Misinformation by govt

Misinformation, the word, seems to be a product of the information age, although the practice is far older. Hearing of the scandal over the the US Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence reminds me of someone I heard at a public lecture in the late 80s. Supposedly he was an ex-US admiral who was touring the world exposing misinformation by the US govt, esp the CIA. I don't remember his name, and he could have been peddling misinformation himself. But the interesting thing was that I had followed in the local paper, the Canberra Times, the very story which he described as a misinformation campaign. It was set in Africa somewhere, and was so successful that it developed for days or weeks, and was picked up by papers around the world.

I heard a discussion in recent days on ABC Radio National which spoke of the last big US govt misinformation scandal being during Reagan's time in office. That would have been around the time of my admiral above.

Two issues I think of in this.

One is the eternal US concern for the American people with a related, and seemingly innocent, disregard for others. Bush cans the OSI on the basis of concern for misinforming US citizens; the US constitution seems to ban misinforming US citizens, but is blind to misinforming others (perhaps unavoidable in a country's constitution); the commentator observed that by misinforming others, because the media is now global, it will inevitably misinform US citizens. Is there no concern for others? Where's the morality here? But this insularity seems so inevitable, and I calm myself by recognising that it's probably inevitable in any world empire, and the US is not the worst of those we've seen.

The other issue is a fear for democracy. Nothing too new here, but if you can't believe what you read, we're grist for the mill of demagoguery. It's a necessary mechanism for the maintenance of the very society we claim to value. We could discuss how you identify truth, or at least reliable observation and interpretation, but that's for another time.