Two examples of disinformation, one of great comms, plus a still relevant observation

Things found rummaging through old presentations last week (looking for something I never did find)

While digging through old presentations this week, I came across some interesting tidbits that might be worth a second look.

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First up is an April Fool’s joke from the BBC. Broadcast in 1957, it told the home audience how spaghetti, then not well known in the UK, was grown and harvested. Setting aside the feelings of those who contacted the BBC to inquire how to get spaghetti tree seeds of their own, this was a harmless prank. It is a humorous example of the potential of disinformation, which this was since it was intentional, that exploits gaps in knowledge and information of the target.

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The next example is a favorite of mine that I frequently shared in my “now media” presentations over a dozen years ago. I introduced the concept of “now media” to challenge the reductive and flawed comparison between “new media” and “old media” that was common at the time.

In this case, a journalist inadvertently inserted misinformation into their article. Although immediately notified of the error, the newspaper ignored the request to correct the mistake and the misinformation was repeated in a subsequent article. After the second article, a clear follow-up that revisited the topic of the first, including a copy-and-pasting of the misinformation, was published a note added to it, but the original error in the text remained uncorrected. As for the first article, the error remains today and there is no correction notice.

In 2009, the Washington Posts’s Walter Pincus wrote two articles about the Defense Department’s massive information operations budget. The spending faced intense scrutiny (deserved for a list of reasons). His first article, published on July 28, 2009, appeared prominently above the fold on the front page of the print edition and contained a significant error. Here’s the relevant excerpt from “Fine Print: Panels Raise Concerns Over Pentagon's Strategic Communications”:

The Pentagon spends nearly $1 billion a year on its strategic communications, its contribution to the "war of ideas" that until recent years had been the sole province of the State Department's public diplomacy effort. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in the military getting money more easily than the diplomatic corps, and the dominance of military personnel in those countries has led to an increasing military role in information operations.

State Department special envoy Richard C. Holbrooke told journalists in March that "the information issue -- sometimes called psychological operations or strategic communications" -- has become a "major, major gap to be filled" before U.S.-led forces can regain the upper hand in Afghanistan.

Last week, the House Appropriations Committee, in approving the fiscal 2010 defense funding bill, said that it had identified 10 strategic communications programs that had grown from $9 million in fiscal 2005 to a "staggering $988 million request for fiscal 2010." The committee said many of the costlier programs appear as "alarmingly non-military propaganda, public relations, and behavioral modification messaging."

The error is in the last paragraph. The committee did not identify 10 (ten) programs that cost nearly $1b. The committee identified and discussed IO programs, with the letters “i” and “o”, as in information operations, that cost nearly $1b. A rational take is Pincus, or perhaps a research assistant, misread IO as 10.

Much ado about nothing? Yes, now. Fifteen years later this is a nothing burger, but at the time it helped further a narrative of irresponsibility. Now, I don’t mean to imply the information operations programs weren’t irresponsibly run or that “solutions” included throwing money at problems and hoping for the best (“hope” is never a great strategy).¹

You’d think the absurdity that 10 programs that cost of $100,000 each four years earlier but grew to cost, on average, $100 million each might spark specific questions from the reporter or an editor. But no, that didn’t happen. The paper, despite messages to the paper and the journalists from the Defense Department and others, never corrected the digital (and thus archive) edition. The error remains at the link above without any note.

Two months later, Pincus wrote a follow up as budget negotiations resumed after a summer break. Same topic, same journalist. Same error. In this September 27, 2009, article, Pincus copy and pasted the false claim that Congress “identified 10 strategic communications programs” that would cost a “staggering $988 million” in the next fiscal year.²

Again, there were calls to fix the error. In case, while the body of the article was left intact, a correction appeared above the digital edition sometime after it went live.³ Given the relationship between the two articles, I think it is reasonable to expect a similar correction was applied to the earlier. It wasn’t.

A practical question: does the intentional failure to correct known misinformation constitute disinformation given the paper and journalists were aware of the errors immediately after publication?

This seems to rise above the press’s evergreen problem of issuing corrections. In this case, the error was the paper’s own making and they were immediately notified of it. Bost times. I wonder if reason for the failure to act was institutional (the media’s general take on corrections), cultural (WaPo’s take on corrections), reputational (correcting this journalist), situational (the paper felt it wasn’t worth the time because it felt only certain people digested the details), or some combination. Regardless, it’s a small example used for a larger discussion.

By the way, here is the House report Pincus copied from:

According to the Department's limited response for information on this funding, IO programs have grown at an enormous rate, from approximately $9,000,000 in fiscal year 2005, to a staggering $988,000,000 request for fiscal year 2010. The requested growth in these programs from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2010 alone is just over $200,000,000.

The Committee believes that the Department of Defense, and the Combatant Commands which drive the demand for information operations, need to reevaluate IO requirements in the context of the roles and missions of the United States Military along with consideration for the inherent capabilities of the military and the funding available to meet these requirements. In support of this evaluation, the Committee has determined that many of the ongoing IO activities for which fiscal year 2010 funding is requested should be terminated immediately.

I included the paragraph that followed the “staggering” passage Pincus used to show IO appeared in a way that wouldn’t support “ten.”

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To break away from the pattern, here is an example of great comms in the field. I shared this—as recently as two weeks ago—to showcase that doing things right can make make a difference. The problem with informational efforts is success usually means something didn’t happen. Done right, informational activies can block or lessen adverse actions. So when trying to justify a program, capability, or the purpose of an office, proving a negative is often required and often falls on deaf ears and blind eyes that prefer the tangible and visceral.

