However, the process is counter-productive as the systems ends up as one in which no one believes each other.
Also, I rather like conspiracy theories – we need to ask ‘why at this time?’, and ‘why in this voice?’ Political warfare is a reality and I delve into politics. We need to see what it is about when Bush uses the nonsense term ‘Islamic fascists’ – it’s as bad as Ahmedinejad using conspiracy theories. The issue is about the opacity of political culture, and journalists are becoming more rather than less complicit, and they need to be more open.
Karen Dabrowska: Journalists love soundbites. Disinformation is a weapon of mass destruction. Todd Leventhal did identify a lot of examples. He didn’t mention anything about William Marks who planted stories in Baghdad written by the US military. The Other Iraq is not trying to correct disinformation, so much as the news values of those reporting. Only some stories get written, usually sticking to the maxim, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’. This has led to a serious neglect of the achievements of the Iraqi people. The problem was that Western media concentrated on bad things. However, we were also disappointed by the lack of response from Iraqi journalists, who were perhaps happy to go along with the news agenda set by others. Even with freedom of information, we have the same news agenda. We should think about this.
Ghayth Armanazi: I would like to challenge Todd Leventhal on a few points. I would like to stress that disinformation is not just on one side – in the Cold War the US carried out character assassinations of Allende and Mossadegh. Nowadays, Hizbollah is spoken of as an instrument of Damascus and Tehran, and Hamas are also depicted as controlled. Who is the source of this disinformation? The US state also.
Ann Leslie: We are being too kind to conspiracy theories – saying that people are powerless and so on. We should stick to rational explanations. We end up like David Icke, who believes that we have been overrun by lizards. I have been told that I am a self-hating Jew. If we pander to idiocies, we might as well say goodbye to reason.
Louisa Brooke: I think Larry made a good point on the very secular nature of the press; the cartoons issue ended up with people talking at cross-purposes. I want to ask the panel what impact they think the internet has.
Babak Ganji: I don’t think we have proved the distinction between disinformation and misinformation, which is ill intent. I think political warfare has been successful on both sides – look at Hizbollah’s popularity in Egypt through information operations. International politics is an amoral business, we shouldn’t be naïve.
George Pitcher: Ann, I think it is unfair to conflate ‘mythos’ – historically the revelation of profound truths – with lunacy. David Icke’s lizards are not comparable to the story of Moses or the Gospels, which are, perhaps, not literally true.
Ann Leslie: In the West Bank, we interviewed the Speaker of the new Legislative Council. We pointed out that the Hamas charter contained a strange view of Zionism. He said that it expressed a greater truth – this is why I give no quarter to forgery.
Adel Darwish: We are discussing the media, not politics. News is judged on its own merits – we keep forgetting that – and to check facts. We evaluate it as having news value – let’s not forget that.
Unknown female speaker at back: Is the clash of civilisations part of this disinformation? What are the values being discussed?
Jan Mortier: The existence of forty autocracies in the world is the greatest conspiracy. We need to look at China in the 21st century and attach conditions for democratic reforms.
Todd Leventhal: Adel asked if we would go to war – after 9/11 the mood in the US was rather ugly. It felt as if Afghanistan had been a good clean success. The President had a pass to do whatever he needed. That is not the situation now. I would be surprised if the administration went to war. I think spin is becoming less and less effective, and that we are getting better at spotting it. With reference to the Lincoln Group example, I think there is a difference between disinformation and covert media placement, which is placing information under false pretences, even if the information is true. This was amateurish, but people do this as part of political warfare. On the US’s use of disinformation, these are issues of judgement calls – areas of opinion rather than hardcore facts. I’m sure experts see nuances on the issues of Iran, Syria and Hizbollah. I don’t put these into the category of disinformation. I use reason and facts to do my job. To understand why people do crazy things is not to excuse them. On the internet – I love it but there is no editor. But if it looks good, the impression is that it is well done. We are getting to an age where the mainstream media is being eclipsed by the internet which is troubling.
Babak Ganji: I was saying that a type of misinformation can be disinformation.
Todd Leventhal: Yes, they used to trawl publications for rubbish, such as the idea of an ‘ethnic weapon’ that would affect some races and not others, and pick it up.
Larry Wright: The disadvantage for the Western media is that they don’t understand theocracy – religion is part of the private sphere: how do you make it a national ethic? I think the media should challenge people on their fears. I also think world religions should find moderates to speak to each other from a religious perspective. Hans Kuhn wrote ‘without peace in Jerusalem, there will be no peace amongst religions, and without that, there will be no peace in the world.’ Perhaps it is also a ‘mythos’.
Unknown man at the back: I’m an ethnographer. My experience is that everywhere there are fears about life, corruption, and self-interest. Todd Leventhal said that 36% of people believed things in those books. 36% of people can’t be dismissed as ‘crazies’ – they make up a part of civilisation. Regardless of theories, we should be interested in why they say those things. People come up with scapegoats. It should also be noted that the press is an industry that needs to survive.
Tim Pendry: I want to pick up on the issue of morality in international relations. International relations are a-moral. Political warfare is a war against one’s own people as much as against other states and “it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder”. Elites are talking to the people by constructing identities out of factual rubbish. We the people need to recapture the media and make journalists work for us.
Karen Dabrowska: On the issue of China – we should remember that the West was trying to promote democracy in Iraq! It’s a slippery slope. In Afghanistan the warlords are back. In the media there is a focus on negativity, war and crime. Journalists should think better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.