If people continue to “get their news from social media” then I guess we ALL get the democracy that they deserve.
24
as the bard of Baltimore HL Mencken said, democracy is the theory of government that the common people should get what they want, and get it good and hard.
7
If our elections are so corrupt, how did the Democrats manage to win the House? Is there a rule now that when the Democrats win it is honest and when they lose there was cheating?
I do wonder if the Democrats are not a greater danger to our democracy than Trump, let alone Putin.
9
How do you defend democracy when so many believe all the world reality they need comes to them through a 3 by 5 inch iWindow. A window that can be controlled by anyone, anywhere.
12
I have two words:
Paper Ballots.
22
C’mon!!!
People don’t have time to pay attention to impeachment hearings or contact their representatives.
They are WAY too busy... you know, like posting on Instagram and checking Facebook!
13
Eliminate. Electoral. College.
20
"Why aren’t we preparing for the next one?"
Clearly because Trump and McConnell are blocking any and all attempts to do so. They WANT more help from foreign governments (especially Russia) in the 2020 election.
It's treasonous and it's happening right before our eyes, just as it did in 2016 as seen on TV and as was documented by Mueller, just as Trump's Ukraine bribery phone call shows, and just as Trump repeatedly called for in public media statements after the Ukraine bribery. Meanwhile the GOP pretends everything is hunky dory. Because for them, it is!
And of course there's shame on America! Scandalous, world-class shame! Now what? Dictatorship, autocracy, kleptocracy and tyranny.
11
Hilary Clinton outspent Trump by $150 million in 2016. False advertising is false advertising. No matter who pays for it.
2
Facebook should be presented with two options. Stop political ads or be broken up
14
Disinformation is Trump's friend. He knows that is why he won in 2016. And he will use it to win in 2020, even if it means justifying his refusal to leave office if he loses the popular and electoral votes.
That is enough to make me afraid. But even more scary are my neighbors and townspeople who are well-educated, middle class voters, who think Trump is terrific, who are in effect Always Trumpers. They will support and defend absolutely anything he does. Anything.
13
Reading the New York Times, and the many comments on the articles on these pages, one is struck by how eloquently the writers and readers of this publication lay out the case against Trump being re-elected, or even having been elected in the first place for that matter.
However, this is clearly a case of preaching to the choir. Many of the authors of the articles and the commenters on those articles are familiar names, and while we shake our head in agreement at what they write, I fear when the final votes are tallied the good sense of enlightened citizens won't tip the scales against the corrupt despot who currently occupies the White House.
If we wanted further proof of this we need look no further than recent polls showing that Trump's traditionally weak poll numbers remain stable, and in some cases better than possible Democratic contenders.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I find it a bit depressing that rather than riding Trump out of town on a rail, a sizeable percentage of our population thinks he's a good president.
18
Liberals. So silly. Americans WANT Russia to interfere and to have a King without restraints rule our country. Welcome to MAGA America. Why do liberals need rights anyway, do they not have minimum pay and the internet? It is all Russians have. Why do liberals always want more?
9
Disinformation and patently false rumors about political issues have been around forever. Nothing new about it whatsoever, and nothing whatsoever that can be done about it in a free society.
Of course we all know that what liberals really want is socialist totalitarianism with state-sponsored propaganda as the only form of mass communication.
2
I am not a socialist or a Democrat, just wondering what you think Fox News constitutes except state sponsored propaganda.
24
@@irish
I wouldn’t know. I don’t watch Fox News. I get all my news from the Wall Street Journal- the last remaining true source of news. Also, I learn quite a bit by reading the patently absurd nonsense published in the New York Times.
3
We are living in an age of disinformation overload: Factual information is singular. . .E = mc2 —and that’s that. Disinformation is infinite—and overwhelms the information space. Can the democratic experiment survive when a handful of scientific facts are buried beneath a blizzard of lies? George Orwell didn’t think so—and neither do I.
3
The Russian disinformation machine has been with us for 70 years and we have lived with it. We live in a globalized world where geopolitics is greater than ever, and does anyone believe for one moment that the U.S. is not also spreading disinformation and mucking around in other country’s elections in order to achieve outcomes favorable to the U.S.? Good grief, our CIA has a history of carrying out assassinations of foreign leaders and overthrowing entire governments. In that light Russia!s involvement in our elections seems rather mild, and after all, aren’t all countries mucking around in the internal affairs of other countries for their benefit?
2
I was Director of Modeling for the 2012 Obama campaign, in the Analytics group. The fact that the Trump campaign gave its polling data to the Russians means that it is more accurate to say that the Trump campaign helped the Russians win the election, rather than the other way around. Those data are the most sensitive and expensive that any campaign creates.
2020 is going to be ugly. They only way to really combat all the social media disinformation is to get out and do a relentless grassroots campaign, door-to-door, political hand-combat by a million volunteers. People still believe other people, especially our neighbors, more than what they believe on electronic platforms.
11
"We" are not preparing because there is no "We". Anymore.
There is Facebook a spreader of false narrative, but so do most of the mainstream media. Perhaps there is an "Us" as in "Us" vs them. But what power do "us" have against the totality of the Internet? My personal solution is to shut down the internet for the four months prior to the election, give actual candidates outsized TV and cable time to make thier cases and sharply restrict all political ads during that time. The internet has stolen the "WE" from "WE the People". That is sad.
4
-Many of the voting machines were (and most still are) old and cheap with low security.
-Through social-media targeted disinformation, voters elected Trump supporters in low-population states that have disproportionate weight in Electoral College votes.
The former Soviet Union did historically spy on the US as the US spied on the USSR.
The difference now is that Trump believes Putin above his own American advisors and has a proven and verifiable record of colluding with Putin against the best interests of the US.
That’s some kind of an American president!
7
The problem is education. Public education is very poor in the USA.
And paying for college education is also poor and only aimed at dominated the lower classes in the best universities : law schools, Business management, etc...
The less educated people have no conceptual tools to know how to vote or analyze the economy or the political situations.
The higher educated are completely biased by their social domination. They also lack conceptual sense of causality.
It is all constistuency of the capitalist system.
1
@JPH paid and dominating. Don't know what that software is doing.
Annoying.
Everything automated in the American culture.
1
What is tragic about America today is not Donald Trump. There have always been Donald Trumps. It is Donald Trump supporters.
America is not what we thought it was.
BTW, I'm an ex-pat American.
15
@Skillethead
Yes. We know you hate us. We’re not stupid.
1
I don't want Congress legislating what does or does not constitute truth. The courts exist for a reason but the legislative branch increasingly seems to have forgotten that.
3
Prior to the digital age Americans were restricted to the diet of information agreed by Washington insiders and a lap-dog media. Now those who would neck down allowable information resent losing their monopoly and label everyone else ‘dis-information’. Too bad, NYT et al....that ship has sailed. And glad to see the back of you!
1
Putin, ex KGB and Russian dictator, is launching the softest invasion of America.
It started with funneling money to the GOP via donations and was amped up with Trump’s foray into politics.
“Russia, if you’re listening...” is a turning point in US history — that was the day Putin planted the idea in American minds that his meddling in US affairs is normal.
Facebook also helped in this soft invasion, facilitating disinformation to targeted Americans.
Then came the other normalizations when Trump got elected:
• Putin having his FSB officers into the Oval Office with neither CIA oversight or US press coverage — normal
• Putin summoning Trump with a mere glance as a master would his slave for a private meet, again, no CIA, no press — normal
• Putin making Trump disparage US intel and military agencies in a press conference while he is praised as a great leader — normal
• Putin making the GOP Russian propagandists and admitting it live on air that the talking point is from the Kremlin as what Cruz and Kenndy have done — normal
• Putin funding the NRA, etc. — all normal
Fast forward to:
• Putin admitting via Russian state media that Trump is a Russian asset per Newsweek.
Now that the idea of Trump being a Russian agent has been normalized and there are zero outrages, one thing is very possible in 2020.
The Russian flag will be flying inside the White House after the stars and stripes is taken down — and it will be a normal sight.
The softest invasion ever is happening.
13
Actually, shame on you for 2016, and OMG you've got to be kidding for 2020.
NYT need to take responsibility for its role in disinformation. In a naive and outmoded attempt at "diversity of opinions" you've allowed your platform to be coopted to elevate harmful untruths. You need to do better, there must be a bar set for what is credible, and the bar must be higher for comments you choose to promote. You're engaged in a dangerous game and I'm afraid to say you're losing. Nazis dont get equal time.
7
@Bob B
I know. It’s totally the pot calling the kettle black.
1
Disinformation isn’t the issue - it’s Republican voter suppression and Republicans working w Russia/Putin to actually change votes, thus the opposition in many red states to allow for paper backup ballots that could be used to test computerized vote tabulations. Republicans have won the popular vote in one - one - national election in the past 30 years (2004). They know they can’t legitimately win any national election
4
Getting fair arbiters to decide what is disinformation or factual slime will be almost impossible. The most effective way is for opposing candidates to agree to speak out if the other falls victim to it, not likey in a heated race.
Trusting the American voter to discern from the cacophony of information is preferable to having a layer of fact police deciding what we see and hear.
That's what Xi has in China,the dominant political party choose the fact checker...a slippery slope.
3
@Lane I agree that having arbiters is concerning (although there are a lot of indisputable lies out there), but leaving it up to "the American voter to discern from the cacophony of information" doesn't seem to be working too well. I think that's especially true of older voters (I'm 70) where some level of filter (for better or for worse) was assumed ("They couldn't say it on TV if it wasn't true"). Many just believe anything they see on the interwebs, and are led down some pretty vile rabbit holes.
3
Trump never fooled anyone but liberals who wanted to believe that they were always right. Trump used the rules of the election game to his advantage to win. Unfortunately liberal media assured us that Hillary was certain to be elected. Many people became complacent and said why bother voting. In the aftermath, media rarely admitted that they were wrong or had been outsmarted. They continually claimed that they could not have been wrong. Instead they said that Trump stole the election and must have had foreign help that he personally solicited. They knew this because they were aware that the Democrats did solicit help from foreigners.
4
We are living in a society where folks don’t know the difference between lay and lie. (You lay bricks; you lie down.) They start sentences with "Me and my friend went.." (Sentences start with the subjective forms like "My friend and I...)
Now, how can we expect a society that can’t even handle its own language to handle professional liars and cheats?
Evidently, the problem is that we’d rather believe the fanciful fictions being perpetrated by people who know better than the simple, honest truth.
4
I live in a township governed by a board of trustees. A few days before the election last month, we got a mailer with a photo showing the Democratic candidate at a Trump rally, along with glowing praise for the president! It turns out, it was sent by the Republican incumbent's campaign, but was made to look like it came from the Democratic challenger. Prepare for more dirty tricks in the next year! (the incumbent lost his seat--so sometimes the dirty trickster loses)
4
Discount Russia, the Ukraine or other scandals, by almost every measure Trump has been a disaster.
- Putting the US economy on an unwarranted sugar high, yet unwilling to pay down the national debt of balance annual budget
- Demonstrates a severe lack of judgement by hiring, then terminating high-level personnel, resulting in Musical Chairs
- Total disdain for the environment, our natural allies, NATO, multi-lateral trade deals
- Showers admiration on dictators and authoritarians
- Insults and attacks those who have differing opinions from his own
- Fuels hate and divisiveness
And I'm just getting warmed-up!
6
Denial. We lost, we as in Democrats, because we had a flawed candidate and a President both of whom I voted for 5 times in my voting resume, and both whom ignored an entire sector of our country, too giddy with being fawned over by billionaires and celebrities to take a hard look at what was coming down the pike. Trump didn't win because of Russia, nor did he win because of racism or misogyny. He won because many people who had voted for Obama twice, saw themselves marginalized and ridiculed. Trump capitalized on this.
The only one's blowing it again is Democrats, who never speak about what they'll do, only about their hatred of Trump.
They will lose big again. All they talk about is race, gender and feminism. Victimhood is their favorite topic. They also have a coded language of anti-white male and refuse to see the similar policies under Obama in regard to immigration. I'll never vote for Trump. I don't think he's good for our country. But the Democrats are worse. I can not in good conscience vote for any candidate on the left. They are the modern McCarthyism, the party of destruction, the mob of reactionary anti-free speech. They are essentially anti-American.
7
@MCS Clearly you bought the GOP propaganda in 2016 and you're buying it again. How is talking about health care for all and a wealth tax (whether you agree with those policies or not) about "victimhood"? I love how you guys think a few strident college students are stamping out your rights.
8
Good luck with any of that. The CEO of PEN comes out against fiction? There's a man bites dog story.
1
We are all fools. Just how much do we look to the president for more than what he is. He does not create laws, does not adjudicate them, has very limited and constrained powers (on purpose) by the constitution, and yet we think he/she is the beacon of our brightest hopes and antithesis of our fears. We forget that congress has failed to do its job and pass the laws(compromised with other side) we want and need and even attempt to live within a budget (both parties fail at this).
1
@Al Morgan The House has passed multiple pieces of legislation that Mitch would even allow discussion on, let alone a vote. Also, the federal government doesn't always need to live within its budget (no, it's not like family finances) because it has the ability to print money. However, they should look to balance things out in the long run. Most Democrats understand that. Republicans only care about deficits when Dems are in office, otherwise, it's all good (hence their recent tax giveaway).
6
Trump will win. First, he will cheat with `oppo' from the Saudis, Russians and any other country that needs US help so can be pressured. Much, if not all, will be dishonest or even totally fake. He will flood Facebook continuing the saturation of anti-impeachment info that's on that platform now. Twitter and Instagram will be full of propaganda gleaned from all the above sources as well as that produced by PR companies with few if any moral values. It will be carefully targeted using data from Cambridge Analytica and all the information gleaned by Russia in 2015-16.
The Republican/Trump campaign has a huge amount of money already and far more is on the way from all those lucky companies that no longer pay taxes to their country.
Then the final triumph, right before the election, Barr's show trial of Comey, McCabe, Strork, Page etc. That will signal the establishment of the Fascist States of America.
Look out world.
1
Why isn't it "Fool us once, shame on us." Why has there been no blame placed on those people who believed and passed on the falsehoods/misleads/garbage the first time around. Another cliche the author could have used in the title is "you get what you deserve."
1
@James H Because they still don't think they believed and passed on garbage and will continue to do so. They're beyond reason or shame. Trying to limit their access to garbage is worth a shot.
1
Step One is to repeal the protections that Web sites enjoy under the Communications Decency Act. Anyone who publishes online, should be subject to the same libel laws that govern traditional media. Reinstating Net Neutrality would also help ensure that those holding diverse views will be able to have their views circulated on the Net without fear of being restricted by Internet Service Providers.
Step Two is to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, which until 1987 compelled traditional broadcast media to provide equal time for advocates of different political views. A reinstated Fairness Doctrine would rein in the one-sided reporting found on Fox News and talk radio.
Federalized elections as advocated by @Richard Steele would also be a huge improvement, as would a federal ban on gerrymandering. Finally, all citizens should be registered to vote automatically and allowed to vote by mail or online. Of course the Republicans will block these and other sensible reforms as long as they are in power. Nor can the Democrats be trusted to fight hard for these things even though they would be in their own interest.
4
I hold all of us responsible, including the news media, because we see disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda from a partisan perspective. This is despite knowing that all sides engage in predetory communication practices. We tend to ignore or overlook disinformation/misinformation/propaganda that seems to serve a normative good or our side in a charged political environment. Unless we take partisan politics out we will not have a meaningful discussion on the integrity of communication.
1
I hold all of us responsible, including the news media, because we see disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda from a partisan perspective. This is despite knowing that all sides engage in predetory communication practices. We tend to ignore or overlook disinformation/misinformation/propaganda that seems to serve a normative good or our side in a charged political environment. Unless we take partisan politics out we will not have a meaningful discussion on the integrity of communication.
I hold all of us responsible, including the news media, because we see disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda from a partisan perspective. This is despite knowing that all sides engage in predetory communication practices. We tend to ignore or overlook disinformation/misinformation/propaganda that seems to serve a normative good or our side in a charged political environment. Unless we take partisan politics out we will not have a meaningful discussion on the integrity of communication.
Because of John Bolton's positions as US Ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Adviser, the Ukrainians reached out to him and asked him if he could convince Trump to release the security assistance that was held up. Bolton said he would see what he could do. When Bolton spoke to Trump about it, Trump told Bolton to tell the Ukrainians that the only they will ever get the security assistance is after Zelensky announces on CNN that Ukraine is investigating the Bidens and the Crowd Strike theory that the Democrats hacked themselves and the server is in Ukraine.
Bolton, who is definitely not a radical leftist democrat, also has ample documentation that proves the Ukrainians were very well aware and concerned that Trump was holding up the security assistance, and that Trump's reason for doing so was solely to force Zelensky to announce on CNN that Ukraine is investigating the Bidens and the Crowd Strike theory.
Is that all true. If so, that would put to rest any questions regarding whether the Ukrainians knew the aid was cutoff and what Trump's motives were.. The Senate Republicans want to make sure we never know.
Trump said it was the Senate that prevented the FBI from interviewing the witnesses with evidence that Kavenaugh was lying in the hearings for his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. And McConnell said it was up to the White House.
Trump says it is up to the Senate to have witnesses in the trial and McConnell said it's up to the White House.
5
@Lance Brofman They playing cat & mouse games for fooling around the people.
1
@Phytoist Fox cable and the pro-Trump broadcasters have a tremendous commercial advantage over the truth-based, or if you would rather call it, mainstream broadcasters. This is the asymmetrical reactions of viewers. Pro-Trump viewers would rather undergo root canal, than listen to a mainstream program such as Rachel Maddow, since what she says makes them feel stupid and ignorant as she refutes what they believe in. In contrast, anti-Trump viewers love to watch Fox programs since it makes them feel superior to both the Fox liars such as Hannity and those stupid and/or ignorant enough to believe the lies. Thus, Fox cable has an enormous advantage in terms of attracting viewers.
The unpleasant truth is that today's white non-college educated working class person is not your grandfather's white non-college educated working class person. Eighty years ago, there were many very intelligent people who did not attend college because of financial circumstances or because of discrimination against their race, religion or gender. Henry George, arguably the most brilliant American economist of the 19th century, left school at age 14. President Harry Truman was not a college graduate.
Today, with many exceptions, someone under the age of forty who was never interested in college probably is not very smart. That also makes them vulnerable to the lies that got Trump elected...."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4133734
2
Politicians have been telling lies for as long as there have been politicians.
The problem with regulation is the meaning of "deceptive". It is usually a matter of connotations and inferences formed by the reader; it's not a matter of demonstrable fact or falsehood.
Nor would there be time to check facts, and litigate disagreements about trurh or falsity of statements made days before the election.
The best remedy for bad, or false, speech, is good true speech.
3
I do assume that President Trump will get his second period. The political undercurrents that made Mr. Trump president are still present.
For various reasons, I have serious difficulties in understanding why liberal Americans do not understand the temptation of Mr. Trump.
Looking at the USA from the outside it seems that Mr. Trump has delivered his most important promises. Those promises were related to the justice system of USA. He has been able to nominate blatantly partisan judges.
Mr. Trump has changed what the law means in USA. That is the reason why many people voted for him. The voters got what hey wanted: a definitely Republican (conservative) law enforcement system for a long time to the future.
Everything else is just random noise.
