Disinformation
There are many novel ways of producing disinformation, as your articles in the May 4th issue effectively illuminated (“Bad news”, “A steep, steep hill”). However, there is nothing new about disinformation itself. In Rossini’s opera, “The Barber of Seville”, Figaro’s cunning use of misinformation is central to the plot. In the military domain, Churchill stressed its importance (“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies”). But during the second world war people in many countries were well aware of fakes and listened to the bbc because it was thought to be reliable. What is truly novel today is the number of people who see messages on social media and non-attributed websites as their only source of news and appear not to assess whether a received message is likely to be accurate. Here is another shortcoming for the education system to remedy.
