all right. so we often use the terms misinformation and disinformation interchangeably. but there is a real difference between the two. misinformation, quite frankly, has always been around. but it is a challenge that we are now always dealing with as a result of social media and 24-hour information streams where the connected world make it s so easy to circulate incorrected information that gets floated and shared. disinformation, on the other hand, is when people deliberately put incorrect or false information out there to achieve a political objective or even create a society of ill-informed or disengaged people. and that is what is really troubling about what we are seeing right now. where right-wing politicians and others are promoting things that they know are false and inaccurate. right now there is an entire right-wing propaganda network on fox news that is intentionally
out? hi. thanks for having me. this ongoing damage by some of these people that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on covid and this ongoing pandemic has been going on for almost two years now. and it s incredibly dangerous. the divisiveness that remains in our country stemmed from day one of this pandemic, and it continues today. and these conspiracy theories that especially are spread by people in office right now, elected leaders, elected officials especially, those with doctor before their name, that lends extra credibility. and it undermines the public health community. it undermines the healthcare workers right now across the u.s., and these communities that are fighting this virus head on. and so what they do that, their supporters believe them. they take this information. instead of taking measures to protect themselves from this deadly virus, they listen to them, and it puts them at risk. so my question is this, how many people have to die in your
community for you all to learn the lesson that covid is here, it s not going away, and the less people continue to protect themselves and the less people get vaccinated and the more you spread conspiracy theories about the vaccine and all these other things about mask mandates, the more you re hurting the people that elected you to protect them. yeah, and you re seeing this play out unfortunately pretty much across party lines, because, as we showed earlier, you have 60% of republicans who are unvaccinated. so there is a real life consequence to the information that is being, you know, spread by the right wing. i know that you ve been on the inside of this. you have been at the white house on the covid task force. talk to us about the challenges that the current administration has to face right now. they have to try to send a message of calm. they have to make policy decisions based on the science like what we were just hearing from dr. collins. but, at the same time, they have to co
information. i think those are great examples of things that are obviously not true and that are kind of political propaganda that are lies, that are very old kinds of falsehoods. i think there s a big spectrum of stuff that is not that clear and that we like to apply this kind of simple framework of misinformation, too. like, through the trump years, progressives believed a lot of things that turned out not to have been true about trump about russia for instance. was that misinformation? was it deliberate misinformation? i m not trying to look inside people s hearts. but i think it s easy to believe things that are not true and have been amplified on social media. and i think the job of journalism, when we can, is to maybe spend a little less time analyzing tweets and more reporting out the details of stories. public health is a great example of a place where often you can say this is not true, take the vaccine. and i m not in disagreement
with you. i think you bring up a really good point because i immediately think of 2003 when the governor, the bush administration manipulated the media by leaking claims that there were weapons of mass destruction, which we knew to be false, only then to turn around and cite the actual media reports as evidence that there are other sources out there saying that iraq has weapons of mass destruction. so i agree that there has always been this kind of symbiotic relationship where the government tries to manipulate the media. but is it different this time when you have the added layer of social media in the 24-hour information streams as opposed to what has happened for decades where a government tries to leak information to shape the public discourse on information? yeah. and i think there is both this incredible new machine for amplifying all sorts of things, social movements you think are really important, social movements you think are horrible. and this new ecosystem where