3
This is not what most Anericans wanted. We wanted more affordable health care, more affordable prescriptions and policies that would keep jobs here. We wanted better gun policies to make our streets and public spaces safer. We wanted out of foriegn wars, and for the rest of the world to be more responsible for policing their own areas. Obama certainly was trying to get troops out, and local govts to take more responsibility. I am not a Republican, but an independent. 3 million more people voted for Hiliary Clinton than Trump. I did not vote for Trump, he was a known criminal way before his campaign, a birther and a misogynist. I did vote. Americans did not realize that the Russians were taking over social media with bots, getting opposition research to target swing states, pretending to be other Americans, where a small amount of votes would translate to more electoral votes going to Trump. Most would like to get rid of the electoral college because it nullifies the popular vote. While most Americans wanted to have immigration policies updated, having a "bigger police force", by which I presume you mean more border patrol agents, was not on the radar. Most wanted a positive resolution for the dreamers. Maybe some thought that McConnell would work for the country with another older white Male as president. Maybe they thought that McConnell and Paul Ryan would keep him under control. Now 7/10 want him impeached, and out. He is a danger to all.
5
I feel and relate to your frustration about nothing being done about disinformation that helped elect the current government but the reason nothing is being done about it is that the current government benefits from it, period.
3
There is a large section of the public that believes that Hillary Clinton was the worst Presidential nominee in the history or America who also happened to believe that she ran the worst campaign in America ( even though she won the popular vote and had the second highest vote total in electoral history) There is also a significant section of people who believe Nernoe Sanders would have won, but it was rigged against him (despite no concrete evidence to the contrary). Between these two groups and Republicans, you have a large amount of people who are emotionally not invested in the Mueller report. You have the media who has , what Jay Rosen calls, a view from nowhere. In order to be "objective", they gather evidence and draw no logical conclusions from their reporters, rendering them to be nothing more than stenographers and gossip writers. On top of all of that, the general public is either too proud or too ashamed to admit they could be swayed by misinformation. This is the perfect backdrop for 2020 to be similar to 2016.
1
Why hasn't the House of Representatives included "dereliction of duty" as an article of impeachment? The Muller report clearly concluded (and Muller confirmed in his testimony) that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. As President, Donald Trump has done nothing to address election interference from foreign entities.
2
What was done by government during the run up to 2016 while this was actually taking place. Why did the FBI comment on issues they were looking into regarding Clinton while going silent on Russian interference? Who was the President at that time? There are no clean faces here, just levels of dirty.
2
If we cannot fix gerrymandering or the fact that several states are purging voter roles then how we tackle more complex issues? The majority new what Trump was and didn’t vote for him but the electoral college got in the way. A close election will bring it into play again.
2
This article seems incredibly naive. Fox and other right wing sites have been misinforming voters for at least 2 decades. Trump’s election, his remaining in office until now, and his eventual acquittal in the Senate could all largely be attributed to the brainwashing of the Republican Party by these misinformation sources. Some Republicans may not realize this...the rest manipulate their base by such means. Those of us who understand this must fight to get our democracy back.
6
Could I recommend the voting system of my own nation to the U.S.? First, we vote on a Saturday - it just makes sense, right? Second, we vote only with pencil and paper. I know, how quaint! But quaint...and hack proof (well, except for the pencil bit - it might be time to consider a pen). Finally, we have compulsory voting. Everyone has to vote...even those who don't want to. I used to think it absurd that those who didn't care had to vote. In the last 5 years I have completely changed my mind. Compulsory voting helps innoculate the nation against extremism. Neither of our political parties can win by using extremist policies to motivate their base - their base is already going to vote...so too the base of their opponents as well as all of those who really don't care either way. 92% of eligible Australians voted at our last Federal election. By comparison, just 56% of Americans voted in 2016 So, by definition, the only way to win an election here is to fight in the center. The electoral tactics of Trump will just not work here. Oh, just to make you feel a bit better, our politicians lie a lot too.
20
We need a paper trail for every vote cast in this country. We need video surveillance of every vote count. We need bipartisan oversight of the voting process. We need new rules so if a secretary of state runs for office they are immediately out of the job of running the election. We need motor voter registration. We need extra-long early voting opportunities. We need same-day registration.
In short, we need all Americans to have absolute confidence in the voting process!
5
I hold the Federal government responsible for the electoral mess that we American citizens put up with every four years. The election for the presidency should have always been a Federalized election; uniform rules, uniform polling stations, etc. All the sanctimonious rhetoric surrounding the rights of the states have turned our Federal elections into a farce. We should be embarrassed by our lack of political will to correct the mess that constitutes American elections. Instead of slobbering about our great democracy, let’s instead put that energy into creating honest elections. Instead, we seem determined to mimic third-world election processes; corrupt and unequal in their application.
152
@Richard steele So eloquently said. Instead we(people)be embarrassed,the Republicans need to be embarrassed for election irregularities by letting states under their party’s governorships for mimicking third world election processes.
9
@Richard steele
You should have a look at what the Australian Electoral Commission does.
https://www.aec.gov.au/
While you are on a fact finding tour, you could look at the gun laws too.
9
@Richard steele
When you impugn the entire federal government, you fall into the Bannon-Trump
propagandistic jargon of the Deep State. The responsibility falls on the Republican controlled Supreme Court in its Citizens United and Shelby decisions, the latter invalidating key parts of the Voting Rights Act.
19
Eatoin Shrdlu,
Voted for neither Trump nor Clinton but to be more exact, Clinton won the popular vote by a 3 million margin due the overpopulation with the vote in California; that does not count.
The electoral college is here to stay because we will not be ruled by an invasion of people to California.
5
Misinformation! Take a look at his latest massive missive! First step to a new normal is getting him off the scene.
1
A lot of these prescriptions miss the mark. None will address the deep issue that all politicians and most media ignore: that we have an exceedingly ignorant population. (Of course, they dare not offend their constituents/audiences so this is understandable.) Hillary was being charitable when she described about half of Trump voters as deplorable. More like all of them.
The crimes, corruption, and lies by the Republicans are legion, but the people remain divided. This is not a "partisan" divide. It is not over ideology. Trump has proven that the Republican right has absolutely no moral center or philosophy. The divide is with a population filled with ignorance, selfishness, and hate. You don't mitigate that through social media.
3
The GOP has been steeped in disinformation campaigns for years. They have methodically undermined fair and democratic government at least since Ronald Reagan. The Russians realized it and have joined in. Why would Mitch McConnell table legislation to protect our elections unless he and his party are in on the scam? The silver lining in the Trump presidency is the prospect of destroying the Republican far right, getting moderate Republicans back in office and setting our democracy free of the GOP nightmare.
3
The article illustrates how our elected officials cared nothing about preventing interference from Russia, or any other country. Tens of millions of dollars, endless congressional hearings, over more than two years, focused entirely on who to blame for the interference. Yet, throughout that process, and until now, has there been any publicized investigation about how to make sure interference never happens again. We never did care about solving the problem. Rather, all we cared about was pointing fingers and scoring political points. So, in 2020, we remain as vulnerable as ever to foreign attacks on our democracy.
Next, the overwhelming source of false information comes from negative ads knowingly placed by candidates and their supporting organizations of both parties. Negative campaigning routinely distorts and falsifies the record or position of the other side, and we Americans fall for it.
The only way Facebook or other platforms could effectively prohibit "misinformation" would be to ban all negative campaign ads. But that's never going to happen. Instead they may try to "fact check" by banning content with which they disagree under the guise of fact checking.
We, not the Russians or the Chinese, are undermining our own democracy, and we are in danger of doing so beyond repair. Those countries could not even hope of doing the type of damage we inflict upon ourselves.
Why can’t we have a national rating agency for factual information? Facebook would get an “F” – “Read at Your Own Risk.” The New York Times would maybe get a “AAA.” That way media sites could aim for whatever credibility rating they want. And readers could know whom to trust and whom not to trust. We also need stronger libel and slander laws as well as public disclosure of sources, including foreign sources.
We are well passed this. Each side would scream “fake” at each other.
Vote for President Trump and show the nation you actually care about America and Americans.
4
Democracy is an attractive concept when the majority of voters agree with your policies. When they don’t, well then, not so much. The modern GOP is following a well-trodden path—when you can’t win fairly, cheat.
9
We need significant bi-partisan commitment to the author's recommendations. That means we need both Democrats and Republicans willing to risk losing fairly. Republican -sponsored gerrymandering, disqualification of thousands of voters and the current Republican support of a president who has repeatedly violated the ethics of our democracy do not offer hope for such a commitment. The author's warning should be taken to heart. Disinformation is significant. Alas, voter vulnerability to such disinformation seems pervasive. We may not have the time it takes to inoculate a new generation against this threat.
2
For goodness sake, Trump is the first real victory uneducated whites, rural whites, suburban whites have had since their right to dominate and defile what and whom they wish without consequences was challenged. Eight years of Obama, and the thought of a black president, had them convulsed in pain.
It is rather pointless to look upon what Trump is, what he says and does, without appreciation for the giddy joyfulness he produces for his white-identity voters (republicans). 62 million of them, virtually everyone living outside of city center.
He might even lose the election; he will not leave the WH. All elected republicans will hold that any election he lost was fraudulent, null and void; a phalanx of MAGA hats will fight any attempt to have him escorted out, after first or second term. All this will happen because the center has already given up, no republican has changed her/his mind and will vote for Trump again, and a large number of democrats - dispirited lot on a good day - will set the next election out because the perfect candidate was not on the roster.
Fool us? We are ushering an age of monarchy that will make Louie the sixteenth look like a beacon of moral opprobrium. And willingly.
5
Trump LOST the popular election by an overwhelming percentage of those who were allowed to vote in 2016.
It was the Electoral College that failed the people - refusing to honor the Framers’ original intent of a body able to keep a demagogue out to take ultimate power from the people from taking the nation’s top office.
8
Such a simple thought...the 2016 cons and crooks helped trump. If it ain’t broken, why fix it?
Trump needs to win in 2020 because he's avoiding charges in New York, as been widely reported.
Perhaps he can strike a deal where he'll be pardoned for everything, and can retire to Mar a Lago.
Once there, he can golf all he wants, eat hamburgers, commit adultery, and do a little grifting on the side.
Anything to be free of this disordered man.
1
@Stephen Pardon is not the answer for this shameless man. He and his family need to be exposed and destroyed.
2
I closed out my Facebook account over 9 years ago and I never posted anything on Twitter, although I constantly get fishing emails from Twitter at least once a day.
What I do know it that I have been observant of WP, NYT, NPR and a few other mainstream news sources and what I have concluded is that there is a greater chance of preserving our democracy with a klutz like Trump than with any Democrat who is determined to change the demographics of the country for their political expediency thru open borders in order to turn America into California.
Yes, I read the NYT and I am repulsed by what the Democrats have done to California; be forewarned.
5
No one (Democrat) is supporting open borders and to consider Trump as the least evil to preserve democracy is perverse.
2
@JRS Do you think it was democrats who run the corporations-- food processors, construction companies, manufacturers--who decided that hiring an illegal workforce that could be paid less and would accept bad and unsafe working conditions-- was better than hiring Americans of all stripes? Please consider this before you say you are "repulsed by what the democrats have done to California."
2
Good question. Why aren't we preparing for the next election? There is one silver bullet and his name is Mitch McConnell. He is the Senate Majority Leader and he won't let anything like that come to a vote. Of course Congress should pass (fill in the blank). Seriously, Suzanne Nossel does not know this? I don't believe it. Please NYT, focus.
It all goes back to the Senate Leader.
1)He knowingly lied for the tobacco industry during investigations of harmful effects of smoking.
2) He deliberately crippled Congress on the eve of Obama's inauguration, and blamed the gridlock on Obama.
3) He corrupted the Supreme Court by blocking appointment of a qualified judge and appointing a sexual predator and a right wing extremist to the Court.
4) He protects and supports Trump, so obviously doesn't care about the USA.
It would be great if someone could determine why he despises his own Country!
3
unfortunately, what is misinformation is not viewed the same by all sides - so controlling it is not possible.
There are some who view others' opinion as misinformation - with broad definitions only tyranny can stall its spread.
In a scale of democratic participation, US citizens are the last to vote of the whole industrialized world. By far the last ones.
Just over 50 % of US citizens in age vote .
It means that the US democracy is very badly functioning.
The myth of the Founding Fathers is just a fable.
The nation of freedom , Liberty, the right to bear arms, Free speech, etc...
It does not work.
The USA are the most politically alienated nation in the developed world.
Politics dominated by lobbies, money, corruption, ignorance, poverty, lack of social life, etc...
It was supposed to be better than the old world.
1
Why aren't we preparing for the next election? Because the Russians won. The Russian kleptocracy is in charge. They are holding our democracy by the neck and they have no intention of letting go. It's not a stretch to infer the Russians likely have kompromat on key figures in our executive and legislative branches, based on their irresponsible behavior. And others are going along, probably because they lack the imagination to realize some of their fellow Republicans are acting under direct Russian control. I can't say it any more emphatically: Vladimir Putin has American democracy by the throat. He's owned our government since November 8, 2016. International criminals and hoodlums who want their way with the United States have to go through him. He has no intention of letting go. Ever. This will not be an easy problem to solve.
3
@Kev: Putin's strategy exploits the anti-democratic features of the US Constitution to revivify secession here. The legitimacy of secession is almost as hot a topic as migration these days, and Putin probably wants to re-assemble the USSR.
All the internet social media companies could voluntarily suspend ALL political adds and messages, but of course they won’t do that. For Many the all mighty dollar and capitalism is more important than honesty, integrity, and our electoral system.
2
"...aimed to sow divisions and disparage the Hillary Clinton campaign."
Missing, as usual, from the above recitation of wrongful intervention against a campaign, is Hillary's purchase and use of the infamous "Steele dossier," which was used to sow disinformation against her opponent.
In this matter, Hillary out-performed the Russians and weakened our democracy for a substantial part of the Trump presidency.
But if you can't break the glass ceiling, why not bring the whole house down?
4
@Jubilee133
Missing, as usual, from the alt-right's recitation of the nefarious Steele dossier, is the fact that Clinton's campaign did zilch with the Steele dossier in 2016.
6
I would start with getting rid of Ajit Pai secretary of the FCC asap. He is promoting wholesale privatization of any and all media. Obama appointed him and Trump kept him in place giving him even greater freedom to expand on what appears to be a winner-take-all mindset.
The the National Rifle Association (NRA) awarded Pai with the Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award and he has been charged with favoritism toward the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a distinctly false news practicing organization that has the ear and eye of the majority of viewers from ownership of thousand/s of small television stations, to which SBG dictates news practices including a reduction in local reportage.
Note that Mitch McConnell recommended Pai to Obama ... oh, oopsy! And I thought I could trust you, Mitch.
3
The Republican Senate, bought and paid for in large part by Russian interests, has blocked the last three election security bills.
184
@David The Republicans tend to be hawks and why on earth would they work with Russia? You may not be aware but our defense budget has increased sharply in the last two years, hardly something which Putin wants.
But the Republicans are not going to go along with fake charges. It is absurd to think that white men are voting for Trump "because" Putin told them to. They are voting for Trump because they do not trust the Democrats. And the impeachment is only making things worse.
I personally wish that Trump would resign. Only his resignation is going to end the madness of the Democrats. If he wins in November 2020, we will end up with a civil war because the Democrats are incapable of admitting that they lost.
1
Not a shred of evidence that Russia or anyone else altered even ONE vote in 2016.
Hillary Clinton choked in 2016.
Live with it!
7
@Arch Stanton
For the record, Clinton beat Trump by 3M votes in 2016. Also for the record is the indisputable fact that Russia made and continues to devote substantial efforts to disrupt our democracy. Amazing that so many members of the Trump Cult follow their Dear Leader like lemmings and say "Who cares?"
4
@Arch: russians didn’t have to tamper with actual voting machines. You think facebook wasn’t a propaganda machine extroadinaire for trumps typical fan? What happened with ‘Hillary’s emails’ when trump requested help? Do you know what they did just with FB? The Rs (Republicans? or Russians?) were so toxic on FB in 2012 that I shut it down. 2016...whew. Add that to Fox News, which is all typical Rs watch, and it’s done. Wisconsin’s trying to purge voter rolls now. NC fixed their gerrymandering issue with more gerrymandering. This is an uphill battle.
3
@Rex7
None of our 45 US Presidents was elected by national popular vote.
Again - Clinton was caught napping in Oct/Nov 2016.
2
Putin’s puppets in the U,S. don’t have a clue what’s in store for them. Putin may be evil and all that goes along with it, but dumb he is not, far from it, and I’d bet the house that he hates ignorant, greedy pushovers and that’s all we have in the White House and the Senate. I hope I live long enough to see the karma these fools have coming.
5
If this country re-elects trump we really don’t deserve democracy anymore, because we are collectively just that stupid and incapable of self-government.
6
To Preserve Our Democracy, We must:
> Resist disinformation flourishing through social media platforms.
> Resist Trumpophants who ignore empirical facts.
> Resist Trump's and the RepubliCons' Tyrannical attempt to corrupt our Constitution.
> Resist the RepucliCon coup on November 3, 2020
1
This piece’s supposition is, that the Anerican voter is an impressionable, gullible idiot, who is more likely to believe whatever garbage is being served up, than not and that is insulting.
3
How does the Steele dossier fit into all this? It was a "rabbit hole" of Russian disinformation, from a sub-source that even admitted that Steele treated jokes of his as verified foreign intel (the pee tape). Then we spent three years treating this disinformation as biblical truth, reality until disprove. Guilty until proven innocent.
Isn't your own paper, and your contemporaries, implicated in that? Shouldn't you be shut down by your own standard?
3
Thank you and bless you Suzanne Nossel .
Every day that Donald Trump does nothing to stop Russian interference is a day that he has aided and abetted a hostile foreign power . And every day at the Donald Trump protects Vladimir Putin (remember Helsinki?) he is aiding and abetting the enemy.
Isn’t it interesting how Republicans have in the last three years lost all of their testicular fortitude, not to mention their conscience... they too will bear the stigma of being “Junior Manchurian Candidates when this is all over...
and when we finally see Donald Trump‘s tax returns we will discover just how deeply indebted he is to the Russians. And at that point we will see the real quid pro quo that has been withheld from America .
3
Sorry I don't buy this "he fooled us" theory.
The white working class pro trumpers knew exactly what they were voting for: a rascist, an immigrant fear mongering white nationalist, a sexist moron.
The white rich knew exactly what they were voting for: A super rich elitist, a true believer in the elitism of the rich, and one who would rape the treasury for the rich (see the new tax changes), stuff the supreme court with clones of him, and at every possible turn reduce as far as possible all social programs and infrastructure support, while pushing forward every profiteering enterprise in sight.
6
We're not preparing for the next election because American oligarchs in charge of the Republican Party are clearly working with their Russian peers to transform America into a fascistic ally of Putin's fascist Russia. Fascism has worked like a charm to enrich Russian oligarchs, so apparently lots of our own now see fascism as the best system to guarantee their permanent dominance of America's political economy as well. Needless to say, all these oligarchs are long-term thinkers, and they can all see the iron law of demographics staring them and their riches in the face. The Boomers who have tilted the American political economy so far right for the benefit of the top 1%, at the expense of the masses, every since the white Boomers became yuppies in the 80s, are now dying at an ever-increasing pace. And they will inevitably be replaced at the polls by the largest, most diverse generation of voters in American history, the Millennials, who are rightly angry over how the rich Boomers have screwed everyone else, and the young above all. No wonder our Boomer oligarchs have desperately reached out to Putin, the greatest master of thought-control in the West, to help them get Trump and the Republicans in power for eight years, in order to make America as fascistic as possible in that time, in order to blunt by force the coming power of the Millennials, deadly enemies of oligarchs everywhere.