It is 2008 in Iraq, when those “ten” programs were growing massively. The people involved were not funded by those programs, they were the standard features of any HQ. It was discovered a US Army sniper from the 4th Infantry Division was using a Koran for target practice. Iraqis, including military partners, were upset. Major General Jeffery Hammond, as the division’s commander, sent the soldier home and delivered a personal apology in person. The situation was diffused with barely a word in the US or a really any knowledge of the event.

The unique feature of the apology, which is likely what made it effective, was it was written to be culturally, not just linguistically, specific, rather than an American-English apology translated into Arabic.

I am a man of honor, a man of character. You have my word, this will never happen again. In the most humble manner, I look into your eyes today and I say, please forgive me and my soldiers. The act of this Soldier was criminal. He has been relieved of duty, reprimanded, dismissed, and redeployed. This soldier has lost the honor to serve the United States Army and the people of Iraq here in Baghdad.

The only recognition of this in the US that I found around the time it happened was ridicule. Ignorant of the situation on the ground and equally ignorant of the informational impact of actions, these negative responses, mostly discussion board threads, all mirrored a cartoon I found—and won’t publish here—of Hammond puckering up to kiss an Iraqi’s arse.

For general news coverage of the event, see this or this.

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Finally, a statement that remains relevant and fitting today:

Propaganda on an immense scale is here to stay. Technological advance may have made this as important to diplomacy as the invention of gunpowder to the military… We still write diplomatic notes, but we try to reach directly into as many foreign homes as we can.  Every other major power is doing the same... I am convinced that unless the United States continues to utilize this new method we shall be left at the post by other countries which are becoming skilled in the use of mass media.

A few things about this. First is the use “propaganda.” I’ve written about the “propaganda of propaganda” (extended audio version here, and I hope to expand the subject into an academic paper), and the misuse of the word. The quote above is from a time when the word did not always carry the baggage it has today. Propaganda was not inherently deceitful and often required a qualifier—ours, there, good, bad, etc.—otherwise it could be interchangable with today’s “information” or “communications” with the erudite understanding that communicating information is intended to influence.

One example of the neutrality of the term comes from 1938. Pushing back on a Congressional plan to establish a US government radio operation aimed at Latin America in response to (seemingly successful) German influence operations (radio, diplomatic, economic, and cultural) across the southen nations, the president of the National Association of Broadcasters, a US trade association representing over 400 radio operators, led the effort to block the government’s (Congress’s, really) effort. The association’s central argument was succinct: “that the [US] radio industry already provides ample technical and artistic facilities for South American propaganda broadcasting.”⁴ No one can claim this “propaganda” was to be deceitful.

I can list plenty of other examples after the war where the word is neutral. There were frequent statements along the lines of “truth is the best propaganda.” Edward R. Murrow is famously cited as saying that in 1963, but others said the exact or similar words for nearly two decades before. William Benton, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, 1945-1947, who oversaw a portfolio vastly greater than the USIA Director ever did, said, “The best propaganda in the world is the truth.”⁵ It wasn’t just an American idea. In June 1945, a Romanian newspaper editor closed his editorial about his of the US press attaché in Bucharest with this line: “In an honest, democratic world, objective information is the best propaganda, the only efficient one.”⁶

Back to the quote above. The statement was made by George V. Allen in an address delivered at Duke University on December 10, 1949, entitled “Propaganda: A Conscious Weapon of Diplomacy.”

I should note a kind of footnote here that relates to my recent post about the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In the post, I pointed out that a career foreign service officer has never been confirmed to be the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. I also shared the work of a Russian researcher that discussed the differences in hiring qualifications between USIA Directors and this undersecretary. George Venable Allen served as a US ambassador before serving as the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, succeeding William Benton. He then went overseas as an Ambassador again and later served as the Director of the US Information Agency.

Allen’s caution about being “left at the post” were overcome. Recent decades, however, shows the excerpt above and his broader Duke address include useful reminders for present legislators and policymakers. Allen did not narrowly argue on the need to “counter” the Russians or Chinese, but that there was a broader need to proactively engage abroad. “Our information, or propaganda, activity is by no means directed solely at peoples behind the Iron Curtain.” Today, being reactionary and narrow is the norm.

1. Who remembers the Lincoln Group and Leonie Industries, for example? The not-so-temporary outsourcing of the skills and capabilities continues to limit us today. See https://mountainrunner.us/2009/08/dod_ig_report/.

2. I want to say the second article was on the front page but below the fold of the print edition. The WaPo site doesn’t provide the ability to see the print version like the NYT does. If it does, let me know.

3. In my notes somewhere I probably have something on about when the correction appeared.

4. The same people who opposed this pre-war effort as redundant to commercial efforts later supporting the government effort after the war. The change in attitude came from acknowleding an accessibility issue: there were countries (think: markets) where commercial operations, setting aside the lone non-profit broadcaster, couldn’t reach or had no incentive to reach. But, in 1938, there were a handful of US broadcasters listened to operated internationally and they treated the ability as an experiment. While the Germans published their radio programming schedules in local papers, the US broadcasters essentially just hurled electrons south without much interest because the only real return on investment was experience and evolving the technology.

5. This was during an NBC University of the Air broadcast program broadcast December 15, 1945. Benton, William Stone, Director of the Office International Information and Cultural Affairs, and Loy Henderson, Director of Near Eastern and African Affairs, were discussing “Our Foreign Policy” with program host Sterling Fisher. Part of Benton’s pitch was necessary legislative authorization of the post-war international information and cultural programs, the former of which had arrived at State following an executive order of August 31, 1945 (which happened to be the same day Benton was asked to take the job of assistant secretary).

6. The editor was Emil Serghie and his editorial was dated June 22, 1945. The source is the November 1945 edition of “The Outpost,” the in-house newsletter of the Office of War Information.