The ‘Disinformation Industry’ Is Only One Part of a Larger Scandal – By Jeffrey Blehar (National Review) / Feb 10, 2023
Yesterday Judson Berger wrote about the “disinformation racket” — a lucrative industry of policing so-called disinformation that sprang forth like a fetid bloom of poisonous mushrooms after the political squalls of the Trump era — with appropriate contempt. His disdain is directed at the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British entrant into the field of trendy grift for prestige and profit. Not wanting to be outdone, the Brookings Institution here in America is today seeking to gain attention with its newest academic study on yet another dangerous front in the ongoing War on Wrongness: podcasts. (The paper is titled “Audible Reckoning,” for an indication of just how serious the challenge is that America faces.)
I could bore you with the details of the paper, but the link is above, and since it’s Brookings, you have probably already assumed correctly that the problem as they see it is (1) there are too many influential morons out there saying bad things about Covid-19 and the 2020 election; (2) the government should probably get involved in some way. Instead, let me melt your eyes with this paragraph where the author explains her methodology.
The research relied on claims compiled in two different ways. The first was the text of claims or statements “fact-checked” as false by either PolitiFact or Snopes, two independent fact-checking organizations whose “fact checks” are widely relied upon by the public and members of the media and academia as credible and well-substantiated. The second was a dictionary of keywords developed using qualitative knowledge and news reports of misleading claims for two case studies focused on the 2020 elections and the coronavirus pandemic.