4
Why aren’t we preparing? Because the political party holding the most power -the GOP- has been using every tool in its war chest to win the next election. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, lying about voter fraud and even outright intimidation are at an all-time high within their ranks. Why would the Republican Party lift a finger to suppress the tactics that have worked so well for them?
224
We unfortunately live in a time where there are two versions of the truth. There is our traditional definition of the truth, which is supported by publications like the NY Times and the rest of the mainstream media.
But there is unfortunately now a huge portion of this country that distrusts anything reported by the mainstream media, and they believe in an alternate version of the truth. So one person's lie is now another person's truth.
There has always been some distrust among portions of America towards the mainstream media, but it has multiplied and become an epidemic. These people have basically thrown away almost 250 years of what this country was built on.
I am not sure how we solve this problem, as it comes down to the fundamental core of America. As the author noted, if we cannot have faith in our electoral process, then what are we as a nation? I personally do not want to be a part of the America that these disbelievers are living in, as the truths that they hold to be self-evident are very different than mine.
134
nyc BD
hi
one of the msm distrusters here.
Just because an outlet is mainstream doesn't preclude it from dealing in misinformation , omissions , smears or very biased hit pieces.
I don't get information from facebook.
I do consume multiple information streams from podcasts, Youtube, alternative media on the Internet .I am very far from alone. Mainstream outlets need to smarten up.
If they keep serving up stuff no one wants to read they'll go the way of the dodo birf.
5
@rolnrn
I believe people will pay more attention to news events and even rhetoric once they can put them in comparative historical perspective. However, that is the rub; media and intelligentsia do not want to discuss atrocities of Mussolini and Hitler, either because its too painful or, maybe as they being proprietary to that era or group.
The luxury of "It can't happen here" has to be brought into keener-everyday-focus taking into account demonstrative risk of Trump's behaviour. If the populace are educated to how authoritarianism weaves its way into political strata, it will be hard not to see links already being allowed by GOP.
9
@rolnrn: Thank you for reading here.
5
Republicans in various States have been working hard to pervert the vote, and succeeding.
And, given that much of the dis-information related to HRC is still being parroted on the Left by the folks there who helped put Trump in office, I don't have much hope they'll be more discerning this time around.
Your premise is deeply flawed. We are stronger now, not weaker. The left just can’t see clearly through their bitterness.
5
The #1 issue with the upcoming election and the past elections is the Neanderthal Electoral College. It should be abolished.
The other issue is the fact only 50% of Americans on average vote during a Presidential election.
6
Shame doesn't mean anything to anyone, anymore. People are no longer ashamed of anything. All taboos have fallen. Don't complain NYT. You worked hard to achieve it.
3
You can fool a fool many times over. November 2020 will reveal just how many American voters are willing to be fooled again.
1
Ross Douthat: "excuse me but I find all of this hilarious"
1
"The last election weakened our democracy. Why aren’t we preparing for the next one?" Well, the short answer would seem to be that far too few Americans understand our constitution, or why we have it. Even worse, far too few Americans care.
@Tom Debley: Trump seems to be fussy about who prays for him.
1
I reject the premise that “we” aren’t doing anything. The McConnell’s GOP is doing something: making our elections increasingly open to hacking and fraud.
Anyone who blames “Congress” is either naive or disingenuously trying to both-sides the facts.
6
@Josh Wilson: "Congress" is comprised of the House, and the Senate. The first is a popularly elected legislature where legislation originates, and the latter represents the interests of the state governments, represented by two senators per state, to veto lumpen proletarian and anti-state's rights legislation originating in the House.
Oh for goodness sake. You have had powerful media interfering with your elections for ages. You let Rupert Murdoch into the country!
1
There is a great dived between Democrats and Republicans – the division is even greater between Democrats and Trump supporters within the GOP.
If John McCain would be around he would definitively be a strong critic of Trump – Lindsey Graham would never dare to speak praising him.
The GOP has become a completely different creature – Reagan would be appalled and angry hearing the so many stupid comments of the GOP “leaders” – approving what Trump and his soldiers are doing.
3
How exactly do elections weaken our democracy? We've had misinformation for years. It's having an uneducated electorate that can't or won't think critically that hurts democracy. We're busy pointing at Russia because a large majority of the left still want to blame Russia for HRC losing. She lost because she was a bad candidate and ran a bad campaign. Well, Comey may have hurt her perhaps, but he also helped her by letting her off the hook. I'd say it's a wash -- which doesn't mean he didn't arrogated power to himself that he never should have.
Dis and misinformation can have internal sources, not just Russia. And there are other countries that would like to get at us in some way shape or form. The only way to fight is honest skepticism. About everything. Don't trust anyone until you've researched it yourself. So if you read it in the Times, then Wapo, then watch it on CNN and MSNBC -- does that make it true. No. Because those outlets plus several others share a left wing bias. Do you think if some nitwits accused Obama of working with Russia to swing an election (hope that really isn't true about 2016) that any of those outlets would cover it. I doubt it.
Do these outlets give a fair and balanced hearing for climate change? Why don't you sound an alarm the first time the climate section of this paper offers a forum to a credentialed skeptic?
8
@Ralphie Bravo!
3
The answer to your question: "The last election weakened our democracy. Why aren't you preparing for the next one?" is simple:
Republicans in Congress have chosen to serve one person - President Trump - rather than be true to the rule of law, their oath of office or democracy itself.
Donald Trump is so bizarrely focused on deference to Russia (to put it charitably) that he will not "allow" congressional Republicans to reasonably proceed to protect elections without suffering his tweet-storm and the resultant backlash from his base.
Congressional Republicans are engaging in the worst collective congressional abrogation of duty since their inability to eliminate slavery without a Civil War -- and that was a tough hill to climb.
This is just cowardice. Pure and simple.
160
@Mark Keller ,
He’s a true Republican:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4O2Ob1gVRUu
It doesn’t get any better than this.
7
@DavidJ
Perfect! and amen...
3
@DavidJ
Thanks. Every voter needs to see it.
4
A big step forward is to make social media outlets like Facebook liable for false information posted on their site. The courts and corporate prudence will clear up this problem. But then again the USA is too backward a country to do this.
2
In one very limited sense, our democracy is functioning well.
We are being presented with a choice for the presidency between Trump and one of the Democrat contenders. Until now, media attention and public focus has been almost all on far left "progressives", especially Sanders and Warren.
Both of those 2 candidates combine just 2 messages. Both have a cornucopia of massive give-aways of free stuff. And both present messages of hate (I explain below). The majority of the public is rejecting both messages.
The public is not rejecting their massive give-aways because they don't want free stuff. The public is rejecting them because they know that one way or another, the public will pay dearly for them, that the politicians are deceiving them.
The public also rejects Sanders' and Warren's messages of hate. They both hate wealth (that is, wealth greater than their substantial personal wealth). Sanders is the most forthright about it....he flat out says absolutely no one should have great wealth. Warren is only a little less direct. She wants to confiscate ALL accumulations of wealth in piecemeal fashion. (originally annual confiscation of 2% per year but within weeks it had already grown to annual confiscation of 6%. Neither of them cares whether the wealth was acquired by corrupt means, or by monopoly, versus by competing best in competitive markets to provide products the public desires. They both just hate all wealth and intend to confiscate it.
5
Instead of developing an alternative, the democrats worked three years to remove Trump from office. What is really uncomfortable to watch is their bewilderment at having inadvertently taken their case into the courtrooms that preside upstairs, the higher court they forgot existed, the timing of which they never saw coming.
7
Did you know that Conservatives and Liberals exist on the same continuum through time? Throughout our history one philosophy or the other tends to dominate politics. Think of one philosophy being parasitical and the other symbiotic. Yet nature requires both for survival.
The trick is to know, given the circumstances in which you exist, which of them need be slightly emphasized over the other. Today, on Earth, we see a single species dominated planet wherein that species, humanity, is threatening not only itself but all other life forms on Earth, with destruction. It's a critical time for a more symbiotic approach. That is, working together, with whole systems benefiting from that symbiosis.
Parasitical "Realist Doctrine" or, political philosophy, won't help much given these current conditions. This is why globalization and increase trade and communication between cultures is so very important at this juncture.
The "Realist Doctrine" is a fine doctrine, the best and most honored and it has 3.5 billion years of successful life on Earth to fall back on. However, on today's planet Earth, the parasitical "Realist Doctrine" needs to give way a bit more to it's antithesis, Symbiotic International Relationships. Given the circumstance on the planet today, this is logical and makes good sense. So it is written, so let it be done.
1
Yes, there may be an electoral crisis centering on disinformation. But the election campaigns themselves are already filled with misinformation.
Trump argues that global warming is a hoax. But Democrats seem to argue that there is no connection between population growth and global warming.
Namoi Klein's book "On Fire" pretends to explain the Green New Deal of Democrats. Yet, I found only one mention of overpopulation on page 45. When describing the "Christchurc killer" Klein writes,
"In his rambling manifesto, he framed his actions as a twisted kind of environmentalism, railing against population growth...."
This holds up the argument that population growth is the cause of global warming to ridicule.
But in "the Limits to Growth" of 1972, Meadows et al argued that some combination of bad consequences, starvation, running out of oil, or environmental destruction would lead to "overshoot and collapse" in which population would temporarily exceed earth's carrying capacity then necessarily fall.
Global warming provides the details of this earlier message. It is warming of earth that may make large parts of the tropics uninhabitable, and force hundreds of million to migrate from the tropics to the poles.
How will deaths occur as a result? Starvation, political disintegration, wars over resources.
In an overpopulated world Democrats when they argue that we can provide universal health care to an unending stream of illegal immigrants crossing open borders.
4
"We will probably never know whether those efforts changed the election outcome." Why won't we know? And, Clinton won the popular vote over Trump. It was the Electoral College that put a Republican in as President, not the people. Also, the E.C. did it before, So, what's the use, then?
1
From John Adams
"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true in fact and no where appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence and cruelty."
My question. Do Trump voters really care about democracy? Will they even notice when it's gone?
2
American democracy is fine, even if the Democrats lose again.
Mudslinging and spreading bullhonkey goes way back in American electoral politics. Social media and deepfakes or what have you is merely the newest iteration. Remember when people voted against Kennedy because they thought he'd move the Vatican to DC? Remember all the conspiracy theories surrounding the Clintons? Remember Willie Horton? None of this is new.
10
I know, let's create a new cabinet position called
"minister of true information". That way the President can appoint someone who is impartial who can control all media. They could hire 10-20 thousand people in their department who would make sure that only true things were seen by the deplorable ignorant American people.
Those caught disseminating false or misleading i.e.
Republican, information would be sent to one of several 'truth and reeducation centers" .
yeah, that sounds about right.
3
@garym14 Thanks. It is appalling to me that the head of PEN writes an column advocating widespread censorship. And that the Times publishes it. Distorted information is nothing new. Especially in politics. Times' columnists continue to advocate for censorship of Facebook, etc. But there are millions of websites putting out political and other opinions. Are they all to be censored? Will the Times be subject to censorship? Other progressive and liberal websites? Newspapers, magazines? What would the author of this column say if the censorship were applied to authors of books? There is no censorship of negative and attack campaign adds on TV or radio currently. Are campaign speeches to be censored? The Times continually advocates for pretty much unlimited freedom for journalists. I say that that is closest to be best principle--for everyone. Thank God for the First Amendment.
1
The US remains in persistent denial that what it adulates as "democracy" is a scheme for permanent government by the opulent via the Senate.
3
Do we actually think people got fooled? I think people who voted for Trump knew exactly what they were getting, and while the misinformation campaigns on Facebook and other Internet sources didn’t help matters, these folks knew a white-supremacist supporting racist when they saw one, and that’s what they voted for. Oops! I mean, he felt their economic anxiety…
3
The biggest election hoax in history was the Steele Dossier bought and paid for by a major party candidate, Hillary Cinton.
8
The basic problem is that many get their information from truly biased sources and don't think these sources are biased. They don't know how to tell when they're being manipulated emotionally, or how to tell the difference between propaganda and facts. In the worst case, they don't want to know because they are so worn down by the struggle to keep a place in society that they are barely functional as parents and workers so why would we expect them to function well as voters?
There should not be discrimination against anyone based on race, religion, or gender preference, but if you are not a fully functioning member of this society, you shouldn't be voting. The way this used to be done, before and until a decade or so after the Revolution, was based on how much property one had. This was used as a measure of one's culture, education, and integrity. This is a step back from pure democracy but even that did not prevent Athens, where it was first used for an extended period of time, from making gigantic mistakes in their selection of leaders.
I am much more optimistic about the state of our democracy than the author is. I have yet to read of a single american of either party who wants to change their vote because of disinformation they heard during the last election. I suppose we are much better at sifting through that vast morass of information (both true and false) and arriving at a conclusion than either Ms. Nossel or the Russians give us credit for.
5
@chip
" I have yet to read of a single american of either party who wants to change their vote because of disinformation they heard during the last election."
Of course not. No one so dumb as to swallow the russian propaganda lies on Farcebook would have the intellectual honesty to then admit publicly how stupid they were.
Kind of like asking a driver to admit they were playing with their Iphone when they ran a red light and killed a pedestrian.
They would never admit it.
3
Preparations are underway! Voting rights subverted, purging voters, reducing voting centers and the fares of an electoral college. Republican led in legislative and judicial fronts.
1
A sure antidote to rampant disinformation is a mandated series of live debates, forums, town meetings and university presentations between the final two selected Presidential nominees. Real spontaneous interaction between the candidates and the American public circumvents all the possible digital warping. Each citizen gets to hear first hand from the candidates.
Such a series should be mandated by law for at least the final four months. Hopefully, Trump would be open to this format, although such fair discussions are not his strong suit. He prefers hit and run...like a bully, like a criminal.
2
Karl Rove thought that Republicans could become a permanent majority. George W. Bush's blundering in Iraq, after Hurricane Katrina, and on the economy ruined that plan. After the 2012 election, the Republicans acknowledged they were not appealing to many sectors of the electorate and recommended plans to reach out to African-Americans, Hispanics, and young people. However, to do that would have meant displeasing the Kochs, the Adelsons, other big Republican donors, and the extreme right Christians that are the core of the party. So rather than try to achieve an actual majority of voters, the Republicans planned to gerrymander and suppress the votes of potential opponents. Republicans are not in favor of democracy if democracy means majority rule. The foreign interference, the disinformation campaigns, all of this was a bonus for Trump and Republicans, so they have no incentive to thwart it in 2020. In fact, between Trump's acknowledged solicitation of more interference in 2020 and Republican efforts to disenroll voters in many states and to sabotage the 2020 US Census, Republicans have signaled their intention to remain in power at all costs and no matter what the people want.
2
why on earth would anything to protect elections pass in congress or be signed into law?
one side benefits "yugely" from this very disinformation campaign, they have no incentive to stop it. so basically, you're asking the other side to unilaterally disarm.
2
Honest Ads Act might help but the crux of the problem is not Facebook or Russia. The core problem is home grown and has been happening right under our noses for years. It is the almost complete transformation of the federal government into a support mechanism for the American oligarchy with Fox News as its propaganda mouthpiece. It's a government of and for the corporations courtesy of SCOTUS Citizens United.
3
@Casual Observer: They have bamboozled the public clean out of awareness that the US Federal Government is a public corporation whose citizen shareholders elect officers and directors. This leaves all the government's coercive powers in the hands of hidden influence, and tamps down unrest caused by unequal representation.
@Casual Observer See Ned Beatty’s speech in ‘Network’ - Paddy Chayevsky saw this coming way back in ‘76. “There are no nations, there are no ideologies - there is only commerce.”
1
We are all challenged from time to time to exhibit our courage in public. Republicans entire careers will be a reflected in their monumental failure to meet the demands of their oath of office.
2
Well recent data shows jog growth is lagging in the Midwest The economy has not reached this area and Trumps Tariff have seriously hurt the region. I would be surprise Trump carries MI. and WI and even PA.
A Trump win would create a unhealable rift in the US, exactly what Putin wants. and what the crazes narcissist Trump will deliver.
1
A Trump re-election by a minority of the country voters, catalyzing his final transformation from unruly incoherence to criminal autocrat, would be a sign that we will witness the twilight of democracy within a decade, if not sooner. We'll get what we deserve, especially if he's not sufficiently contained between now and the 2020 election.
1
Between Zuckerberg/Sandberg and McConnell, we are in trouble. But they are in positions of power and stunningly greedy, so the last thing they will be bothered with is democracy and an honest election.
The three of them are a disgrace to our society.
1
It seems to me that the DNC would rather have Trump than Sanders or Warren.
2
Listening to a Trump supporter on NPR I realized vividly that those supporting impeachment and those supporting him speak and think in radically different ways. He spoke of being happy with his current economic position and felt Trump had given him that, some thing I would debate with him but debating anything seemed not to be important to him. For me it is important that a president work with our allies, is honest and truthful, does not make a profit from his position as president and works within the boundaries of the constitution, nothing of which seemed to concern him But hey he had his so what does a 'little' immorality matter. For him it was all partisan politics. for me it really has nothing to do with party, but as I said we spoke different languages. At this point listening to him I understood it may take a real in your face economic disaster to shift this thinking as moral arguments seem no longer to matter in our now benighted country.
6
Lots of wisdom here but, of course, nothing remotely like this will happen. Since Trump benefits from Russian interference, he’ll do nothing to stop it. In fact, he encourages interference from China, too! And, Mr. Giuliani is “investigating” the bogus corruption of the Bidens in Ukraine, so Trump is openly up to dirty tricks. The mind boggles.
I hope I’m alive when the secrets behind Trump’s 2016 “victory” are revealed. “Russia, if you’re listening...” They were and they still are.
1
"Why aren’t we preparing for the next one?"
The answer to that question is obvious: because President Trump wants nothing done. It's to his advantage for Russia to interfere in the 2020 elections. And -- as the Ukraine scandal has vividly demonstrated -- he is all too willing to invite foreign interference in our elections.
If he wins, he'll do what he's always done: deny that Russia interfered and call it a "hoax." It's worked for him before.
And if he loses? My bet is that he'll claim that nefarious and unnamed elements in Ukraine interfered in the election (his current game plan). Worse, if he loses, it's certainly within Trump's character to claim election fraud perpetrated by Ukraine or some other bogeyman. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that he'd rally his base to march on Washington and refuse to give up the White House.
5
@Thrifty Drifty You hit the nail on the head, my friend. This exactly.
I would say thanks for saving me the time of writing my own comment, but the fact that we find it necessary to point out things like this, is soul soul-crushing.
4
The media created this mess by not reporting the news in a fair way. It's that simple. They called al conservatives racists, or worse, The media has forgotten their responsibility. No one pays attention to the talking heads when they spout on and on about the obvious. I've heard truck drivers and factory workers saying things twice as smart as these bubble heads. Trump won, he did nothing wrong, the only wrong is all this constant banging against The United States of America. We are not a bad people but a hard working people who knows how lucky we are to live here.
6
@Richard Havens Calling people bubble heads and talking down to them will certainly bring them over to your point of view. One Fact:Trump was convicted of stealing money from kids with cancer to fund his campaign;paid a $2 million fine; so he did at least one thing wrong
2
I must disagree with the premise that Mr. Trump has done nothing wrong. Even outside the presidency, he’s done things he is currently having to pay restitution for - examples: the Trump University scam ($25 million judgement) and using his “charity” as his personal piggy bank ($2 million judgement). But, to me, his biggest “wrong” is his dehumanising behaviour. I’ve been told several times to “go back where you came from” - that Trump says that is what people like me need to do. Does Fox News report that Mr. Trump’s followers yell at an American citizen, daughter, wife and mother of veterans to leave the country in the most vile terms, without warning and in the most frightening way? No, you don’t hear that. I am now constantly on the lookout for exits and persons rushing toward me. Mr. Trump’s followers seem to think he has given them permission to do some pretty despicable things. Which came first - action in response to Trump’s message about the “other” and permission to dehumanize, or long-held, deep-seated views of the “other” given legitimacy to be acted upon by the highest office in the land? The answer is important if we are to survive the Trump era with our humanity in tact.
