Aurora Hindman - Misinformation Examples

CNN reports on Fox News story: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/26/business/fox-news-gold-star-family-apology/index.html

PragerU YouTube Short: https://youtube.com/shorts/c3oy0HcB7yo?si=hy3oiLM7hesU4QYS

Lexicon of Lies defines disinformation as information that is deliberately false or misleading, while for misinformation, the inaccuracy is spread unintentionally. These two examples I chose, a YouTube short and a Fox News article, somewhat blur the definition lines in terms of how sure one can be about whether the spread of inaccurate or misleading information is deliberate-- that is, knowingly and purposefully. First, Fox News reported on a false story claiming the family of a Marine killed overseas had to pay $60,000 to ship her remains home because "the Pentagon refused to pay" (CNN). 

Fox News was informed of their story's inaccuracy but at first only changed their headline "to attribute the claims to Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida" (CNN). The article was later removed entirely from the site "without a correction or explanation." By keeping the story up but simply tweaking the phrasing to attribute the claims to someone else, Fox appears to be simply "reporting." However, now Fox knew the story was inaccurate. At this point, this is an example of disinformation. Keeping the story on the site continued the spread of misinformation, and not including corrections or fact-checking in the article meant Fox was essentially endorsing this story. Finally, when the article was removed suddenly from the site, Fox did not try to inform its consumers that the information was inaccurate.

Prager University is a conservative media organization that is not an accredited university. In their YouTube short, a young white man interviews a Black man in a casual "man on the street" style video. The interviewer asks the interviewee if he knows which political party founded the KKK, abolished slavery, and gave African-Americans the right to vote. The man guesses the Republican party first, and the Democratic party the second and third time. By asking these questions and not elaborating after the "answers," the video takes a partisan Republican-aligned position as it paints the Democratic Party in a poor light. These questions are all related to race and civil rights-- by having a Black man as the interviewee, a man who accepts the "correct" answers with a positive attitude, he is used as a token minority figure. 

This video works on the premise of technicalities, as the parties have developed and changed considerably, but kept the same names. The modern Democratic ideology is generally more progressive, while the modern Republican is more conservative in ideology. However, historically there was a "party switch" wherein the formerly conservative Democrats became more progressive, and vice versa with the Republicans, in the 20th century. This is the key to PragerU's video, that they do not discuss because they believe the party switch is a "myth." PragerU portrays the Democratic Party as "the racist party" or perhaps Republicans as "the Civil Rights party." In the text Critical Disinformation Studies, the phrase "confident yet inaccurate" is mentioned, along with the idea of misinformation versus misperceptions. Because of the party switch but modern parties keeping the same name, PragerU can imply that the historical ideologies of the parties are still the same. The accuracy of the video's information is debatable, likely based on one's political affiliation. The information is vague, and brief. While presented as facts, it eliminates context. The information is confident, but misleading, as the text describes. The misleading nature perhaps could define it as disinformation. The video spreads misperceptions.