The Party of Disinformation
Politics doesn’t
have a reputation for honesty. Even when political parties are trying to
dispense accurate information, they inevitably put some spin on the facts to
strengthen their position, especially with their own base. This is unfortunate,
but it is the reality we live in. What has happened in recent years, however,
is that one party has stayed more or less tethered to facts and is attempting
to solve real-world problems, while the other party has become a factory of
disinformation, outright lies, conspiracy theories, and invented crises
intended to stoke anger and foment senseless culture wars.
Some might lay
all the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, but although he has certainly pushed
the GOP further into the realm of fantasy and paranoia, the Republican Party
was well on its way to this destination long before Trump hit the
disinformation gas pedal. I was a Republican until sometime during George W.
Bush’s first term. What drove me away from the GOP was the lies. Leading the
country to war in Iraq with intentionally false claims was something I could
not stomach, but the bigger issue for me was the bald-faced Republican lies
about the effects of tax cuts. Tax cuts do not pay for themselves. They never
have and never will. But this was the argument Bush and his congressional
co-conspirators expected Americans to swallow. As is almost always the case
with tax cuts, the Bush tax scheme was just a thinly veiled attempt to allow
the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. The result was twofold: first,
the debt ballooned, which was entirely predictable; and second, income
inequality accelerating, placing a greater burden on the middle class and the
poor.
This, of course,
was just the beginning. The rise of Fox News gave the Republican Party a very
loud propaganda machine that has produced a fact-free zone protected to a large
degree by the First Amendment, although the limits of that protection are now
being tested by Dominion Voting Systems. It is instructive to compare the
current situation on the right with the propaganda of Nazi Germany. The German
citizens were pretty much a captive audience. Hitler controlled the media, and
the only way they could hear a more accurate account of what was happening in
their country was to break the law and listen to BBC broadcasts, as young Latter-day
Saint Helmuth HΓΌbener
did. Helmuth didn’t stop at listening, though. He felt he needed to spread the
truth he was learning. Before long, however, he was caught and executed. In
contrast to the Germans of the 1930s and 1940s, Republicans of today have
captivated themselves inside a right-wing media bubble that feeds their
confirmation bias to such a degree that some 70 percent of Republicans still believe
Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election. If statistics don’t lie, this
means a substantial percentage of Latter-day Saints also believe this lie and
others.
Not long before
the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Church made a significant
addition to its Handbook. Obviously, Church leaders were alarmed at what they
were seeing among members, and they felt compelled to warn members about where
they were getting their information. Part of the addition reads: “Many sources
of information are unreliable and do not edify. Some sources seek to promote
anger, contention, fear, or baseless conspiracy theories. Therefore, it is
important that Church members be wise as they seek truth. Members of the Church
should seek out and share only credible, reliable, and factual sources of
information. They should avoid sources that are speculative or founded on
rumor.”
Good advice. But
many members think that their sources of information are reliable when they are
not. How can we tell the difference between good and bad sources? Let me offer
one answer. Look for guardrails. Pay attention to which media outlets have
credible fact checkers. This is a valuable service. Shortly after the January 6
insurrection, Mitt Romney published an editorial in the Deseret News. I
have never voted for Romney and probably never will. He and I disagree about
most policy questions. But we inhabit the same reality most of the time and
could have a rational discussion about most issues. This is not true, however,
of people who inhabit a universe built on disinformation and conspiracy
theories. Wrote Senator Romney: “I believe that we should watch and read, not
just sources we tend to agree with but also sources we disagree with. If Fox is
your regular diet, watch NBC, CNN or ABC now and then. Conversely, if MSNBC is
your regular, don’t make it exclusive. We need to broaden our reading as well.
I note that news organizations like The Wall Street Journal and The New York
Times make an effort to get the facts and when they make a mistake, they
acknowledge it. Social media has no fact-checkers, no editors and often doesn’t
even disclose who actually wrote a post.” I endorse Romney’s wisdom
wholeheartedly, and I would add that Fox News and other purveyors of propaganda
do not employ fact checkers. In fact, Fox News has even attacked the
“fact-checking industry.” If you are making money by fabricating “news,” it is
always more expedient to attack the fact checkers than to tell the truth.
Earlier this
year, BYU Studies published a special issue on good government. One
particularly helpful article was by Ed Carter, a journalist, lawyer, and
professor of communications at BYU. His article is titled “‘Truth Is the Only
Ground’: How Journalism Contributes to Good Government.” I would recommend the
whole article highly, but one paragraph stood out because I think it expresses
a truth most people don’t understand: “High-value journalism
today generally requires subscription payment. For decades in the twentieth
century, high-quality American journalism was largely supported by advertising
revenues. Editorial content appeared to be free. With the introduction of the internet,
news organizations initially made their editorial content freely available
online. Some legitimate news organizations still do. However, digital
advertising revenues today pale in comparison to the print advertising revenues
of the previous century. While there is freely available information content
via social media and other digital channels, the content produced by reputable
journalists generally requires subscription revenue. So, news consumers who
want to support good journalism should prepare to do so with their wallets.” I
agree with Ed’s assessment. I support good journalism with my wallet. I
subscribe to the Salt Lake Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington
Post, and used to subscribe to the New Yorker magazine for in-depth
reporting (I stopped because I couldn’t keep up with it all, but I still read
as many free New Yorker articles each month as time will permit). My
wife and I also donate money to KUER radio, Salt Lake City’s NPR host.