2
The Democrats decided it would be more fun to go with impeachment rather than finding & getting behind a candidate, who could beat Trump in 2020.
If the Democrats hold on to the House it will be no small feat at this point.
If Sanders, who is coming on strong, is the nominee, Trump is going to have a big win. It's going to make Boris Johnson's win look like nothing in comparison
5
Are you so certain that most Americans can afford for profit health care, the most expensive health care on earth? And are you sure Americans have no problem paying four times as much for drugs as our neighbors in Canada? Americans don’t mind spending down their savings, going bankrupt or starting GoFundMes and begging to pay medical bills their expensive for profit insurance won’t pay?
And you are certain most American families don’t mind that their children must take on high interest debt,that takes decades to discharge, in order to get a college education?
Why does Bernie draw record crowds at every rally across the nation?
2
Sadly, none of that will happen as long as any GOPers hold the levers of power.
For the Republicans none of this is a bug; It's a feature.
5
At the risk of stating the obvious, because doing nothing benefits the Republicans.
3
Disinformation, as nearly everyone in the United States knows, is the main stock in trade of Donald Trump, and for the 21st-century version of the Republican Party, misleading the public, the courts and the respected news organizations in America and abroad has become its modus operandi.
Whether it is using false information to help an aggressive Russia, the new best friend of the G.O.P., to rig an American election against the Democrats, or spreading lies on the internet about a competing American company’s products or services, the approach of the hyper-conservatives is a win-at-all-costs, do-whatever-it-takes nastiness.
The same people who pose as sexual prudes and criticize the life styles of working people, simply have no moral compass when they smell blood in the water. Everyday things like having a company stand by its product warranty to the consumer have become increasingly problematic.
The warnings of Suzanne Nossel and PEN America should not be ignored by any of us.
1
Who, exactly, is “we”?
The mob has voted in a dictator.
We are powerless now to oppose them.
I find it absolutely perplexing to listen to people claim everything is disinformation and yet they only rely on one politically affiliated news source.
If you want to know when something is disinformation then do what I do. Read NYTimes, then tune into FOX news, then read a little Washington Post, then switch to the Washington Times.
You will start to get a feel about what a partisan media looks like and you will be able to decipher disinformation on your own. That is what the 63 million people did in 2016 so while the outcome to them was no surprise those who isolated themselves to one media source were shocked. Amazingly I cannot figure out why they would allow those single sources of media to again tell them how to think and vote.
6
I’d be surprised if most Trump voters routinely read the NYT or Washington Post
2
The Obama administration were well aware what Putin was up to early in 2016. Why the Russians were allowed penetrate into our election process is anyone's guess. I hope we have better defenses in 2020.
2
Once Trump skates through impeachment unscathed, if he's re-elected, it won't be as president. He will officially be a king and the Republican/Russian destruction of our democracy will be complete.
Here's the quote from this op-ed that says it all: "Mainstream media companies must articulate protocols for handling stolen, leaked or unverifiable information."
Remember Adam Schiff's repeated statements that he had conclusive evidence (that he couldn't reveal yet) that Trump colluded with Russia? How about the Steele report which, except for the items that were already public knowledge at the time, has been totally discredited? And Steele himself, here's what the Washington Post said in February 2017:
"While Trump has derided the dossier as “fake news” compiled by his political opponents, the FBI’s arrangement with Steele shows that the bureau considered him credible and found his information, while unproved, to be worthy of further investigation... Steele was known for the quality of his past work..."
Based on Mueller and Horowitz reports, it appears as though much of the media was duped into reporting false or unverifiable information, while ignoring contradictory information that didn't fit the preferred narrative.
Fiona Hill stated that she thought the Steele "dossier" was part of the Russian disinformation campaign to discredit whichever candidate was elected. Putin must be pleased that his campaign succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
2
The Democrats should just scratch when it comes to a primary nominee. Let Trump run un adversed and regroup in 2024
1
Democrats need to stop bringing a butter knife to a gun fight.
Republicans are now lawless and need to pay a price.
The Trump supporters who are now threatening civil war if he's impeached, need to put up or shut up.
The republicans want a total takeover, but wouldn't want a civil war, since their lives will get wrecked along with everybody else's.
Yet, what the white, angry, christian male does not understand, is that there are groups far more deserving of anger and rage.
I'd rather have the mess of secession than the fascism we're facing.
Tell the republicans that it's over for America, just not the way they want.
2
Delete Facebook. You'll be a happier person for turning off the disinformation hose attached to the outrage machine.
1
Disinformation is as old as William Randolph Hearst. There’s nothing new about disinformation.
Foreign interference is as old as the C.I.A. in Latin America. Nothing new in that, either.
Voter suppression is as old as the KKK. Again, nothing new.
Voter fraud? Been there, done that. Just ask the Daley’s of Chicago.
What we need to accept is that we have had few if any “clean” elections or election results. Indeed, the “will of the people” has never really even been a goal as enumerated in the very Constitution we hold so dear, but honor so rarely.
But everyone should vote anyway. Maybe one day we’ll get lucky and the powers that be will realize that they, too, will eventually die and have to give an account.
1
Why aren't we preparing? Could it be because the current president is the source of the sabotage? Naahhh, that's crazy talk...I guess.
1
The cult wants to be fooled. They invite the scam, and are vicious about it. The believe they can never be wrong, and their hero is a god.
DUH! The foxes are in charge of the hen house.
'The last election weakened our democracy.'
Typical, unbearable and disgusting fallacy by 'liberals'. The fact that you lost to one Trump is showing the strength, resilience, and vibrancy of US democracy, denying the dishonest and agenda-driven media (like NYT), and big money to dictate who wins. Trump is voted in by simple folks and he will be voted in again!
Further, Trump's victory is on par with the Obama victories, both signify the excellence of the limited US democracy (limited only because there are only two options to chose from and both are obvious slaves to money). But, in the all-out war that the liberals wage against Trump, all is allowed and no logic applies. To your detriment, my ex-friends.
5
Prepping Well, comprehensively and Imaginatively is not Dem's DNA.
We all need to pitch in to register voters, etc. because they are lame and fully one-half as corrupt as Repubs, who are trending neo-Fascist, Oligarchic and Plutocratic.
Bye-bye Middle and Working Classes Hopes for their Children and Grandchildren.
American democracy is under attack by neofascists who are winning.
More concerning to me than disinformation is the fact that someone could be persuaded to vote a certain way based on something they read on Facebook.
282
@Spiral Architect -- Or, based on the fact that their favorite candidates hate all the same things, and people, that they hate. People that stupidly angry MUST have shortened their lives by quite a bit. I hope.
8
@Spiral Architect It's seldom about changing minds. It's about solidifying supporters, sowing doubt among potential swing voters, and dampening enthusiasm among those who might support the opposition candidates.
They do it because it works, and we have a news media that repeats the lies because they have to report on "both sides."
9
@Spiral Architect "read on facebook" is an mischarectization of the misinformation's real medium: the posts are shared and written by people you already know and trust.
The electorate is made up of people and people trust information that is parroted often enough by people they trust or like, nuanced facts aside
3
Republicans don't see the attacks against our elections as an attack against democracy, but an attack against liberalism, and for that reason will never lift a finger against outside influences. They welcome the help. Trump just happens to be the latest, and most easily corrupted, standard bearer of exactly what Republicans have been working towards since FDR. Their goal is to destroy every vestige of liberal policy completely. Disinformation and disenfranchisement IS their playbook, aided in large part by the wrong-headed Citizens United decision, which freed up billions for their cause. The only effective way to to stop this onslaught is by voting every last one of them out of office, from local alderman all the way to the President. They've shown their disdain for American values for far too long.
273
What really weakens democracy is the false notion that large numbers of people can live off taxpayer provided benefits and don't need to take responsibility for themselves (economic redistributionism). That's a bedrock feature and sincere belief of the Democratic Party. They promise their followers the shortcut to success, they call it 'social justice', when to the people working to pay the bill, it's 'social injustice'. At least Mr. Trump, whatever his other shortcomings may be, understands that American is really an economic, not an ideologically based society like, well you can make a list: Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.
6
@Ronald B. Duke What really weakens democracy is the abiding and false notion that large numbers of people can live and survive off slave-labor jobs where the pay is set at the MINIMUM WAGE, WITHOUT BENEFITS. THAT is a bedrock feature and sincere belief of the GOP, despite the growing mountain of evidence that proves otherwise.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/minimum-wage-workers-cannot-afford-2-bedroom-rental-anywhere-in-the-us.html
The GOP has convinced their followers and supporters --the CEOs and shareholders of large corporations, Wall Street Bankers, the 1%ers, K-Street lobbyists, and middle-aged, poor, uneducated white men, that people who are poor are always black or brown, and that they never work. So they have planned to cut any type of benefit that will keep the poor "colored" working classes housed or minimally fed. But they have lied to some of their followers--
https://qz.com/1504507/trumps-snap-food-stamps-cut-will-hit-his-single-white-base-the-hardest/
At least Mr. Trump, in complete harmony with his iniquitous, evil and immoral nature, is going to be ecumenical in his abuse of people everywhere, including all of his followers because he understands that America is really a brutal capitalistic power where whomever has the gold makes the rules, that the people are nothing but cash cows, and that government bears no responsibility whatsoever to the people it governs.
2
@Ronald B. Duke " What really weakens democracy is the false notion that large numbers of people can live off taxpayer provided benefits and don't need to take responsibility for themselves (economic redistributionism). That's a bedrock feature and sincere belief of the Democratic Party."
This is an absolute falsehood. Many Democrats want to help those in need and help them to get to a better place where they can support themselves. Do you really believe that the Billionaires work one thousand times hard than the just wealthy?
Look how many of the super wealthy are living off of taxpayers money. How about companies like Boeing and Centene who get a significant portion of their income from us taxpayers.
3
Our leader and Commander in Chief needs to be articulate, compassionate and understanding to the needs of all Americans, not just those who vote for him/her. Our leader should exhibit professionalism, experience and maintain an above board moral character. Our leader should be Donald J. Trump.
2
@RS
You are fully delusional. I'm especially impressed with your definition of"moral character" as it applies to Donald Trump. Within the context of his multiple marriages, porn star payoffs, bankrupsies, fraud restitution, blatant lies, deceit, malfeasance and corruption you can conjure up a relationship between that term and him is beyond me!
3
@RS
I believe you left out a "not" in the last sentence.
3
@RS Nowadays it really can be tough to discern between serious sentiment and satire!
3
Democracy is weakened with characters like Hillary rigging the DNC and debates in her favor. The fact that a complete political outsider won the election shows our democracy worked against all odds.
11
@Not 99pct And with the help of the state-of-the-art (in the 18th Century) Electoral College.
5
@Lifelong New Yorker Which was in place since the beginning of the republic. It may have helped her to visit some of those swing states. She lost states like Virginia and Pennsylvania as well.
2
@Not 99pct Thanks for providing me with a good laugh. Oh, wait. You actually believe this.
2
Perhaps the brilliance of "balance of power" will continue to serve us well. Both sides use disinformation, likely equally, so who is to say that one side has an advantage? One can argue that the propaganda from one side will cancel out the propaganda from the other.
1
Why goodness gracious mercy me. Imagine a supposedly respectable journal using an out-of-context clip to claim that a certain progressive candidate supported David Duke...
2
The only thing we have to fear about disinformation is fear of disinformation itself. Ironically, articles like this one are the biggest problem because they endeavor to convince us that any irregularities in an election invalidate the result. There are and will always be irregularities in every election. Know how I know? Because people are involved. Sure, there are bad actors trying to manipulate people with some measurable impact. But the reality is that there is no sufficiently powerful coalition that exists today that has the ability to really take over the process because there are so many different interests trying to win at all costs that they largely cancel each other. Take Russia for example. Russia spent $1.25 million a month on ads trying to sway the election. What a positively paltry sum that is in the grand scheme! You had billions of dollars flowing into each side trying to sway outcome; if all that cash were sitting in a room and you added or subtracted the Russian cash, you wouldn't even be able to tell whether it was there or not without a counting machine. Are the Russians that much more sophisticated than Americans that their dollars actually made an appreciable difference? I doubt it. I think we'd all rather Russia invested zero dollars in influencing our elections, but if all they're doing is buying ads and leaking compromising emails (think there was some of that on both sides of the aisle) this is hardly worth a tenth of the attention it gets.
3
@Bob
Exactly. I've never used Facebook or Twitter or anything similar but I have a hard time believing they had that much of an impact. How many people are dim enough that they would depend on a source like that for news?
Not as many as some people would have us believe, I'll bet.
3
The answer to your question is "because the majority of Republicans do not want a democracy."
3
Many readers have expressed that the issues that have gotten us to today's political morass started a long time ago. Most things-human have roots in the past starting with any individual person: what happens to a person, starting at birth, will have an effect many years down the road.
The process of turning many American minds to mush, with an inability to think and assess clearly, to arrive at facts and conclusion, by deductive reasoning, begins at birth with "all things cute", little contact (for many children) with nature, too many plastic toys (big, gaudy), a world that's meant to be about wild-and-crazy fun, lots of noise with no signal other than noise, quick food and soft drink - the sweeter the better - and no chewing required.
I perceive that the complacency, exhibited by much of the the population, has its roots in childhoods that begin with being served up a diet of mental pap since the day they were born and continuing with the metaphorical equivalent - being served up reading matter or entertainment that is worthless or lacking in substance. There are limitless channels that dish out an undemanding mental diet.
Mouths that don't need to chew [pap] are the eating equivalent of minds that don't operate analytically. A mind, untrained to think deductively will just swallow whatever is forced into it - "open wide, here comes the biggest, loudest orange airplane". Now, swallow. Good job!
1
@Susan There is also a theory that some people simply cannot think very well:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/bad-thinkers?utm_source=pocket-newtab
It's a function of poor early education, fear, family environment, tribalism and confirmational bias. For example, Good Thinkers are never quick to believe everything they hear or see, no matter what the issue is--they tend to research and fact-check material and adjust their way of thinking accordingly. On the other hand, Bad Thinkers never fact check anything that confirms their long held beliefs because they actually FEAR being found wrong. It has to do with poor intellectual character.
2
@Elizabeth Moore
Our culture does not like to admit that all are not created equally, intellectually, or otherwise. It's not politically-correct to state certain truths - such that some people have better intellectual capacities, than others. Whether or not one chooses to believe that, or not, an education that emphasizes the issues you addressed such as "don't believe everything you hear" and fact check, fact check, and keep fact checking - could, somewhat, help offset, the less than sharp intellectual capacities. Thanks for your commentary - which is so often rejected - as if the issue simply doesn't exist. Pretending something does not exist is not helpful to individuals or societies.
2
Interesting article.
Can withholding information from a person or population be classified as misinformation? Can giving a certain political persuasion an out-sized voice be considered misinformation? This is the bias we see in the establishment media and it is just as heinous as disinformation - because at the end of the day opinions persuade and hearing only one-side of the story distorts opinions.
Suzanne, try be fair!
2
There's not just a "prospect" that sophisticated influence operations might happen, it's guaranteed.
We have hundreds of years of crisis with disinformation ... the disinformation that "those people" don't belong here, "those people" didn't earn the right to Medicare or a job or much of anything, and "those people" need to be kept in their place or sent away.
As long as the GOP plays its Lee Atwater "those people" game, with both domestic and foreign disinformation programs, they are guaranteed about 40% of the vote and a good shot at victory.
6
"help Americans spot and report misinformation..." Many Americans don't care about misinformation. The tribes have closed ranks and their minds are closed. Look at Northern Ireland, the Orange and the Green as they've been for centuries before NI was carved out as an enclave for the Orange. Too many similar examples around the world to list. It's about hearts and minds, and about nation building at home. We tried in Afghanistan and failed. We haven't even tried at home. It's only going to get worse--unless major disasters combine to jolt more people into awareness.
4
@Des Johnson:
I'd go a step further: Americans like disinformation; the way it's crafted, in many ways excites the ego and feeds primal instincts. Just observe a Trump rally, the epitome of disinformation.
3
@Des Johnson: There is no international law of secession to establish the legitimacy of a province to withdraw from a nation to govern itself as an independent nation.
1
@Steve Bolger Hi Steve. NI is not a province, although it is often referred to as such. That designation was appropriated because NI is a part of an Irish province, Ulster. Unionists had long hoped that if/when home rule came to Ireland, Ulster might remain in the UK. But the demographics would have been unfavorable. So six of Ulster's nine counties were deemed to suffice as the Unionist enclave. And that was the arrangement included in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and accepted by Republicans under duress. The new NI regime mis-appropriated the term Ulster for their institutions, as in Royal Ulster Constabulary. I was born in Ulster but not in NI. Now, the demographics of NI are less favorable to Unionists.
1
The complicitness of the Trumpist Republicans is bad enough, but what’s even more frightening is voter apathy along with the apparent inability of so many people to discern truth and facts from the bogus misinformation and lies being delivered to them daily on a variety of platforms. Unless people smarten up and get it together, which doesn’t appear likey, we are screwed.
6
There is a silver bullet - treat social media like networks holding them responsible for their content, or remove all political ads on social media. How our democracy can be held hostage by a few social media barons is ludicrous. It's about time we reign in this failed social experiment that has been using our democracy as a guinea pig. Handing off this responsibility to citizens to judge for themselves and dissect fact from fiction is irresponsible at best since, sadly, a large chunk of our population are not tech savvy enough or educated enough in American and world history and propaganda to realize the often questionable sources of the information they absorb and to tell the difference.
5
@Costanzawallet The content on Social Media comes from users unlike television networks. You are essentially calling for censorship. Additionally, you call leaving judgement to the people to be irresponsible. It’s the people though that matter in a democracy. A government that forces others to withhold information, even false information, from it’s people is a tyranny. Millennials and Democrats seen intent on taking us back to a time when government owned the people and told them what to think. That hardly seems progressive.
3
@John
Back to a time? You think Trump's government isn't telling us what to think right now? His entire presidency has been predicated on the insistence that only he is trustworthy and everyone else, literally EVERYONE else, is lying.
And the frightening thing is how effectively it's working.
2
@Costanzawallet
It doesn't seem as though there was much concern about the fact that the barons of only 3 media companies (ABC, NBC, & CBS) controlled much of the news for many decades. Of course, anyone who reads newspapers rather than online or broadcast media wouldn't be influenced by "fake news."
2
"Why aren’t we preparing for the next one?"
Why aren't we prepared? Because the House has spent all of its time of a fools errands- Russia probe and impeachment.
4
@Grace The House has passed several election security bills in 2019. The most recent is the SHIELD Act, which tightens restrictions on campaign spending by foreign nationals and requires more transparency in political ads on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This and several hundred other bills passed by the House this year have been stopped for consideration by the McConnell-led do-nothing Republicans in the Senate.
5
@Grace
Because GOP governments spent its time arguing over baking cakes for same sex weddings or which restroom the LGBT people may use.
The Russia probe and impeachment are necessary items.
3
@Grace: Mumbling Mitch makes twiddling thumbs as productive as legislating in the Congress.
