Disinformation Quotes

“Disinformation is distinguished from misinformation in that it is intentionally fraudulent.”

“When disinformation is running rampant, there are two ignorances that may emerge: the one is actually positive, a sort of pure and intentional emptying of the mind; but the other is of course negative and clogged and polluted.”

“Be careful who you choose as your hero or who you choose to deify, be it Clay Aiken or Barack Obama. You put all you're hope and all your dreams and all your ideas about stuff into one human being. They're a human being they're going to let you down. You can't make someone your hero because of something you read on the internet. The internet is not a source of information it is a source of disinformation.”

“In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different roder from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this world almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information--misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information--information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?”

“While information is the oxygen of the modern age, disinformation is the carbon monoxide that can poison generations.”

“The oil companies regard nuclear power as their rival, who will reduce their profits, so they put out a lot of disinformation about nuclear power.”

“Public discourse has been polluted now for decades by corporate-funded disinformation - not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental and societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim.”

“The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”

“But it would be broadcast, and in the great public theatre of his age; that unregulated market of braying narcissists, that Wild West of disinformation and fraud, that infinite sea of piracy, the great electorate where the constituency of billions voted their approval with a click of a mouse. The internet. It brought governments down and rewrote history...”