Goebbels realized that the media and political propaganda which is based on misinformation, lies, and deception are the capable tools to control the masses, pass plans, and portray Hitler as the only savior. In fact, Goebbels and Hitler succeeded in mobilizing Germany to enter World War II.
- "Give me a media without conscience, I give you a people without consciousness.”
- "Lie, then lie, then lie, so that people will believe you.”
The message of the media is a sublime message. The most important character of the media is honesty, revealing facts, and enlightening human minds. Unfortunately, the media has turned into a political project and personal advantages for people or countries. Today, war is no longer military. Rather, it has become a psychological war through the media machine.
1. The concept of media misinformation and its means:
Misinforming linguistically (the verb: misinform): It is the opposite of guidance and beaconing. Misleading a person is to turn them into wrongfulness or falsehood.
It can also be said that misinformation is a lie, which is the opposite of the truth.
Media Misinformation:
It is the concealment of facts from the public or distorting them by the media in order to direct public opinion towards certain goals far from the public interest.
Dr. Farid Hatem defines it in his book “Propaganda and Media Disinformation” as: “Intentional false information that provides a benefit for conducting effective military operations, detecting leakage of information and redirecting its leakage, directing the process of manipulating awareness and controlling it as well, stimulating someone by providing incomplete or complete but unhelpful information, and at the same time misrepresenting part of it.”
Disinformation activates during periods of wars, conflicts, overthrows, and regimes changing. Paulo Freer says: "The rulers resort to disinformation only when the people begin to appear as a social will in the course of the historical process.”
Realistic examples of misinformation:
The "Los Angeles Times" revealed in one of its press reports the misinformation in the international media. The newspaper said: “Pentagon and US national security officials did not deny that CNN announced that the attack on Fallujah had begun three weeks before the actual attack took place. The purpose of this fake announcement, according to what the US military said, was to expose the movements of the Iraqi fighters and rebels.”
Also, the newspaper says: "One of the means that the US Department of Defense used during the invasion of Iraq in 2002 was to establish the Office of Strategic Deception, which is specialized in providing the media with lies and misinformation, and selecting American military spokespeople with high skills in psychological warfare.”
One of the most prominent examples of the impact of media misinformation on the political public's opinion and the exploitation of elites and influential figures in building the public's attitude is what happened in 1942, when the popularity of US president Calvin Coolidge declined, which made him summon the media expert "Burns" to ask him for advice. Burns invited 34 Hollywood stars and persuaded them to pay a visit to the American president. That was it. The result was an increase in the president's popularity with the public.
We see media misinformation evident today in the events of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the circulation of many videos in which each side condemns the other. Then it turns out that they are scenes from a video game called “War Thunder”. One of these clips - as its publishers claim - was a downing of a Russian plane by a Ukrainian air missile, only to find out later that the clip belonged to a Libyan plane that crashed in Benghazi in 2011.
People tend to follow fake news:
The American Institute "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" conducted a study under the supervision of specialized researchers, which included about 130 false news and rumors on Twitter. The result was that the false news spread six times faster than the real one. And that the proportion of people who search for, retweet, and follow fake news is ten times more than the proportion of followers of real news.
Media misinformation tools:
- Satellite, television, and radio channels.
- Magazines, newspapers, and journals.
- Programs, seminars, and conferences.
- Commercial advertisements.
- Internet and social media.
2. Misinformation techniques:
- The methods of media misinformation are:
- Distortion of information.
- Media concealment or disregard of an issue.
- Rumors and confusion.
- Lying and deception.
- Hiding the facts.
- Anonymous sources.
- Exaggeration or intimidation.
3. Goals of misinformation:
Misinformation aims to:
- Negativity: The most important goal of media misinformation is to transmit negativity to the individual, and then transfer it to the group. This is based on the fact that it is easier to lead negative groups than to lead positive groups.
- Emptying emotions: One of the goals of media misinformation is to secure channels and ways for these negative groups to release their suppressed emotions. This makes it easier to drive and steer them.
- Directing the culture: Misinformation aims to direct the audience to specific cultures that serve the goals of misinformation.
- Attention: Media misinformation seeks to draw attention to one event and distract it from another.
- Image inversion: One of the goals of misinformation is to invert an image. The victim becomes a criminal and the criminal becomes a victim.
- Blackout of facts: Media misinformation seeks to choose the facts that suit it and support its goals and interests, and to display those facts and focus on them.
- Confusion: Media misinformation aims to create a state of confusion in public opinion by publishing conflicting news and information.