3
"The last election weakened our democracy. Why aren’t we preparing for the next one?"
Isn't it obvious?
Because "The Bachelor" is on tonight.
8
When the Democrats control all three branches of government, the first thing they need to do is get rid of things like gerrymandering, suppressing peoples' ability to vote, taking people off voter rolls, and falsifying voter fraud to enforce phony ID laws.
And, they need to add two seats to the Supreme Court.
The have to do what the Republicans did when they had power: play dirty. There are no moral victories anymore.
Step up the fight against Russian trolls and those who support them.
Indict people who are currently in our government who committed crimes against the Constitution.
If you have to play dirty to ensure our democracy, then do so.
5
@Joe: It is not wise to do anything just because somebody else does it.
Progressives seem to be setting the stage to claim that Trump's win in 2020 will be tainted. I recall in the weeks prior to the 2016 election when progressives were claiming that Trump would not accept his election loss! (It was never clear what they thought he would do. Raise an army?) But it turns out that it's Dems who simply can't accept an election loss. And note the focus on "disinformation" which is going to be defined as "anything that hurts Dems." For 2 years progressive media told us that the dossier was likely true (which was false) and that Trump colluded with Russia (which was false). Talk about disinformation. Progressives should look in the mirror.
6
@R.P.
I also recall Trump insisting that the election was rigged if he didn't win.
But watch out for those evil progressive boogeymen.
2
@R.P. FLAG FOR DISINFORMATION!
FACTS: "Dossier" was a classic intelligence analysis of various leads that was remarkably accurate, i.e. TRUE as far as it went.
Mueller identified well over 100 instances of collusion, identified a clear willingness to conspire with russians and then multiple efforts to obstruct a duly constituted investigation into the criminal conspiracy.
2
@R.P.
Once again, a Trumpist repeats the canard that there was no "collusion." But the Mueller Report only concluded there was no "criminal conspiracy" -- a very different legal question. Proof of "collusion" is abundant in the Mueller Report:
1. Trump in 2016 encouraged a back channel to Putin, through adviser George Papadopoulos.
2. The Kremlin told Papadopoulos it had thousands of stolen emails containing derogatory information on Hillary Clinton -- and would do an "anonymous release" (through WikiLeaks) to help Trump.
3. The Trump campaign shared internal polling data and information on battleground states with a Russian spy.
4. Hours after Trump publicly invited Russia to hack Clinton's emails, the Russian military attempted to hack her emails.
5. Trump personally asked campaign affiliates to find the missing Clinton emails.
6. The Trump campaign -- and Trump himself -- had advance knowledge of future Wikileaks releases of stolen emails, per Roger Stone's statements.
7. The Trump Campaign coordinated its campaign strategy based on future WikiLeaks releases
8. Stone told Trump that WikiLeaks informed him there would be a massive dump of Clinton's emails, and Trump responded: "Wouldn't that be great."
9. Trump's attorney Michael Cohen, at Trump's direction, negotiated with Putin's inner circle regarding a Trump Tower Project in Moscow, through June 2016.
continued at https://www.justsecurity.org/63838/guide-to-the-mueller-reports-findings-on-collusion/
2
I was able to cast a vote in 2016 and will be able to do so again in 2020.
How was democracy weakened again?
3
@Aaron Aach so! The old "I'm alright, Jack" argument.
1
If the United States elects Trump to a second term, I for one will be giving up on the country. No electorate in its right mind could reelect this man.
5
Something to ponder.
Before navigating through the tedious process of selecting your Democratic primary nominee please remember how easy it was for Hillary Clinton to lose and election rigged in her favor.
6
We aren't preparing for the next one because the party who controls 2/3s of our government benefited from that attack.
503
@Pat
Hogwash! We are preparing. We're doing our darndest to find and support the Dem that will beat Trump.
We are also doing our darndest to shout from the rooftops all that Trump is doing wrong and doing to line his pockets.
That's not doing nothing to prepare. That notion perpetuates the false belief that we are lazy or overwhelmed and can't cope with the strong effort to make the necessary changes.
Again, HOGWASH. We can and are preparing for 2020.
3
@David H I read your response to Christy. And I fully agree with what Pat wrote in response:
"And your comment is a perfect representation of the reflexive both-siderism that has helped normalize right-wing extremism."
7
@Pat I just hope We The People don't get so upset about Impeachment that the Democrats lose the House in 2020. The GOP only needs to flip roughly 20 seats to retake the House, and 31 Democrats won in districts that Trump carried in 2016. We don't want a GOP sweep.
Yup. The promise that many thought the internet had, to bring information to all, and thereby enlighten, is a clear failure. The internet has instead brought a pandemic of magical thinking, denialism, outright falsehoods, and propaganda. But it's even worse than this. We are entering a second generation of young people raise by screens instead of people, and who have serious gaps in knowledge of how to study and learn, think critically, or evaluate the quality of information presented to them.
Have an opinion about something, sane or otherwise? Go on the internet and you'll find multiple site(s) to back up your claim.
AI is here. Deepfake is here. The internet may soon exist only to tap into the ID...the part of the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and primary processes (e.g sex, dominance, "winning") are manifest.
2
Read more about Putin and then adjust all scenarios about both the 2016 election and the future election for 2020. There is simply no limit to what Putin is doing and will do to try to restore Russia's place in the world, without first of course enriching him and his buddies from St Petersburg, the KGB, and whatever it is called now, and pushing to get Crimea first, then Ukraine. Where did Trump get on the train? Moscow hotel? Miss Universe? Disinformation is a mild name for compromat, corruption, murder of those pesky journalists who just get in the way of restoration of
Mother Russia. Trump is just a fool with big ideas who was found by them to be a patsy. Follow the money.
9
Suzanne, you have said it exactly right. It is not Trump or the Republican Party who are responsible for trump being dumped on us. It is the American electorate who are to blame. Trump showed his colors as a bully, misogynist and abuser, unable to listen to criticism and put his own selfish interests which landed him in the White House. We deserve what we got. The tragedy is that so many people lost their lives,were injured, jailed and reduced to poverty and lack of healthcare. It with be tragic if the electorate repeats this again. Let him pay for his own golf outings and not bill the taxpayer for then
Christopher Slevin
10
No one was fooled in 2016 expect the lemming who hang on every word from the leftist ideologues paraded out by the Democratic National Committee.
They were fooled into thinking that an cold, smug, calculating egotistical elitist monster would actually defeat Trump.
Oops. Got that one wrong.
And they still hang on every word and will probably claim to be have been fooled again in 2020.
But it's just blind allegiance.
8
We we elected George w Bush twice.
2
The Democrats are preparing for 2020. Joe Biden looks more and more like a clone of Hillary Clinton.
5
@novoad
Biden's not a clone of Clinton but of the good ol' boys club.
Hillary Clinton is intelligent and was qualified for the jobs of senator, Sec. of State, and then president.
The only thing wrong with the last election was the Democrat’s determination to nominate Hillary Clinton. Had anyone, maybe my dog - he was old enough in dog years, been the Democrat candidate, that person would have won in a landslide. All of this gripping and morning about Russian interference and so forth is just - as they would sayin the UK - rubbish.
10
If the democrats and the left continue to call for: more mass immigration, free medical care for illegals (and start to reign in the other enticements to illegal immigration), never deporting anyone, getting rid of insurance people like, free stuff that other people have to pay for, and not stand up to unfair taxes, fight to keep jobs here and bring some back ( not just tell working Americans, "tough they're gone"), stop declaring everything this country has built as "evil" and racist, the republicans won't need a disinformation campaign to win in 2020. The democrats will hand it to trump and company just like they did in 2016. The democrats have to stand for something besides "we hate trump" and their only goal is getting rid of him. It's time for not only a positive message for America but a vision of a sustainable, fair, honest future in this country. If it's just "we hate you and this country and trump" vs a strong stock market and plentiful jobs, many people won't vote just to get rid of trump. I didn't vote for him and I won't ( not that it makes any difference here in idaho) but the obama voters in places like Michigan and Wisconsin will and the democrats can loose again. At some point democrats are not the victims in all this, it's their own stupidity and short sightedness.
9
@Al
My version of your post would be that, since much of the country (and world for that matter) no longer matures out of adolescence, criticism is more widely perceived as hate. Adolescents perceive criticism this way, adults take criticism constructively.
3
@Al
Thank you.
1
The Electrical College (as I call the institution that shortcircuits democracy) election has damaged our elections in 2000 and 2016. Absent that, our recent history would be very different. Ditto gerrymandering, Citizens United, and voter suppression.
And yet folks like to obsess about things like disinformation on social media that really CAN'T be fixed . . .
1
But to progressives, isn't anything that comes from a non-progressive's mouth "disinformation" ?
5
Trump used charity money for his campaign
Many of Trump’s advisors are in jail or indicted
Trump does not believe in climate change
Trump referred to white supremacists as fine people
Since you don’t know my politics, you are suggesting that the above facts are disinformation only if I’m a progressive. Hmmm.
4
Reasons?
1. Republicans still have control of the Federal government, they are amoral and highly partisan, they see the disinformation working to their advantage, they have nothing better to sell to the public.
2. Complete commercialization of politics. Ads including deceptive ones have become the main venue for influencing opinion. Not hard to go from deceptive ads to outright disinformation.
3. General lack of will to have the government regulate anything anymore.
2
@Larry Figdill
I forget, who was President of the United States and in charge of the Executive Branch from January 2009 until about noon on January 20, 2017?
Wouldn't that person be responsible for all of the bad things that happened before the last Presidential election?
Wouldn't that person be responsible for ensuring that the election was correctly carried out?
According to you, the person currently in charge is responsible, but I guess that does not count, since history did not start until November 9, 2016.
2
@Keith The person and party in charge now ARE responsible for the lack of action NOW, after the problem was revealed during the last election. By the way, the Obama admin did want to announce and do something about election interference by Russia but was blocked by Mitch McConnell. And of course Obama's major fault was to believe it necessary to try to be bipartisan and not offend Republicans.
There is an analogy to the 9/11 attacks. The biggest difference now is that everyone is aware of what can go wrong and will beat the snot out of a would-be hijacker.
Having been exposed to rampant disinformation and seeing it from afar as a neutral observer in the UK votes, people know much of what they are told or read is highly suspect at best. This seems extremely likely to make a big difference - bigger than any effort to filter the cesspool that is social media.
3
I would be more concerned with the 2024 election. My guess is we will get our first female president but my worry is that it will be Ivanka.
1
American politics has always been about disinformation: the anti-Communist hysteria of the fifties, the Vietnam war of the sixties and seventies, ballistic missile defense in the eighties, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, you name it.
Americans don’t care. They don’t even vote most of the time (as anyone involved in a school board election can readily attest). They simply go along with what they are told. As Goethe observed, there are none so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe that they are free.
The problem here is not disinformation. We’re already swamped in disinformation. The real problem lies in people’s willingness to accept what they are told, and their corresponding eagerness to latch onto conspiracy theories and political charlatans.
7
@Global Charm If “disinformation “ kept us from communism then “disinformation” appears to be a positive and useful tool.
1
Start with writing an amendment to repeal the Citizens' United decision, where all the money comes from to begin with.
7
@JD
Yes, because there was no corporate money in American politics before Citizen's United.
I tell you what, I will agree that Citizen's United needs to go, if you agree that all organizations (labor unions, dark money billionaires, non-profit organizations, newspapers, etc.) are also not allowed to in any way shape or form to give any support or endorsement to any candidate. Having worked for a number of Democratic campaigns in Texas back in the 1980s, I can assure you that there was plenty of organized union support for campaigns, both in money and people to knock on doors and put up signs.
Why do you have an issue with Citizens United if the top money support to campaigns all come from unions? How much money does Planned Parenthood give to Democratic candidates as opposed to Republican ones? Why should any organization, no matter their status, be allowed to give money?
1
Democrats have nobody in the current lineup who can beat Trump. I know it's depressing, but we can take both Houses of Congress instead.
@M. G. Hate to burst your bubble but the house, senate and SCOTUS will remain Trumps till at least 2024.
He rightfully deserves it. He has done more in 3 years then Obama did in 8 and Obama had the media in his back pocket.
1
@RS Yeah Trump's done more - to ruin the country forever.
The only thing worth knowing about the information in the whole social media information network is that it is all biased, partisan and opinion. Once you know that you can either read this stuff for entertainment or make you life easier by not tuning in to it at all.
3
THE fight for democracy,
is what this election has become.
Time to take it to the streets, to stand out in the open.
Speak, let our voices be heard.
Vote down the autocrats and denialists...
Bring back honor and put value back into the principles of a free, and transparent, nation. We are the leaders of civil society,
and this is the election to prove it...Protect the VOTE.
Activate. Because truth matters.
4
I love the rhetoric from the left. A disgusting attack on an election...a free and fair election...something they've done EVERY time they've lost since 2000. Note that it has spread around the world...we see losers every where questioning the legitimacy of an election when the lose. We can thank the democrats for this undermining of the election process all around the globe.
3
Those same lefty tools were available for the right to question 2 Obama victories.
Democratic Field is a disaster with no one able to become a clear Nominee there is no need for any other country or group to try to interfere with our election. Democrats are doing that all on their own. They are their own worst enemies, and quickly becoming the worst enemy of all Americans. I am more afraid of the Left today than I have ever been of Russia. Putin has been in control of 7000 nuclear warheads for about 20 years and the world still stands. If the radical left held that power for the same period we would all be in a Nuclear Winter right now.
1
Ms. Nossel,
As you know, the Republican Party which abhors democracy, no longer sees Russia as the Evil Empire, but the not so bad, corrupt abetter of a permanent Republican government.
The party of voter suppression, voter disenfranchisement, voter intimidation, welcomes any and all help from outside sources (see Rudy G's confession in the NYT), as long as the helped is Republican.
1
Imagine they don’t want witnesses at the impeachment trial who might reflect poorly on trump. Well, I guess that’s the new American way.
1
Simple answer to the question asked by the headline: because those who won in 2016 are in power.
1
I'm way more worried about Google and Facebook's known ability to swing 10's of Millions of votes than I care at all about Russia. If you care about Russia, most people think you don't think.
4
It looks like it can only get worse.
1
This article is nonsensical. If people want change they vote for it. In NYS, voters were sick of GOP obstruction of the Dem agenda, so they voted the GOP, and their Dem allies, out of office. Here's the thing: if your life is worse under Trump then no amount of advertising or nefarious Russian misinformation campaigns will stop you from voting Dem. And, if your life is better under Trump, then you vote to reelect Trump. (That's where I fall as a former Hillary supporter.) The real problem is that the more liberal you are the less likely you are to vote. Yes, in some states it's made more difficult, but it's not impossible. Heck, former slaves went out to vote under threat of lynching. If you want to vote you'll vote. it's called personal responsibility.
5
Did it ever dawn on anyone that when Hillary left the State Dept after the Benghazi debacle and took my months off from public view, this was on the back of many voters’ minds if she has the stamina for the Presidency without taking months off?
2
For a moment I though this would be bout the anti-democratic shenanigans of the DNC in the last election.
7
Fool us? No, not “us”
Fool the electors? Yes.
What makes you think that the electors are not subject to bribery or intimidation?
"Campaigns and political parties need to be on high alert to these tactics" - I think they, and others, have gone to school on the Russians' success and are figuring out how to apply these tactics to their own advantage. It's just a question of who does it best. We need to fight these efforts, but it's hard to see how to do so effectively. Social media is so effective at targeting peoples' biases and business models they operate on provide no incentive to clean things up.
The biggest "tell" to me re Trump's complicity or lack of concern in Russian meddling has been his failure to take any active leadership role in explaining the hazard to our nation and why it must be stopped. Instead, since he first assumed office, he has minimized the significance of the nation's intelligence service reports and in fact tried to give credence to Putin's specious denials. I remember when President Kennedy called the nation to action to counter the Russians' start of the space race. He alerted us to the significance of the problem and brought us together for a concerted action. Trump's failure to act is outrageous and in my view relevant to why he should be impeached.
1
It's a challenge. The media in general continues to report on what Donald Trump says or tweets, because he's the President - and we're all operating under the long-standing 'rule' that when a President speaks, it's news.
However, most of it is either misinformation, outright lies, or internet troll gibberish. He and the GOP are taking advantage of all of us here. We're helping to spread their misinformation. From climate change, to congress given' ability to investigate the President, and to 2016 election interference - there is only one set of facts.
Of course we're not ready. We're more vulnerable than ever before because we're not only combating disinformation, our president, his supporters in Congress and one of our major political parties are actually spreading it.
400
@David H
And your comment is a perfect representation of the reflexive both-siderism that has helped normalize right-wing extremism.
58
@David H Except Pelosi passed several bills on election security, and McConnell blocked them.
78
@David H Here is where I would depart. Donald Trump has materially weakened the standing of NATO. He has meddled with the unity of Europe.
Trump has increased Russian influence in the Middle East. Even to the point of abandoning allies in the worst possible way. In fact, his actions could very well complicate the security situation for Israel.
Trump has basically blessed an offensive war by Russia against Ukraine and was willing to meddle with Ukrainian security, and that of your allies, to benefit his election prospects.
Trump will say that he goes along with Russian sanctions, but it has been kicking and screaming the whole way.
Frankly, I cannot think of a way that an actual FSB agent in the White House would have done a better job of strengthening Putin's hand. So, why wouldn't the Russians want to see how much they can get? They have gained a lot and the cost has been nothing. And the GOP has sat backed and watched it all and appear willing to go to any lengths to protect him.
35
Until social media companies put truth above profitability, we are all going to pay the price for disinformation.
276
@LHW
The problem is that those who want Facebook & others to police their content believe they are publishers and therefore responsible for content. Facebook & Twitter & others believe they are public utilities. They just provide the means for communication. The phone company is not responsible for the phoned in bomb threat.
5
@LHW The problem predates social media, e.g., Fox News has been around longer.
10
@Donna false equivalencies are just that. Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter are much more than a phone company ever imagined to be. And, yes, even Ma Bell got reigned in, albeit for monopolization, which could also apply to the media giants. But the greater issue is the reach of these giants and the nature of that reach and the on-going abuse due to lack of regulation. If you don't understand that then you probably feel that smoke signals are comparable to the telephone ... the relative effectiveness applies to comparing the telephone to social media giants.
6
First, people have to believe that it's more important to know the facts than to have their prejudices and preconceptions confirmed. Then teaching them the techniques for identifying reliable and unreliable sources of information will pay off.
Growing up, I was taught that I should avoid books and people who might threaten my faith, and that is was a virtue to believe certain things despite the lack of evidence or contrary to the evidence. The simple faith of an uneducated peasant was held up as a model of holiness. That kind of conditioning makes one easy prey for the Trumps of this world.
25
Stop letting other sources telling you what to think. Stop being lazy and do the research before you "share" anything. Stop reading op-ed pieces, they're just that. Someone's opinion for a source that get advertising revenues for clicks. Start being pro-active in life. "I'm too tired from a long day at the office" is a laughable excuse. I am an immigrant to the States from (then) communist Romania, which used 100% propaganda for everything. People knew exactly what the government did, re: misinformation. We found other sources (RFE, Voice of America, BBC via "illegal" ways) for info. We WORKED to get our info. Americans, it seems, are "too tired." IF so, watch all their liberties quickly erode.
3
The important thing is that the Russian interference in 2016 happened on Obama's watch. He saw it and chose to do nothing of substance, since he thought Hillary was winning.
