{"id":874,"date":"2012-10-19T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/19\/lets-call-it-the-disinformation-age"},"modified":"2012-10-19T12:50:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T12:50:00","slug":"lets-call-it-the-disinformation-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=874","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s call it the \u201cDisinformation Age\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry delivered some words of wisdom to the Rotary Club of Amarillo: If someone tells you something is true because they saw it on the Internet, do some factchecking before drawing such a conclusion.<\/p>\n

Thornberry\u2019s remarks should ring true in this age of instant communication. It\u2019s the product of the Internet and the proliferation of media, many of which have a political axe to grind. <\/p>\n

Thornberry, a Republican from Clarendon who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since January 1995, cited Rotary\u2019s Four-Way Test \u2013 which is a sort of code of conduct for Rotarians \u2013 the first of which asks: Is it the truth? In this age of instant information, Thornberry has concluded that whatever he hears isn\u2019t always necessarily the truth. Instead, it is someone\u2019s version<\/em> of the truth.<\/p>\n

Emails get distributed instantly around the world with assertions about all manner of things. One of the examples Thornberry cited Thursday involved President Obama. An email has been bouncing around that says the president has issued more than 900 executive orders during his term in office. Not true, Thornberry said, adding that Obama has issued a little more than 100 such orders, which is \u201cabout normal\u201d for a president.<\/p>\n

The Information Age can be described as the Disinformation Age, given all the bogus information that gets passed around as \u201cfact.\u201d <\/p>\n

Allow me some candor here: So much of it in recent years has sought to demonize Barack Obama with filthy innuendo and outright smears.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve learned in my professional life is that one man\u2019s fact is another man\u2019s propaganda. Thus, I\u2019ve learned the hard way to believe only a tiny fraction of whatever I see on the Internet. I\u2019ve lost count of the times I\u2019ve cringed at the words, \u201cI know it\u2019s true because I read it on the Internet.\u201d <\/p>\n

Thornberry\u2019s message was a measured, reasoned response to the proliferation of malarkey (to borrow a phrase from Vice President Biden) that is littering cyberspace at this very moment.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of what an investigative reporter once told a meeting of journalists at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference I attended in the 1970s. \u201cIf your mother tells you she loves you,\u201d he said, \u201ccheck it out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

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U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry delivered some words of wisdom to the Rotary Club of Amarillo: If someone tells you something is true because they saw it on the Internet, do some factchecking before drawing such a conclusion. Thornberry\u2019s remarks should ring true in this age of instant communication. It\u2019s the product of the Internet and … Continue reading Let\u2019s call it the \u201cDisinformation Age\u201d<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}