- Spreading panic: Media misinformation may sometimes aim to spread panic and fear among a particular group of people by insisting on the danger surrounding them in order to serve the interests of another group.
- Fraud: One of the goals of media misinformation is to deceive the viewer or reader and make them believe that the news is from a reliable source. Then they base their opinion or attitude on incorrect information.
- Putting poison in honey: It is one of the most dangerous goals of media misinformation. That is presenting the news or information and decorating it in a way that suggests that it is in the interest of the viewer, and that it is reliable and based on the right basis, then passing poisonous ideas and goals through it.
- Repetition: “Smart advertising will not achieve any success unless it depends on an important technique, which is to specify certain points and repeat them alot” Goebbels says. Repeating the news and making it a daily story makes the viewer believe it and adapt or get used to it, no matter how negative it is, and no matter how much it calls for rejection or denunciation.
- Sarcasm: Misinformation aims to ridicule and mock important political events and figures so that the viewer ridicules, mocks, and ignores them or does not deal with them seriously.
- Precedence in conveying the news: Goebbels says: “The man who says the first word to the world is always right.” Audiences tend to be convinced by what they hear for the first time. Therefore, the media race to convey the news and formulate it in a way that serves their interest because they know its impact on the awareness of the public in the way it hears the news for the first time.
4. Best books about misinformation:
Many books have dealt with the issue of media misinformation with care and attention. Most notably:
Mind Manipulators:
In his 1973 book "Mind Manipulators", Herbert Schiller discusses the five misinformation myths in America. This is in an attempt to explain how the American media is trying to impose itself on the rest of the world's cultures, and how it manipulates the threads of public opinion, and consolidates the concepts that it wants under the pretext of awareness sometimes and entertainment at other times.
Crowd Psychology:
Gustave Le Bon, in his book "Crowd Psychology", talks about the most important emotional and rational characteristics of the crowd. He explains how the group has a completely different perception and behavior. He reviews the methods of controlling the crowd and how the leader or the commander imposes his will on the group through incitement and cheerful slogans, not logical ideas. This book was one of the most important sources of Nazism during the World War in promoting its ideas and understanding the public.
Media: The Second God
In his book "Media: The Second God", published in 1981, "Tony Schwartz" explains the role of the media in influencing the psychological state of the audience and the way they perceive and judge information. He also explains the role of advertisements in promoting an imaginary desire and need among the audience, which turned into a passive receptionist most of the time. The writer predicted the form of the media in 2000.
Media Control: Chomsky
Chomsky points out in his book "Media Control" that propaganda in democratic countries is like batons in totalitarian countries. That is because this propaganda achieves the same goal of dictatorship in depriving the public of its will and freedom of decision, but in a more civilized way.
Television and the Mechanisms of Mind Manipulation:
In his book "Television and the Mechanisms of Mind Manipulation", Pierre Bourdieu attempts to draw attention to the intermarriage between capital and modern technology because television has turned from a means of entertainment to a means of manipulating the audience in terms of withholding or displaying information that is incomplete or truncated. The writer presents this book as a cry to the audience to warn them against manipulating them.
Audience Engineering:
The writer "Ahmed Fahmy" explains in his book "Audience Engineering", which was published in 2015, the most important psychological and emotional aspects that the media uses to control the audience, media trends and methods of deceiving the public, and the psychological theories on which it depends. The writer provided a number of examples from our contemporary reality that indicate the media control over the public, convincing them of what they want.
In conclusion: Smart audiences are not deceived
The Egyptian writer and researcher in political affairs Ahmed Fahmy asks in his book “Audience Engineering”: “When will the media stop lying?” He also answers: "When the public stops believing".
After this huge amount of media misinformation that surrounds us from every side, it has become necessary to confront it and be aware of its danger and how it deceives us and leads our thinking according to what its owners want. That is through researching and scrutinizing the methods of media misinformation and detecting them, not adopting the opinions and attitudes of the media, checking the background of the media and those behind it, and the source it relies on for its information, and not believing the media.
There is a group of people who sanctify the media and believe that the media never lies. The credibility of the information must be questioned, no matter how old the media is, and no matter how our heads are cracked with slogans of credibility, professionalism, and objectivity. There is no neutral media or without an agenda. Do not forget the most dangerous trinity and the secret mixture of the media “money, politics and the media” and how each of them overlaps and supports the other. The most effective weapon in the face of media misinformation remains the increase of knowledge, culture, and reading, as the smart audience is not deceived.
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