In 2018 under Trump there were strong, though not openly touted countermeasures. That is why there was no Russian interference. Also note that although Republicans lost the House, they did not do the kind of elections fuss that the Democrats did and continue to do after 2016.
Therefore, as 2018 vs 2016 proves, as long as Trump is in charge, our elections are safe.
1
@novoad Republicans did fuss in 2018. Look at NC and a few other places. At least impeachment is constitutional.
@RamS
A recount is normal, in case of tight results.
Going Democratic style would be to call the 2018 elections illegitimate, all the way till 2020. Or till the cows come home.
Which the Republicans, much to their honor, did not do.
Disinformation can be dealt with fairly easily , but it requires a bit of inquiry by the voter. Which is to say, disinformation will remain a huge problem for the good guys. What IS a huge problem which can’t be ameliorated, period, is the disenfranchisement of previously enabled voters by court-sanctioned purging of voter registration. Minorities are most affected by this maneuver. Gerrymandering is another technique. And there are basic dirty tricks of making registration difficult and voting, itself, intimidating.
By next November Russians may well have more say in our elections than the entire minority population of OUR country.
I'm not saying I have a better idea, but:
I'm concerned about the concept of a mechanism to label misinformation as such (implying that anything without this label is legit).
First and foremost, where do you draw the line? There are many shades of gray - things are rarely a binary 'True' vs. 'False'. For instance, you could have a false premise while still remaining factually correct.
Also, who would wield the power of the 'rubber stamp'? How do we ensure this is also not abused?
1
It’s important that the candidates put the national interests before their ambitions.
Hillary Clinton and Jeremy Corbyn both failed to see that they were running against a strong headwind, in terms of their electability.
And that is the generous analysis. The non-generous analysis is that they did see, but just didn’t care.
The nation is in danger. It is the time to care.
2
> Why aren’t we preparing for the next one? <
I can't stand rhetorical questions that *everyone* knows the answer to, and *nobody* wants to answer aloud. We aren't preparing for the next one because of REPUBLICANS.
51
@Bill Camarda
Dear Bill,
As a registered Democrat who voted Third Party in 2016, I respectfully have to disagree with you.
First of all both major political parties are just different sides of the same coin with the exception of some so-called 'hot button issues'!
The so-called moderates of the Democratic Party aren't really interested in President Trump's guilt so much as some other more Liberal Opponent running against them in the primary! The same is true and was true in Sen. Spector's case in the Republican side when now Sen. Toomey ran against him. Funny that now Sen. Toomey is considered a Moderate even by Liberals!
The Democrats are fixated on getting President Trump, and have either forgotten we need them to keep their eye on the election, and not President Trump. Ever since the Democrats gave former President Bill Clinton a 'Free Pass' do you really believe that the Republican Senate won't do the same!
2
@Dennis I respectfully disagree on each point.
1. Democrats didn't cover themselves with glory during Clinton's impeachment, but they were at least prepared to censure him. Republicans claim that Trump not only did nothing wrong, but that all his lies about Ukraine are the truth. It's as if Democrats would've said it was Clinton's OBLIGATION to have sex with an intern.
2. Democrats are far from perfect, but 15,000+ Americans are already dead because Republicans refused to expand Medicaid in their states. That's a whole lot of families in mourning because some folks can't tell the difference between the parties.
Democrats won't do enough about climate change, but they wouldn't have spent the last 3 years protecting coal, revoking gas efficiency improvements, and eliminating rules to limit methane emissions. It's the difference between a very bad climate change outcome and a horrible one.
Democrats won't do enough to protect us against global banks, but they created a strong Consumer Financial Protection Board; Republicans destroyed it. Democrats nominate judges who protect a woman's right to choose, Republicans do the opposite.
How many more hot button issues should I mention? Corporate tax cuts? LGBTQ rights? Net neutrality? For-profit higher-ed loan forgiveness? Shall I go on?
3. Toomey, the Club for Growth free-marketer who's furious because Democrats negotiated a few more worker protections into the new free trade agreement, is no Democrat's idea of a moderate.
3
@Dennis
Dude you're a registered Democrat who lives in Pennsylvania who voted third party in 2016 -- you're the reason Trump is President. So don't go lecturing the rest of us.
4
I do not believe that disinformation gets to the heart of what happened. I believe that the American people for the most part saw through much of that.
To be in politics (it seems to many of us) is to be accomplished in the art of lying. Bob, weave and duck the question and when cornered, spin the best you can. A business where a wealthy minority are rewarded and the majority are not.
Then along comes a guy who calls them on it. Both parties. Never mind that he is actually no different, what matters is that he sounds different and he is entertaining to watch. He knows that we know that he tells lies. He knows that we know that much of what he promises he will not deliver. Still there is an honesty to the dishonesty. Hillary we thought, was polished and smooth. Contrasted with Trump, who is coarse and rough, the voters picked the wolf in wolf's clothing.
7
@Canuck
Disinformation and toxic nationalism does get to the heart of the problem.
I work with Republicans. One of our accountants literally had no clue that the Mueller report specifically stated that it did not clear Trump.
Another Republican I work with literally had no clue that many of Trump’s department secretaries and staff have had to either resign amid ethics scandals or withdraw their names for consideration.
Republicans ONLY consume media from entities that confirm their previously held beliefs. They don’t read anything except for emails newsletters from Fox News or messages from their Republican friends who pull memes from Reddit and 4chan.
The majority of Republicans have honestly no clue what is going on in reality. They honestly believe that there is a Hydra style deep state conspiracy out to destroy their family’s lives. It’s a real fear they have. Because conservative media has told them thousands of times that its a fear they should have.
I’m not saying they’re innocent victims. It’s inexcusable how a grown up could abdicate their responsibility to seek out facts and truth. But it is a grave mistake to underestimate just how well disinformation has taken hold of the lives of millions of people. And it is literally millions of people.
4
Measures can be taken to overcome electoral misinformation. But ignorance, hate and bigotry—Trump’s main campaign themes—present a far greater challenge.
This is a good time to reflect on Kruschev’s “We will bury you” threat of 1956. Back then people thought he meant imminent nuclear war, but maybe he had a longer-term plan in mind. And now, with collaboration of our current administration, Putin is putting it to good use.
4
It's all so obvious - elected leaders don't want to address this issue because like 2016, disinformation further supports them to be likely re-elected. You think Trump or McConnell wants to sabotage a good thing with Russian interference? As for Social Media companies, the more activity on their platforms means more money for them. There are only a few ways out of this mess - vote, boycott and protest. When it comes to the 2020 election, if people sit back because of disgust and fail to VOTE, they get what they deserve.
8
Adam Schiff, top Democrats, and the entire mainstream media and all of PEN leadership have told us for 3 years they had proof of collusion between Trump and Russia, which at the end of the Mueller report, was all but absent. The left is as guilty of disinformation and media manipulation as anybody else. Comey claimed that the FISA warrants against the Trump campaign had been 100 percent above board and the IG report showed they were not. Chris Wallace caught him lying Sunday by simply juxtaposing Comey's own soundbites in the past with the findings of the IG report. The US has bee guilty of meddling in all the foreign elections it could, including in Russia and Ukraine. So all this righteous outrage should be kept real.
10
Perhaps the question should be, why are Republicans across the nation hindering efforts to prepare for the next election?
19
@padgman1 Nope, I don't buy this. Republicans and rightwing-promoting opinion outlets (Fox News, Sinclair, Breitbart, etc.) promote the idea that all news is ideologically biased because once some people started waking up to the fact that these rightwing outlets aren't providing actual journalistic reporting, their defense has been to to spread the lie that no one is. When people buy into this, it benefits them in two ways: 1) it gives them cover to keep doing what they're doing, and 2) even more insidiously, it erodes public belief in the press and undermines its function as a check to authoritarianism.
While no outlet or person is perfect and mistake free, there are outlets, including this one that you're reading, that go to great lengths to uphold journalistic standards and integrity in their news reporting.
I'd encourage anyone to read up on what those standards are if you're not sure -- it should give a fair amount of comfort and clarity on what you can expect from actual news outlets. I'd also encourage folks who feel uncertain to get clear about the difference between news and opinion and where to find each.
As someone who works in communications, I'm always surprised by the number of (professional, well-educated) adults I encounter who are unclear on or unaware of the difference between what's published on the editorial pages v. news pages. And that the standards for someone who is a talk radio host v. a reporter from a reputable outlet are extremely different.
23
While the article contains good suggestions, the real challenge will be to disincentivize the use of lies to game the political system. Need a carrot and stick: damage those that lie, while promoting truthtellers. But taking measures that come back to the players after lies are exposed, are after the damage has been done and truthtellers have left the stage.
In July 2019 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended his decision to block an election security bill and lashed out at critics in the press who had disparaged him as a Russian asset and who had sought to bring such measures to the Senate floor.
“The outrage industrial complex doesn’t let a little thing like reality get in their way,” said McConnell. “They (his opponents) saw the perfect opportunity to distort and tell lies and fuel the flames of partisan hatred, and so they did.”
McConnell was responding to an opinion column which described how Republicans, including McConnell, had blocked bills designed to counter cyberattacks by Russians or other foreign agents, against U.S. elections.
With elected officials like Mitch in power, what can possibly be done to curb misinformation campaigns in 2020? They are complicit in their refusal to do so compounding the danger of preserving our fair and free elections. It is not just a question of spreading lies on social media platforms and the Internet.
28
Ms. Nostrell, talk is cheap. I have been a member of PEN for almost a decade. PEN is supposed to be a champion of the freedom of speech, but it is only a champion of the freedom of speech as long as it toes the line of the Democratic party. You better look inside your own organization and analyze how do you defend and support the freedom of speech for Americans and writers whose views you disagree with, conservatives, independents, Republicans, and Trump supporters. For us, you (PEN) are as repressive as China against the dissidents that you want us writers to sent letters do over Christmas.
13
Just ponder the fact that if our democracy is undermined to destruction by false hoods propagated on social media, our next government could easily be authoritarian, while squashing all dissent. There would no longer be social media. Hmm. Interesting prospect since we do nothing to curb the dangers of social media.
1
When the party in power values remaining in power more than the system it purports to govern, you see what we are seeing. I am not confident that even if that party should lose in the Electoral College that it will stand down. And all it takes is one more seat on SCOTUS to seal the doom of the Constitution.
2
Nothing is being done because Republicans have disinformation working in their favor and they don't want to lose that advantage for 2020.
37
First it was Russian Collusion.
Then fake news.
Ukraine.
Now pundits are blaming US citizens exercising their right to vote for the candidate of their choice...
1
I'm sorry, but this veiled attempt to be objective just doesn't cut it. The mainstream media - has been downright horrible in being objective in the coverage of politics over the last 3 years. While Trump may be a loathsome individual, the coverage of the Mueller Report - and the debacle of evidence gathered under the current impeachment process has been the worst I have seen in my long life. Yes - call out Trump - but you can't throw away democracy and objective reporting simply because you don't like someone.
A very large issue facing all western democracy is the outrageous bias in the media against parties that believe in personal responsibility, who believe in equality of opportunities, and who value free speech. These may have been the hallmarks of the 1960s human rights movements - but today, the media refer to these as right wing policies and values. Call me old fashion, but I believe in equality, free speech, and as JFK said - think not what your country can do for you, think of what you can do for your country.
14
@Randy please, you’re absolutely wrong. Free speech doesn’t mean support lie after lie. Trumps lies have totaled roughly 11,000 since taking office and 4,987,987,888 prior to taking office.
You want the media to play nice? Get real. Newspapers have been digging into trumps present and past, and it’s not a pretty picture. More than a dozen of his backers are either indicted or in prison. Just the kind of guy I want as president.
15
@DavidJ So the ends justify the means?
Great, thanks for summing up the destructive philosophy of both Democrats and their allies in much of the press.
Why don't Democrats try to get Trump on substantive policies and not charges made up by a british spy? Simple. Because there is no substance to the Democratic Party lately.
3
@Randy Would you say our president embodies the three good things you mention - personal responsibility, a belief in equal opportunity and free speech?
5
There are far too many constituencies that receive value from disinformation, ranging from corporations to politicians. One underlying problem is the terrible ignorance of too much of our population, partially the result of terrible schools in high poverty areas, coupled with poor nutrition, etc. The people of this country will, eventually, reap the consequences of their ignorance or they will revolt against the wealthy. Fortunately, I won't live long enough to see the demise of the country I love.
4
@RML
A quick glance at the US education system will reveal why why are so dumb. Kids that need a "special safe place" from ideas they don't like, to the LA school district in which >90 languages are spoken, to test scores that show we really are dumber than we used to be, to teachers that are barely able to get out of the class room without being assaulted each day, to nonexistent parents, to neighborhoods where getting to school alive is a gamble everyday. If you don't get the basics before you finish HS, you aren't going to get it later.
1
"Dozens of pieces of legislation aimed to safeguard our elections have stalled"
Well, who did this? Why the passive construction?
15
Hopefully, Americans are more engaged in our democracy at every level - that seems the only real solution. People have gotten so busy they seem to think democracy just "happens." But no, it takes work. People need to be involved, there's no other way. If we can't get ourselves off the couch to be involved, then we will get some form of government that takes advantage of such lethargy, in many ways we already have it. Engaged people are the best antidote to mis and disinformation. We all need to be "that guy"/"that lady" at the city council meeting with the collage of pictures of cracked sidewalks or weedy patches at the park, etc., badgering the department manager or commissioner to stop making excuses, kids are getting hurt, etc. "That guy" or "That lady" is who we need now. A little crazy, sure, but it usually takes a mad person to take down a tyrant.
With the majority party benefiting from the disinformation campaign and foreign influence it is clear why the Senate and WhiteHouse are not moving legislation to protect our elections. Republicans have been in favor of voter suppression and as the impeachment battle shows they don’t believe foreign influence on our elections is a high crime.
22
This article about the power of disinformation influencing the (American) public boils down to 2 questions:
Who do we trust to provide us with accurate information (in order to form a cogent opinion)?
What policies should be enacted, if any, across all media forms to identify and discredit disinformation ( so that a cogent opinion can be formed without "malicious" external bias)?
Unfortunately, the answer to the first question, in this day and age, has been obfuscated by biased media outlets on all sides. "Just the facts, ma'am" doesn't cut it anymore as those facts are accompanied by arguments twisted by all sides to convince, not persuade, their audience that our side's views are the correct interpretation and all other viewpoints are wrong, if not "fake."
Without an answer to the first question, the second question cannot be adjudicated as there is no basis, no standard on which to determine what is disinformation or not.
2
There are plenty of steps that can be taken to prevent the spread of voter-targeted disinformation. Unfortunately, little if anything can be done to prevent voter ignorance, gullibility or plain disinterest.
14
It is important to remember that the Republican Party now thrives on misinformation and is dependent on it. Losing trust in the electoral process helps the Republicans because their presumed presidential candidate will be an authoritarian. So protecting the electoral process is a partisan issue in that it helps the Democratic Party, the one major party that supports democracy. In addition to trying to combat misinformation it will be important to combat voter suppression, a favorite tactic of Republicans to prevent people who are likely to vote Democratic from voting. Trump probably won Wisconsin because of that state's voter ID law which prevented a couple of hundred thousand people from voting, and a half lived in Milwaukee. That law still exists which keeps Wisconsin being a swing state rather than a blue state, which is what it would be without the ID voter law. In Florida the Republicans have made it impossible for hundreds of thousands of former felons to vote even though a referendum was passed to allow them to vote. The only way someone like Trump could possibly win an election in the US is through misinformation and voter suppression and the better the Democrats can combat that the more likely it is they will win.
21
There are plenty of steps that can never taken to prevent the spread of voter-targeted disinformation. Unfortunately, little if anything can be done to prevent voter ignorance, gullibility or plain disinterest.
3
It's hard to get worked up about election interference when money is equivalent to free speech and so much of our elections are controlled by Super PACs and dark money. Whose interests are we fighting for? Whether Russia or the 1% control Congress matters not a whit to me. I'll never have a voice in this system.
8
Clearly, the Twitter-in-Chief has employed these social media techniques to great effect. For the principle of the First Amendment, I would never suggest that his Twitter Account be suspended. That acknowledged the dissemination of information is moving at warp speed and there have to be effective measures to create a immune system to detect and reveal the pathogenic memes.
2
I imagine that Ms. Nossel's questions are purely rhetorical. It seems plain from what she writes that she knows that Republicans don't want to admit that such interference as there was in 2016 overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump, and that they believe that interference in 2020 again strongly will favor him and other Republicans. If they were sincere in the belief that the supposed Ukrainian interference (a nonsensical idea at its core, unless you're a Russian disinformation agent) took place in 2016, they'd want to strengthen our system for 2020 so that the evil Ukrainians wouldn't put a diabolical Democrat in the White House. The actions of Republican politicians are fully consistent with a willingness to accept whatever they expect to happen. As for the danger to democracy, we've seen various Republicans insisting over the last few years that the United States isn't a democracy, it's a republic (which, of course, can be an oligarchy by design). There's more to this statement that a preference for the word that sounds more like "Republican" over the word that sounds more like "Democrat".
7
With all due respect and prejudice towards none, I find it very inconsistent that Americans are getting up in arms about President Trump but are giving Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden free passes.
3
@Lawrence Chanin
"....giving Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden free passes."
Those administrations are out of office and their previous policies are subject to adjustments now. They are history, beyond our reach.
The current administration is the only entity we have any say in - they are the current executors of our country's policy and the only people who can respond to the public's petitions.
They are choosing to respond to and support the desires of a small slice of the American public. The bigger slice has a lot to say about these national issues, and presenting rational arguments and overwhelming, vetted data doesn't seem to affect this administrations actions.
So the bigger slice of the American population is resolutely up in arms.
4
@Lawrence Chanin
Excuse me, were you actually here, or at least following the news, during both of those administrations? Neither got "free passess."
And stop with the false equivalences. The iniquities of all former administrations pale in comparison to the current Trump and his mob.
2
@Lawrence Chanin Trump's boorish behavior puts him in a category that heretofore never existed. While I detested Bush-Cheney and revered Obama-Biden, I give them all credit for maintaining the facade of dignity and respect for the offices they held (though in Obama's case I do not consider his demeanor a facade). We who care about how America looks to the rest of the world are indeed up in arms. We have a criminal in the White House and he will remain there for as long as he wants. Anyone not up in arms is part of the problem.
2
To say, "fool us once shame on you" serves only to try to excuse the inexcusable. Donald trump has carried a large sign on his back for his whole life that proclaimed his self given right to cheat every time he thought he could get away with it and he has cheated every fool who decided that rubbing elbows with some terminally boring rich guy was going to be the high point of their life. He has often been protected from the consequences of his cheating because people hate being wrong more than they hate being cheated. They are willing to go to their graves all the while knowing they have been swindled whether they be swindled in their vote, in their pocketbook or both but it's a rare one of them that will admit it. For many who have been taken they will go on to devote their entire life to accepting and proclaiming Trumps "genius".
While I never watched a single episode of The Apprentice I have read that Trump was only on screen for a small stretch of each episode. If true this makes perfect sense since he can't even lie in an interesting way.
4
As pointed out by others, American based disinformation is turning out to be far more of a problem than what the Russians did in 2016. That being the case, we are our own problem.
I am not letting Russia off the hook at all, Putin and his people are a true danger to the globe, let alone the U.S. But we have an enemy within and it is us, (or some of us, that is). Political operatives, campaign staffs, and idealogical fanatics, (both sides, but to me, the GOP is far worse and the real purveyor of trash politics), do everything they can for their candidates to win and it is simply now beyond a lot of voters ability to fact check everything that comes their way.
