Steven, you are fond of calling Steven by his last name, Meyer. It is not lost on me that there is a historical connection to this usage. I don’t think Steven would stoop to bringing this up, but Goering once said that is Germany was bombed, “You can call me Meyer”. Cynic that I am, I don’t believe this is an accidental usage. Any thoughts?

Some advice:

If someone describes himself as a [placeholder] fact checker where

placeholder is adherent any ideology of belief system including but not restricted to atheist, capitalist, Christian, communist, conservative, leftist, liberal, Marxist, Muslim or Zoroastrian

Don’t bother.

Firstfactcheck.substack.com is my Substack site I am a conservative fact checker.

mrscracker,

Precisely! Lying by omission is much more effective than telling outright untruths.

P Gr

I am an evil, godless, far left, commie, Marxist, woke heathen intent on destroying western civilisation and enslaving all good Christians. When the Christian Revolution happens I shall be among the first to be burned at the stake or made to breathe nitrogen.

With that out of the way…

:Let’s talk about “think tanks.” There are genuine think tanks like Rand Corporation. But most think tanks are really rationalisation tanks. Corporates generally, or a specific corporation or group of corporations want to do something. Perhaps they have a PR problem. They will ask a rationalisation tank to which they donate to help out. This is often done by planting stories in the media.

A classic case is Purdue Pharma when the extent of the opioid crisis was becoming apparent. American Enterprise Institute, a recipient of Purdue donations, planted a story in NY Times which remains a classic of disinformation. Unfortunately the actual article is behind a paywall but here’s an open source description:

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-purdue-pharma-media-playbook-how-it-planted-the-opioid-anti-story

The owners of large corporations, which may include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Disney etc, are the donors who make use of the corporate dezinformatsiya complex “think tanks”. They rarely target the general public directly. Rather their job is to build a pro-corporate consensus in Congress and the media. And, on occasion, to help out with public relations. The whole point of good PR – ie misinformation – is to be as invisible as possible.

It is important to remember the sole purpose of a corporation is to enrich the stockholders and C-level executives. Nothing else matters. If presenting a “woke” facade generates profits the directors and CEO will employ an army of PR consultants – ie misinformation experts – to make a company appear woke.

And mistakes are made. The manufacturers of a certain beer-like substance called “Bud Lite” made a catastrophic mistake. My guess is this was a fairly routine bit of marketing decided at a low level which backfired badly. The person who took the decision probably thought it was a harmless gesture to a specific demographic.

Disney is anything but “woke.” It is all about money. They attracted the “pink dollar” by presenting their theme parks as gay friendly places to hold conventions and meetings.

When dealing with large corporates extreme cynicism is the only sane attitude. Anything a corporate CEO or PR flack ( ie misinformation expert) says should be regarded as misleading unless independently corroborated. Any news from any for-profit media outlet – this includes Foxnews as much as NY Times and Joe Rogan as much as NewsmaxTV – should be regarded with scepticism.

The noise to signal ratio is very high. And with the advent of large language models and deep fakes it’s only going to get worse.

Anyone, and that includes you and me, can be fooled. In fact the people easiest to fool, are usually the people who are convinced they can’t be.

Any thought that the directors/C-level executives, the news stars likes Carlson or Hannity, are fighting the good fight for “real Americans” is delusion. Carlson is no more a crusader for truth, justice and the American way than Robin Williams was really a serial killer in the movie Insomnia.

A great example of Carlson’s dezinformatsiya was his comparison of food prices in Russia as compared to the United States. Yes, when rouble prices are translated into dollars it looks cheap. But Russians don’t earn dollars.

In proportion to their incomes, Russians have to spend between two and three times as much on food as Americans. For most Americans, food is cheaper than it is for their Russian counterparts.

It’s often the information you don’t share that’s critical.

@Steven Meyer you wouldn’t happen to be a left-leaning misinformation expert yourself, would you?
I am not sure about this you wrote “Let’s face it, when it comes to generating misinformation the big bucks are on the conservative – ie corporate – side. It attracts the top talent which explains why left (ie non-corporate) misinformation is so lame.”
Do you have any evidence for this? It’s not obvious to me that “The American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute” etc are more relevant in terms of power, money and “corporateness” than Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, the old Twitter, Disney, and a big etc. I also don’t see how left wing misinformation is so lame. It’s cleverly woven into mainstream media, Hollywood, tech, pop…

First let me answer the question Mahlburg poses in the title to this piece.

“Conservative” misinformation experts definitely do exist. You can find them lucratively employed generating misinformation at so called “think tanks” such as The American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and other branches of America’s corporate dezinformatsiya complex.

Let’s face it, when it comes to generating misinformation the big bucks are on the conservative – ie corporate – side. It attracts the top talent which explains why left (ie non-corporate) misinformation is so lame.

On the admittedly specious reasoning that Mahlburg’s disapprobation is equivalent to a recommendation I investigated Misinformation Review. It’s not especially impressive but if you want to see for yourself here’s a link:

https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/

If you want to learn about misinformation any reasonable course on public relation will get you started.

Rule one:

Always dilutes your misinformation with as much truth as possible the better to hide the taste.

What about misinformation in the Catholic Church?

I thought readers might find Father Casey interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwQYefFrki0