Image courtesy of Newsroom.Carlton. CA
The calendar continues to mark the time between now and the 2024 general election and, the dangers of misinformation and disinformation are growing.
As reported this past week by the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, a Colorado legislative committee has narrowly endorsed a proposed $150,000 study by the Colorado Attorney General (AG) on ways to prevent and combat the spread of misinformation and disinformation. But the endorsement came after some major concerns were voiced regarding whether the measure threatens First Amendment free speech rights.
“I want to be clear, no one is trying to curtail free speech — on the contrary,” said Sen. Lisa Cutter (D-Jefferson County) sponsor of SB 24-084. “And I want to remind people this is a study, not legislation allowing the AG to determine anything.”
The bill was passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a three-to-two party-line vote. It requires the office of Attorney General Phil Weiser to study “how the internet and other media channels, including social media platforms, are used to share and spread misinformation and disinformation.”
The bill isn’t necessarily predicated on finalizing a report by the general election. It sets a March, 2025 report deadline. The bill would empower the AG to examine the legal framework governing the regulation of speech and online activities. That framework wouldn’t just include the Colorado constitution and the U.S. Constitutions, but to Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act.
Interestingly enough, the bill, if passed in its current form, would also require the AG’s office to establish an educational initiative “to encourage respectful engagement and discourse” and to develop a resource bank for schools, organizations and community leaders to “facilitate productive and honest conversations regarding statewide and national issues to help people find common ground.”
While this is described only in general terms, it may have some common ground with an initiative on which several news organizations, including Ark Valley Voice will be at work on this year called “The Public Square.”
The bill now heads to the Colorado Senate Appropriations Committee.
Circa 1964, I attended El Camino Community College in Torrance, California. For a kid from the old dirt-street town of Dillon, Colorado, that experience was a real eye-opener regarding politics and propaganda.
To describe the atmosphere of the early 1960s at El Camino, each day after classes, I would find political propaganda from one of the local Communist or Nazi groups stuck under the windshield wiper of my car.
At that time as well, I took two semesters of sophomore psychology under Professor George Stanley, who (interestingly enough) served in the lonely position of tail gunner on a B26 Bomber in WWII. That experience, he claimed. served to clarify one’s purpose in life.
Not the typical professor, he spent several weeks teaching us the psychology of political propaganda. According to Professor Stanley, propaganda doesn’t always reveal itself as blatant disinformation or outright lies.
For example, a newspaper can emphasize or de-emphasize the importance of an article by placing it on the front page or moving it closer to the classified ads (ask me how I know). A writer can “slant” an article by cherry-picking their information or by simply changing the tenor of the wording, which used to be known as “spinning the facts.” Without going into more detail, you get the idea.
To quote Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister, Dr. Josef Goebbels, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” That is indeed the object of modern political propaganda and of that, we should all be very afraid.
Gary E. Goms
Buena Vista