8
@David
You make good points. What I find incredible is that there are sources of facts and information out there. The problem is, people want to listen to the rants of Rachel Maddox and hannity or go to FB to get their info. That's opinion and very slanted opinion all with an agenda. The republicans lie and distort because it gets their people worked up. The democrats respond in kind. That's not democracy but it works and democrats need to take the high road, as hard as that sounds.
1
Playing off the ideological divisions of a polarized electorate will merrily continue because the citizenry of this country --disconnected, passive, spoiled, entitled and politically lazy -- no longer feel the slightest sense of obligation or responsibility toward their country and its governance.
The truth is out there. The lies are often stunningly, embarrassingly obvious. Even most "Deep Fakes" require the willing suspension of disbelief and a giddy admiration for the technology that gives rise to them. But so long as voters choose to be audience members instead of passionate citizens, they will continue to be distracted by any shiny object; and happily hoodwinked. Isn't that the general idea of a magic show?
7
Break up the FAANG,s they are a carbon copy of the trusts that ruled America at the turn of the twentieth century.
2
@Willl W
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (FAANG)
1
Oh, my, and an asteroid may crash into the earth, destroying life as we know it. And, indeed, the sky is falling! “Disinformation” is definitely the new buzzword. It’s amazing to me that Hillary’s failure to get elected — when the Democrats were so certain they had 2016 in the bag — has spurred a new industry called disinformation, as though political campaigns over the past 200 years haven’t been rife with lies and slanders and every other kind of underhanded manipulation of the media! C’mon folks, do you take the American electorate to be a bunch of damn fools? Perhaps Hillary’s denigration of Trump’s millions of supporters is indicative of how the Dems view us poor electors. This particular writer thinks there should be stronger censorship. If you want demagoguery, then go for that. In the meantime, I’ll settle for the vast and often conflicting marketplace of ideas that marks a vibrant democracy. The difference today is this marketplace of ideas is no longer controlled exclusively by those who think they know what’s best for us, but rather is open to the voice of every citizen. And I guess for some people this is very disturbing.
8
@Joe Gagen I invite you to google "National Enquirer Summer 2016 Covers," and look at all the disinformation, exclusively targeting Hillary Clinton, with false news stories. Compare that with David Pecker's "catch and kill" campaign to find and bury TRUTHFUL stories about Donald Trump's mistress-payouts.
1
Spot on comment! There nanny state Dems think the only reason anyone voted for Trump was because they were manipulated by Russian Facebook ads. what hogwash. Well they'll be commiserating with Jeremy Corbyn and the UK Labour party about all the lies that kept them out of power in less than a years time.
1
We ignore what needs to be done for the next election at our peril. Should we remain complacent, thuggish Trump may re-assault the presidency in 2020 (with Putin's faithful assistance), to everybody's loss, as he shall complete the destruction of this suffering democracy.
4
This isn’t hard. Quit kowtowing to the mob on Twitter, and win back the people who rejected you last election. On second thought, rereading this article, that may be harder for you than I thought!
2
Supporting more access to education at all levels couldn't hurt.
14
"Now, a social media analysis firm, Graphika, has traced those posts to a Russian disinformation campaign — in the first evidence that a network of accounts involved in spreading disinformation before the 2016 election also participated in circulating the false claims about Yovanovitch that led earlier this year to her recall from the U.S. embassy in Kyiv."
From the WAPO.
It continues. Thanks Mitch.
4
Fool someone 13,000 times, you're a Trump supporter.
4
@koobface
Dear koobface,
Remember the words "I did not have sex with that woman!" and the lies & farce that followed!
2
Suzanne Nossel wrote: "With the immense power [...] comes great responsibility."
^ This is a truly beautiful and inspirational quote. I shed tears as I read it. I commend Ms. Nossel for originating such a sentiment. Someone should edit her Wikipedia article to include this beautiful sentence and credit her as its author.
But—wait a minute—have we perhaps encountered this profound statement somewhere before? Could it be that Ms. Nossel purloined this quote from a philosopher? Perhaps.
But who said this profound quote? Was it Martin Luther King? No. Aristotle? No. Plato? Shakespeare? No.
In fact—as every English professor knows—this quote has an amazing provenance. It was purportedly first said in 2002 by Benjamin F. Parker of Brooklyn, New York. Ben was a former World War II veteran who married his high school sweetheart, May Reilly. The couple couldn't have children. But, when Ben's brother Richard Parker and his wife Mary were killed in a plane crash, Ben and May took in their orphaned son Peter Parker and raised him as their own.
Later, Benjamin Parker — or "Uncle Ben" as we known in the neighborhood — was killed in a burglary attempt. His family mourned him, but they never forgot Uncle Ben's Brooklyn wisdom: "With great power comes great responsibility."
Uncle Ben would be so proud to know that his words have now appeared on the front page of The New York Times. Thank you, Ms. Nossel, for continuing Uncle Ben's legacy.
1
@Sándor : it was not 2002 -- more like 1975 or earlier -- and from SPIDERMAN (Peter Parker!) and written by Stan Lee.
It’s interesting that in every single country when the Conservative party has won, the media, online social websites, and foreign interference have been blamed.
The exact same reasons are cited on the other side of the world as in the US. Now I voted for Hillary and have been a dem based on my value set but I cringe at the media’s insinuation that voters are just dumb sheep who must be lead down the correct path. People are lashing out all over the world.
Maybe voters aren’t stupid and weren’t fooled. There seems to be a world-wide trend of rejecting globalism and mass migration. Maybe there was too much migration too quickly in Europe. I don’t know.
5
Same old pathetic song every election cycle. So we go into this election season knowing that Republicans will cheat in any way they can.
Starting with the time tested strategies of too few voting sites,
Precincts are understaffed, out of ballots, machines malfunction, GOP hacking, and so on.
Sorry minority voters, every time we face this republican rot and do nothing about it. And apparently neither did you.
I think the NYTs should lead the charge and it can start by chronicling Stacy Abrams work in Georgia.
4
Somebody tell Mitch McConnell to do his job and work up one of the election security bills before it is too late.
6
@Gone Coastal Mitch is in the bag for the Russians. Let that scare you.
3
Nossel’s implication that “mainstream media companies” do not have policies in place for handling potentially inaccurate claims is ludicrous - if one excludes , perhaps supermarket tabloids and Internet conduits for uncontrolled info from the mix - along with Fox News, which was founded on the lie that other American newspapers and TV operations, all in the hands of business owners, most by Fortune 500 business owners is somehow in the hands of some silent hidden cabal of radical leftists.
If she had thought to contact any large or even medium city newsroom, and asked, she would have probably been handed a copy of the official guidelines relating to such matters.
The most recent campaign was moved by companies neither fish nor fowl: the Web one-to-many “social media” which allows anyone to claim anything, without effective control.
If there were any, the president would be holding news conferences and addressing the entire public, not using Twitter and campaign rallies - where admission is controlled by tickets available only to rabid supporters.
Trump almost never addresses the public at large, either directly or through its financially elected representatives of the Fourth Estate.
One thing the press hasn’t established is how to deal with a man who - by careful analysis - lies directly or misleads with almost every statement, especially every “tweet” and has made a one-way contact system his method of forcing media attention. I have no answer for dealing with such evil.
5
A significant part of the Russian manipulation of the 2016 election was to divide the Democrats. Trolls worked hard to turn Bernie supporters against Clinton. I believe that in Michigan, where apparently about 80,000 Democrats actually showed up to vote but left the space for president blank because they were Bernie supporters, it was enough to give the state to Trump.
Let's hope that this time around, regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination, and regardless of whether there are third parties, anti-Trump voters stay laser-focused on beating him even if trolls try to make them cast a protest vote against the Dem candidate or not vote at all.
4
@MJ I didn't need a troll to make my decision on Clinton. She and the cheat'n DNC weasels did that all by themselves.
We're taking our eye off the ball. The excessive amount of attention being paid to impeachment is backfiring. Trump's polling numbers should be cratering. Instead, the opposite is happening. According to a new USA TODAY, Poll Trump now leads his Democratic rivals in his bid for a second term. The national survey, shows Trump defeating former Biden by 3%, Sanders by 5% & Warren by 8%. We shouldn't find this surprising. The public is exhausted with the day to day drama. A majority of Americans may support impeachment, at least until it interrupts their favorite TV programs. This sentiment was on full display two weeks ago when viewers took to social media to voice their frustration that CBS decided to preempt The Price is Right in favor of the continuing hearings. Fans were livid. Yes, there was a great discussion of the views of the Founders, but many people tuned out. They're shopping, cooking, & spending time with family. They're simply not interested in seeing this during the holiday season. Trump is at his best (in his mind) when he's fighting back & slinging mud. Impeachment hearings driven by activists have over-reached. It will be spun by Trump as a witch hunt to fair-minded voters. When impeachment fails in the Senate as everyone knows it will, Trump will again claim victory. He believes this debacle will facilitate his winning a 2nd term. We will be better served in focusing on the 2020 race. At the end of the day, that's alll that matters. Everything else is noise.
6
@Bill Brown
"Impeachment hearings driven by activists have over-reached. It will be spun by Trump as a witch hunt to fair-minded voters."
So what do you think - in a fair-minded way, of course?
Is a preempted t.v. show so important that having to watch our government function is such a painful assault on your own peace of mind?
3
@atutu You are preaching to the wrong person. All I'm saying is we need to get the impeachment hearing over as soon as possible. Trump's numbers have gone up not down since this began. Let's focus on the 2020 election, in the grand scheme of things that's all that matters.
Is it really that important?
It seems these days we are divided along the lines of either you’re for Trump or you’re not.
Are there that many voters who haven’t made up their minds and are so easily influenced by fake news who don’t tune in to any real news?
3
@Bronx Jon
It seems pretty easy: What's to like?
1
"The worst outcome of the 2020 election would be a scenario in which disinformation makes it impossible to know who really won."
...and there are many - both foreign and domestic - who want to keep it that way.
And they have more money.
6
@yeti00
It can't be even near: close enough to cheat means a Republican win.
1
The best way to soften the impact of disinformation campaigns is to eliminate the Electoral College and convert to a direct popular vote. Hillary Clinton was the clear winner in 2016. She should be president.
It's pretty hard to fool 130 million voters each with equal say as to who should be president. It's not so hard to sway a few thousand voters sitting on the fence in 5 or 6 swing states. I'm afraid we're going to see a repeat of 2016 in 2020.
Of course, this is impossible since the Republicans run the show and are likely to remain in power. But it's one example of solving the problem by thinking outside the box. Maybe there's another that might save us in time for 2020.
7
@hark The barriers to make an amendment to the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College are very high. BUT, voters in each state can influence their legislators to pass the National Popular Vote bill. https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
1
The problem is real but right now we are tilting at windmills.
We need a culture that values education and teaches young people at the start how to discern fact from fiction. We glorify fantasy and escapism right from the beginning of childhood and what we have right now is the payoff.
We need less Magic Kingdom and more Mr. Rodgers in our homes and then people will get it.
3
Indeed, the last sentence of this article is descriptive of the outcome if Trump loses. He said in 2016 that he would not accept the outcome of the election unless he wins. He never admits he is wrong, and never admits it when he loses, so he certainly will follow this pattern. We should be ready for Trump's attempt at a very real digital based coup in 2020.
4
@JD
And don't forget the 2nd Amendment Militia.
1
We're about 25 years into the internet age. I figure it'll be another 25 before we have general rules of the road worked out. The leverage of instant access to information is to our minds similar to what the steam engine did for our ability to perform physical work. But this is such a powerful tool we are not able to see all of its benefits and pitfalls at once. Hence my 50 year estimate. What is needed are trusted, verifiable sources of information that the majority of people will know to turn to. We have these sources, although most are legacies of the print age and are largely withering on the vine, with a few notable exceptions. What we are missing is the economic model for news sources to flourish and be robust, and the social model where most people trust and know to turn to them. It feels like we are currently in a trial by fire on this and the outcome is uncertain. It may be a hard lesson. I like to think we humans are up to it. There are an awful lot of crises that seem to be coming to a head lately. Do we have the collective intelligence and will to decisively step into a workable future for our planet and society? Stay tuned folks, its going to be an interesting ride.
2
As important as any of the measures outlined in the article, it is equally important that the American electorate learn to think (for themselves).
They should not rely on Facebook, Twitter, memes or one-sided talking head "news" coverage for their information. Listen to the news from a wide variety of sources. If you like MSNBC, watch FOX for a couple of hours and vice-versa. Folks need to get out of their partisan bubbles if they are ever going to get to any semblance of the truth.
16
@SuLee Please don't forget PBS & NPR.
4
@dede.heath
Yeah, they should be encouraged at every turn, even if they are luke-warm and inclined to get caught up in "He said, She said." They should also be funded in the interest of an informed electorate.
1
@dede.heath
Yeah, they should be encouraged at every turn, even if they are luke-warm and inclined to get caught up in "He said, She said."
Disinformation did not play an important role in the 2016 election.
Wikileaks’ publications of hacked DNC email wasn’t disinformation. It was a whistleblowing event that revealed the DNC was stacking the deck against Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton. It forced the resignation of the DNC cochairman, but Hillary won the Democratic nomination anyway.
Ukraine’s release of the “Black Ledger was not disinformation. It revealed that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had accepted unreported payments from a Ukrainian political party and led to his conviction on money laundering and tax evasion charges. But Trump won the election anyway.
The Clinton campaign and DNC commissioned the Steele Dossier, which turned out to be disinformation, but Trump won the election easy way.
Concord Management’s paltry social media efforts was buried under billions of fake AOL post, tweets and instagrams.
9
To answer your question simply , the problem is not being addressed because Trump has succeeded in convincing Americans that there is no problem.
6
If you think it through, the Russians could have had any one of three objectives during 2016:
--get Trump elected by undermining HRC
--elect any Republican, defeat HRC
--simply discredit whoever won.
I present those three objectives in inverse order of likelihood. It's possible the Russians favored Trump, but that isn't a crime. However, they had no idea what he might do once elected --- he was an unknown quantity running for a party that traditionally has been hawkish toward Russia.
It is widely believed that Putin didn't like HRC due to some things she did as SofS. So it is quite possible that he might have interfered to hurt HRC.
However, strategically, isn't it more likely that discrediting the next president, whoever won, was the most desirable outcome? Hence, hack the DNC, hence, plant the Steele dossier.
Yes, anything could happen in an election, and the source could be external or internal. But the problem with the 2016 election isn't that Russia influenced the outcome (they didn't), the problem is that the dems have refused to accept the results. Putin could have never hoped for such an outcome. The MSM undermining everything Trump does, the false Russia-collusion narrative. Divisiveness increased, capped off by a partisan impeachment process in the House.
1
@Ralphie Blow all the hot air you like. The selective picking of facts doesn't prove anything. The overall pattern has been documented by professionals and they disagree with you.
1
@OldMoldy really? Citations please. And if you cite Brennan, Clapper, Comey -- don't make laugh. That was a pure political document designed to hurt Trump. They presented no evidence that Putin directed his hackers to help elect Trump (v defeat HRC, a huge difference). I also refer you to this op ed piece from the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-job-for-adam-schiff-11576540574?mod=opinion_lead_pos8
Computers are the arbiters of our lives. We use them for commerce, for education, and for communication. In many cases, it is social media that connects us with the vast cyber community that exists within virtual reality. People spend the better part of their days chatting with faceless, nameless people and very often become influenced by their cyber friends. If we don’t know who is providing us with information, then how can we believe the info? This is the gist of disinformation and, unfortunately, people are taken in by it daily. So it seems that our problem is not within our stars but within ourselves, as Shakespeare so eloquently opined. What we need to realize is that if something doesn’t seem right then it probably isn’t. Going into the next election we will need information and direction not from cyberspace but from physical reality. And what’s the probability of that happening?
It's already too late. The media (right and left) are pushing agendas without regard to facts. Each side believes the other is, to borrow a word, 'deplorable'. People are hooked on social media, it is an addictive drug, where they follow and read only items that they agree with and ignore the 'other side'. Blue vs Gray was a very dark time in this country. Will Blue vs Red be the end of the "United" States?
1
We'd be blind if we were looking just at Russia, or just at Republicans targeting Democrats.
We should have noticed that people make money on line by promoting outrage and scoring clicks. "Sharpen divisions" is another way of describing an entire industry of exploitation of on line life.
Would they stop at an election? No, they'd see it as opportunity. It is pure opportunity, for what they do.
Some have said that much of the "Russian effort" was little more than such private exploitation. Set aside what happened in 2016, and think for a moment what they tells us about 2020. It could happen that way in 2020, whether it did last time or not. That industry is real, and not just among Russian hackers.
We don't need malign Russians, if we stand ready to do it to ourselves. We don't need Russians, if every well wired country in the world is full of hackers looking to make a buck off messing with our election.
It isn't just Trump. When he is gone, however he goes, this problem will remain. The internet turned on our politics, monetizing a weakness. They won't stop. Like the Terminator, they'll be back, and in ever new nastier forms.
5
Good advice.
But not appreciating the attraction to dirty tricks by too many is living in a bubble. From the Willie Horton ads to the attempted and successful thefts of campaign plans, irresponsible people (mostly Republicans) have noticed the success that comes from misleading and lying to the public. Whether some of the public wants to be lied to is another topic.
No answer here. But until we raise our next generations to be honest and fair, our future lies not with telling the truth, but with convincing others to tell the truth, the whole, truth, and nothing but the truth.
We can start by imprisoning the liars in the White House -- through a full-throttled trial in the Senate.
Not likely. But that would be a good start.
4
It's hard to ignore the fact that the President of the United States has willingly lied over 15-thousand times since taking office. The Russians are bad, but Trump and his acolytes in Congress are far worse.
15
There isn't any evidence that Russian interference caused Clinton to lose. Comey testified to that. But there is also Dona Brazile's book that leaves no doubt where the blame lays. There is also "Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign." Even Bill told her she needed to spend more time in middle America. She ignored him and put he bets on a few north eastern state and the Pacifist states. And she got them for the most part but a great red wave swept across the country and Donald Trump became president. The information about the DNC was released. but does anyone think even one vote shifted from Hillary to Trump over that, Clinton and her team predicted she would bury Trump in a mountain of electoral votes. The reverse happened. Trump won because of his message and strategy, not even one vote because of the Russians.
9
Republicans will not even try to fix this issue because it (and voter suppression) are the only ways they can hold on to political power. Republicans have put their own interests above the good of our democracy. VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO!!!
2
“Why aren’t we”?
Because those whom the disinformation benefitted now control the government. Trump could never have been elected without it.
7
It's been suggested that 50k votes in key states would have swung the 2016 presidential outcome. Say it's the same in 2020. The loser can now honestly question the role of disinformation and invent motivations and sources far from the truth. In other words, Trump loses but does not concede citing an unfair election, millions of illegal votes, outside disinformation from North Korea and China, inside disinformation from those GD Dems. Nothing like seeding the Supreme Court to insure against questionable outcomes.
2
How wonderful and appropriate! For much of the press is routinely engaged in disinformation campaigns. Oh, to taste the irony!
6
I used to worry that I wouldn't be able to recognize a lie if I heard/read it. But, in the last year, I have realized that my critical thinking skills are so much better than I thought. I'm careful, and I do my homework. So, yes, I'm ready for the further disinformation attacks. But, I don't spend any time on Faux Nes, and not too much time online, and when I do, I read a lot of different points of view, around the world. NYT is what little corporate MSM I consume. Usually it's the online independents, who don't shill for payoffs.