If
you are getting all your news for free on the Internet, especially on social
media, please realize that you are probably not getting much good information.
What I appreciate about the two national newspapers is that, even though they
tend to lean left, they publish columnists from both the right and the left, as
well as some who manage to reside somewhere in the middle. These are almost all
well-informed and astute observers of what is happening in the United States
and the larger world. Getting views from all angles helps you understand issues
with more nuance and insight. And feasting on quality journalism also helps you
recognize shoddy journalism when it rears its ugly head.
Unfortunately,
much of what comes from the right-wing media bubble today is not just shoddy
but dishonest, intentionally misleading, and inflammatory. You can pretty well
adopt this piece of advice as gospel truth: If a media source seeks to inflame
rather than inform, it is likely playing fast and loose with facts.
Let
me give a very current example of what I mean. Now, this quote does not come
from right-wing media; it comes from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, but
it serves to illustrate what I am trying to point out about where the
Republican Party and its media have gone. This is what McCarthy posted to
Twitter: “Do you make $75,000 or less? Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents
will be coming for you—710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than
$75k.” This attack on a provision in the newly passed (and misnamed) Inflation
Reduction Act has been repeated and expanded across right-wing media and social
media. So, what is the truth? Well, PolitiFact did what they do: a fact check.
Here’s a summary:
•
The 87,000 figure is from a May 2021 Treasury Department assessment of how it
would use $80 billion to improve IRS operations. None of this May 2021
projection is set in stone, particularly the hiring of 87,000 new employees.
•
Not all the hires would be auditors or would work in enforcement. The money
would go toward many things, including “hiring new specialized enforcement
staff, modernizing antiquated information technology [that would enable the IRS
to process your tax return faster], and investing in meaningful taxpayer
service.” Some would of course go toward hiring support staff.
•
Over half of the IRS workforce is close to retirement, so tens of thousands of
these new hires would be replacing half of the IRS’s 80,000 employees.
•
Over the past decade, the IRS has seen its funding drop by 20 percent. This has
prevented it from going after tax cheats.
•
The 710,000 audits figure was taken out of context. The Congressional Budget Office
report that Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas used to come up with this
figure actually said that the audit “rate would rise for all taxpayers, but
higher-income taxpayers would face the largest increase.” Brady also failed to
acknowledge that the CBO estimate was based on $60 billion going toward
enforcement, while the actual bill allots $46 billion.
•
Brady’s projection also runs counter to stated IRS policy, laid out in an
August 10 letter from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to IRS commissioner Charles
Rettig: “I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or
auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small
business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative
to historical levels.”
And
this is just the tip of the iceberg on this issue. The Republican disinformation
about the IRS portion of this one bill includes fearmongering statements by,
among others, Senator Chuck Grassley (Iowa) on Fox News telling viewers about “a
strike force that goes in with AK-15s [sic] already loaded ready to
shoot some small-business person.” Such nonsense shouldn’t even need to be
debunked, but this is the sort of rhetoric that has taken over the Republican Party
on issue after issue.
The
Republican attack on funding the IRS is just one more step in a long fight to
defund the agency. Republican presidential candidates, including Ted Cruz, have
campaigned on abolishing the IRS. While that is improbable, Republicans have
been very effective in negotiating budget cuts for the agency to that point it has
been incapable of performing its basic function: collecting taxes from those
who owe them. And now that the Democrats have restored that funding, it is not
surprising that the anti-tax party is lying repeatedly in an effort to
misrepresent the actual uses of that funding.
I
go into this much detail on one example simply to illustrate how disinformation
and propaganda work. I am not saying that the Democrats don’t also misrepresent
facts, but in today’s world, the two parties are not at all equal in this
regard. The flood of disinformation coming from the Republicans is
overwhelming. They feel that can say just about anything, and their followers
will believe them. The result is that the Republican Party has become an
anti-science party, and anti-expertise party, an anti-fact party, and a party
that has made the acceptance of lies a requirement for elective office in many
states. This embrace of falsehood should convince any believing Latter-day
Saint to, at the very least, turn away from this party or, preferably, to do as
Liz Cheney is doing and fight the lies and disinformation with truth.
One
final observation. If nationwide statistics reflect what LDS Republicans
believe, it doesn’t say much for Latter-day Saint ability to discern truth.
It’s as if the gift of the Holy Ghost is pretty much inoperative among many of
our members.