2
We are not preparing for the next attack on our democracy because the president wants and welcomes that attack. Why kill the goose that lays the golden egg. While praising the intelligence of the American electorate, he secretly knows that they can be led around like bulls with nose rings - only instead of bullrings; he uses their beliefs and prejudices to lead them wherever he wants.
If DJT doesn't destroy our fragile democracy, he has published the blueprint and playbook for some other demagogue to do it later. If a democracy like America's is going to exist, there will have to be a paradigm shift in human thought throughout the world.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is important and what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for dirty tricks and destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of us all. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
didn't have these problems before social media (twitter, facebook, etc etc etc).
we should just shut them all down.
go back to reading newspapers and books and listening to the radio.
1
And let’s not forget about hacking by Republicans, since the voting machines are owned by republican companies. See the book Code Red by Jonathan Simon.
Whoever wins the 2020 election, at least a third of the Americans will be convinced he or she stole it.
1
Yet another letter that ignores what the problem is. Republicans are the problem. Full stop. Democrats have proposed multiple bills for election security and the GOP has blocked them all. The GOP wants foreign interference in our elections. People need to wake up to the fact that the GOP is committing treason.
5
The Choice is Easy, People.
Vote Blue.
No Matter Who.
( State Elections, Too.)
2020
The most pernicious and lethal disinformation attacks facing America emanate from the Oval Office and the Trump TV propaganda network on a continuous basis.
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@Alan R Brock
Rightwing smear maestro, David Brock wasn't paid millions to be a nice guy by the HRC campaign. Nor is the DNC paying him again to make nice.
Hate to be the Bothsiderism...but both sides do play in the dissemination of propaganda and falsities'.
Guess perspective would be based upon who/what is on the receiving end of these attacks 'n smears.
1
"Why aren’t we preparing for the next one?"
McConnell and the Republican party are preparing for the next one, by insuring that the disinformation and voter disenfranchisement that gave them the Presidency and the Senate continues to keep them in power.
And so McConnell has blocked a wide range of protective measures, for example, HR-1:
"This bill addresses voter access, election integrity, election security, political spending, and ethics for the three branches of government."
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1
If you have a Republican Senator, and care about democracy, please call/write their office and speak up---and suggest fellow constituents do the same. They are supposed to represent YOU, not their Russian/Republican secret money donors
6
It’s willful ignorance. Americans are intellectually lazy. The U.S. is over as we know it.
2
The news media would help keep truth in the campaign by challenging some of the supporters of either party who appear on their show and make comments supporting a false narrative.
Too often I hear Politicians either lie or avoid to answer any question regarding a policy being supported by the leaders of their party. Their position is left unchallenged by the media. Why?!
2
Is there any evidence that the Russians are spreading disinformation in countries other than the US? It’s working so well here. Why wouldn’t they be doing this elsewhere? It is so easy.
2
@Tom In Oakland They are INDEED doing it elsewhere! They have been doing it for years in Ukraine and in the Baltic states as they try to undermine the democracies there. They have been doing it in the Middle East as well, such as lying about their bombing of hospitals in Syria. Other states along the southern border of Russia have also experienced their disinformation for many years.
4
@Tom In Oakland
Just glance through Peter Pomerantsev's "This Is Not Propaganda" for a world tour.
1
We can investigate Russian disinformation campaigns, because they represent unacceptable foreign interference.
But what can we do about domestic disinformation? The anti-Clinton campaign of slander and innuendo went back for years before the Russians got involved. Fox News, talk radio and right-wing social media have been pouring out disinformation for ages; the Russian contribution has been marginal. (OK, the fake news isn't 100% right-wing: but it's skewed that way. And even the "left wing" versions often to oppose the Democrats...)
But those domestic sources of divisive lies are all American citizens exercising their freedom of speech. It's not very obvious how they can be shut down or regulated. What we are learning is what we have actually always known: demagoguery is extremely effective, and not just among uneducated fringe groups.
10
The Russian hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign wasn't "disinformation."
What they released led to the resignations of the top people at the DNC, including Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the head.
And it was the most basic phishing techniques that led to the hacking and leaks.
So let's start by saying campaigns should all be aboveboard, and everyone should pay script attention to cyber security.
And it the FBI calls about hacking, it shouldn't be ignored by a kid at the help desk--as happened at the DNC.
4
@Talbot It is true that the hacking wasn't disinformation. What WAS disinformation was the multitude of websites they set up pushing all kinds of lies about the candidates along with a multitude of bots they set up to swamp the blogs such as this on a mass of public sites with phony users that pushed all kinds of hate rhetoric. And we mustn't forget their biggest lying mouthpiece of all: the RT network -- which pushes Kremlin propaganda throughout the world 24/7 with all kinds of anti-USA hateful stories and twisted truth.
2
Why are we relying on defense? That is a losing strategy. Those companies and countries who seek to interfere in our electoral process must pay a heavy price for that. So heavy that it will discourage other bad actors. I am thinking along the lines of shutting off Moscow's power for 24 hours as a demonstration of capability, then saying to Putin "Have we gotten your attention yet? This is just a small demo of what we can do. Mess with us again and we'll show you what pain is."
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@Bruce1253
I've been in favor of a much more "pointed" response to Putin for 3 years now but the censors won't let my comments by.
Greg Iles wrote in his piece of fiction "Devil's Punchbowl" about some people being "one bullet problems," in this one case I've never thought of a better response. Imagine that someone had taken that approach to Adolf Hitler in 1933?
@trader
There is a tacit understanding among world leaders that they will not target each other or their families. It is not a coincidence that except for Kennedy (that's what you get when you double cross the mob) no President has been assassinated in modern times.
Unfortunately, it's probably too late. 2016 was aided by Russians aided by Cambridge Analytica driven micro-targeting ad campaigns funded by GOP interests. Neither is likely to leave the field next year. Plus, now we have Iranians, North Koreans and... China.
Trump's 2020 reelection effort is off and running with a lot of help. Yes, most meddlers would prefer the current occupant to any Democrat.
16
Again we are warned that the Russian's have been the major force "disrupting our democracy." But the article manages to not once mention Cambridge Analytics and its offshoots.
No mention of the overt racism behind the GOP Southern Strategy of 40 years ago. The Willie Horton ad appeared long before Putin was around.
GOP legislators in several states have made it clear that they intend to stifle democracy by purging voters, manipulating elections, gerrymandering districts and attacking the Voting Rights Act.
The GOP attacks minority voters every chance they get and have done so for decades. Yet, we are told that the real threat to democracy and source of divisiveness is Russia.
How can Ms. Nossel be a serious advocate for democracy and ignore the racism, divisions and systematic effort right in our own backyard, mostly to limit the franchise to people of color?
Even assuming that Russia meddled in 2016, did they have a greater impact in Wisconsin than Governor Walkers efforts to purge voters?
Has Putin done more damage to democracy than the Supreme Court has with Citizen's United?
I hope I'm not the only one that thinks there's something terribly wrong with this picture. No one wants foreign interference in our elections.
But the elites right here at home have steadily undermined our democratic process far more than Russia has. If we are serious about a solution we need to look in the mirror, not at the Kremlin.
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@Drspock
The Russian bodies and bots focused most of their efforts on the festering and lingering and enduring and endemic legitimate educational, health, housing, political and socioeconomic grievances of black Africans in America.
And while no group of Americans gave Clinton/Kaine a higher percentage of their vote 92% including 88% of black men and 95% of black women, black turnout was down 11% from peak Obama in 2008 and 2012.
The 2016 election was the first black turnout decrease in a Presidential election in 20 years.
Shelby County v. Holder did more damage to black voters than any SCOTUS decision by gutting the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act that had decades of bipartisan political report when they came up for renewal and revision.
13
I think the point is we are vulnerable to continued political and electoral sabotage because of the very valid points you remind us of. Thank you.
Pet peeve, I’m sick of the milk toast term “meddling” being used to define what Russia did. They flat out attacked us and sabotaged our election. Of course Comey was the one who delivered the final cut to HRC’s campaign. The early voting numbers plummeted after he placed his shiv.
I will be standing for impeachment tomorrow that for sure.
13
@Drspock: Absolutely right. The Russians took the opportunity to spread lies and divisiveness, but basically all they did was amplify what was already happening here. What we are seeing isn't the Russians taking over, it's Fox News and talk radio, the Tea Party and the Kochs and the Mercers taking over. We can't just point the finger at a remote enemy...
17
The human brain and nervous system are more rewarded by negativity and emotionally charged input than by bland neural input of fact and reason.
In other words, a piece of Facebook "fake news" that gets the blood boiling a little is going to be shared and remembered more than a news story based on reality. Whether inspired by Russia, Republicans, or others, the next election will be infiltrated by unseen forces that sway the outcome.
That's why huge numbers of Democrats and independents need to turn out to defeat Trump and his allies. A complex "machine" of people is already working quietly to ensure Trump remains in office.
Even then, we have to move into a world in which a vastly improved education system must help young people to think critically and creatively, to make wise decisions, to make sense of overwhelming media input, and to learn independently. We've seen the results of our diminished schooling thus far -- another generation or two of Trumpists is literally unthinkable....
18
True, and social media algorithms are designed to elevate posts that make the blood boil. The Silicon Valley business model uses human nature to manipulate us to make money,
3
What the Senate, Electoral College, Cabinet and Supreme Court of the United States don't you accept nor understand that America is not and never was meant to be ' our democracy'?
America is and always has been a very peculiar kind of republic.
A divided limited different power constitutional republic of united states where the people wield the ultimate nominal sovereign power over their elected and selected hired help.
The ' disinformation campaign ' that must cease is the ' our democracy' delusional duplicitous deception.
2
It might not solve the immediate crisis, but it would weaken social media’s potential for mischief over the long run: education in grade schools and colleges. A recent article described the efforts in Finland to do just that. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/how-finland-is-fighting-fake-news-in-the-classroom/
The social media genie is out of the bottle, and the stopper isn’t going back any time soon. Disinformation and whispering campaigns have been part of our lives for a long, long time — gossip and its sometimes awful consequences didn’t need technology. I’ve argued with my wife about her passing on uncorroborated statements about the lives of friends. But now, that impulse is turbo-charged and easily manipulated by political bad actors. We’ve probably lost half a generation to social media, but if you want a personal solution, just completely ignore everything on social media other than good jokes, glimpses of people’s vacations and meals and useful information that really is “social.” We are our attention. We can be masters of where we apply it.
3
But not one republican member of Congress believes any of it, we are certainly doomed. As long as ‘it’, welcomes Russian support we won’t have fair and free elections.
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@George The Republicans don't care - that's why we are doomed. Vote blue and get rid of them.
1
We have let in the Trojan Horse, it's called Social Media. We are being attacked from the inside and we a powerless to stop it. The attackers are not only entrenched in our home, but in the homes of many countries throughout the world. Sadly, we are marching toward a terrifying blowup of epic proportions. We can thank Twitter and Facebook, and all the mindless dolts who rely on those platforms for "information".
42
The disinformation never stopped: 2 minutes in any social media platform proves this out. Reality dictates that we do our best to teach how to combat it on all levels from personal up to media institutions where “both sides” has contributed to the rise and spread.
1
A historic question for 50 of our noteworthy Republican Senators:
Would you rather be remembered in History as:
1 of 50 Republican Senators voting in unison against impeachment of an autocratic president, or
1 of 12 Republican Senators voting for impeachment of an autocratic, lifelong morally corrupt president?
The choice is yours:
An ignominous legacy as just another spineless toady, or
A legacy as a member of a unique minority of profiles in moral courage, who recognized a blatantly corrupt administration?
164
@Samm -- A bunch of them have stated that they don't care about legacy. All they want is the short term benefit--it's why they ran for office to begin, NOT to serve the people, or the country. You would have to have a conscience to care about legacy.
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@ChesBay
It would be interesting to compare the net worth of each Republican, including in the administration, before and after the Trump presidency. My guess is they all will have done very well for themselves.
18
Sadly, I think we both know the answer to this question.
4
Why aren't we preparing for the next disinformation attack?
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that it's because the people who are in power are the ones who benefited from the last disinformation attack and who expect to benefit from the next one.
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@Vesuviano And they are actively part of the attack team, as well--Putin's "troops on the ground" in the U.S.
8
We are not preparing because republicans have turned our government over to the Russians. Willingly.
156
Self fulfilling prophesy if ever there was one. It’s incredible the power ascribed to these so called disinformation attacks. Why do we presume they’re any more effective than the billions on billions spent manipulating outcomes that we’ve generally been accustomed to? The reason is simple: all this talk of concern about disinformation is really a way to avoid accepting that Trump won and he’s going to win again. Deal with it. We’ve had plenty of bad leaders over the years. Predictably everyone says it’s the end of our country. Predictably they’re wrong.
3
"Known misinformation should be flagged, demoted and corrected not just on public sites but in private groups and services where it can do the most damage. "
This is simply not possible to do in a way that will remotely make a difference.
The reason is that Russian disinformation that started to infect our public discourse years ago has now borne its fruit: the distrust, discord, and invective that now permeates everything we see, hear and read.
THAT is the victory of Russian disinformation -- to undermine voter confidence in the very institutions of our government and democracy.
It has nothing to do with getting one candidate or another elected.
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@David H
An interesting cycle of things came to mind as I read your letter: we "defeated" the Soviet Union in 1991; Russia appears to be "defeating" the US in 2019/2020.
Let's just hope that, in defeat, the US does not become quite as broken down as Russia.
4
@Peter Hornbein
We have elections in this country every 2 years. That is only one of hundreds of differences between the USA and Russia.
Another very important one being that the Russian people are accustomed to being taken care of from cradle to grave, and are happy to cede their freedoms in exchange.
Do not worry, the US will NEVER become like Russia.
1
@David H
Get off of social media, they make money by your clicks, no clicks no money. Very simple. Everyone needs to grow up, we didn't have this social media ten years ago and we don't need it now.
4
"They must come out publicly to forswear disinformation tactics and insist that all their backers do the same." Does anybody really think the Republicans will do that?
Fact checkers 8 hours a day 5 days a week? That's not even quarter time.
Maybe Zuckerberg could turn off FB for the last ten days of the election cycle.
Or give a big Christmas present to the world and shut the thing down altogether, so many could start 2020 with an extra few hours a day to do something useful.
70
"Disinformation" has been spread in every single Presidential election since George Washington's -- did anyone think that would change in the social media age? Ms. Nossel claims that "(w)e learned from the Mueller report that the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election in a 'sweeping and systematic fashion' through social media disinformation" and that "we will never know whether those efforts affected the election outcome," but much of that conclusion lies in taking the assessments of national intelligence agencies with their own agendas and a long history of lying to the American people at face value. The allegations contained in Mueller's indictment of the Russian troll farms are just that -- allegations, which will never be tested in a court of law because I doubt those individuals will ever be available for trial.
Russia certainly "interfered" in the elections with the goal of aiding Trump's election, but it is evidence-free fear-mongering to suggest that they "flipped the election" or influenced anybody other than die-hard partisans who already knew for whom they were voting. How would you regulate troll comments without shredding the First Amendment? Who decides what is "disinformation?" We don't need Russia's help to divide, fracture and splinter us -- we are more than capable of doing that ourselves. Focus on securing the ballot boxes and securing registration lists instead of social media -- such "security" is just a code word for censorship.
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@Boris Jones "Securing" the voter registration lists? Is that another word for "purging?" Your response fits the Russian agenda exactly.
4
@John Lentini
It means just the opposite -- making sure they can't be hacked and tampered with by outside forces, either foreign or domestic. Blaming all of our problems on the "Russian agenda" is tiresome and a convenient cop-out to avoid facing our problems. Russia may have attempted to exploit divisions in American society in 2016, but it did absolutely nothing to create them. Attacking every vaguely progressive idea as furthering "Putin's agenda" is nothing more than an attempt to shut down those to whom you have no answer.
2
This is ludicrous. The only way to prepare for disinformation campaigns and other likely attacks on our democracy is to create a constant and persistent support of our republic in which all citizens believe in, support and are involved in our government and the democratic glue on which it is based. We have done little if any of this for years and the quick success of the Russians efforts are telling.
So, it is a republic if we can keep it. Franklin was speaking directly to this kind and many similar attacks to come. There is no easy, quick fix only hard,enduring but exceedingly rewarding involvement.
36
This such a difficult problem to address in a free society. We have so called news sources such as FOX, Breitbart, and Townhall that spread lies and misinformation to those who love to listen. I am not sure what can be done about that. Maybe the problem is education. Maybe everyone needs to be taught critical thinking in school. Even if that were possible, that would be a long term solution.
26
The only way I can think of to combat disinformation within the boundaries of the Bill of Rights and also avoid creating a government watchdog that might degrade into censorship is to follow the peer reviewed academic journal model and require full transparency on funding. There should be site that only publishes verified news and fact checked by multiple parties before publishing. I may be bombarded by misleading news and data there should be one site I can go for a check. It can be funded by surcharge on news organizations, say 0.01 % of taxable income run by a team of journalists and academics on rotating assignments. In addition, all news sites and think tanks should disclose where their funds should come from and list individual names. I don’t need to know GM contributes, I need to know who at GM authorized the contribution. It might actually be as habit forming as taking selfies, who knows...
1
"The last election weakened our democracy. Why aren’t we preparing for the next one?"
Because the party in power benefited.
430
@Pat Let's remember that the Democratic party all but ensured there were no contenders to the nominations others than HRC who had paid the DNC's debt left by Obama and a little known O'Malley. Bernie, an independent, had been faulted. In the end, by electing Trump, however outrageous he is, democracy won. Instead of crowing the anointed candidate, people elected the wild card.
7
@Idealist No, Putin won through his campaign of disinformation, theft, and coopting of the Trump campaign, which encouraged and welcomed Russian election interference. There, fixed it for you.
22
@Michele The reason Trump got elected was due to Clinton's lack of campaigning in the Rust Belt. Had she bothered to spend a little of that unprecedented $1billion on a trip there, it probably would have tipped the scales on that razor thin margin. However, she chose not to and as such, is accountable for her loss.
9
What we need is a new set of regulatory agencies for the 21st century to reign-in Sociopath Media platforms and police the internet at large.
This would involve nationalizing the large cloud providers like Amazon and bringing these activities under close supervision.
It won’t happen soon - Congress couldn’t fix the State Department 70 years ago - but it needs to. Otherwise we will continue the growth of socio-political dysfunction to until it’s addressed.
@Skinny J
Regulatory agencies to reign in "sociopath media platforms" as defined by them? Imagine what an agency with watchers appointed by Trump might consider to be "sociopathic." You are describing a dystopia that I doubt anybody who believes in democracy and "consent of the governed" would want to live.
5
@Skinny J
No way. What you are saying is that we need the government to monitor all our communications, presumably for the "greater good."
1
There are very fine lines between our first amendment rights, opinions, facts and outright lies. People have the right to believe and express that belief regardless how wrong it may be. The counter to wrong ideas is a clearly laid out explanation of why it is wrong and offer a pathway to the light. However that takes time and effort which is not welcomed in todays highly charged political arena. It's much preferred to demonize the opposition and emotionally charge every statement and then blame everyone else for not getting it, or getting it right. The fallback position for the loser is defeat by disinformation not by their lack of ability.
7
@Kurt Pickard
Disinformation is a dark art. It entails blaming the victim for the crime, distraction from obvious wrongdoing, and saying it loud and constantly. Needless to say the breadth of social media implemented with the latest artificial intelligence bathes us in blatant lies along with our daily search for information or entertainment.
Like so many for-profit institutions that affect us so profoundly social media must be reined in if we still have hopes for a civil society.
5