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A Lie by Omission

Entry 2343, on 2024-05-20 at 13:06:48 (Rating 4, News)

According to my search engine's (Brave Search) AI summary, a lie by omission is "a type of deception where someone withholds important information or fails to correct a misconception, rather than directly telling a falsehood. This type of deception can be just as harmful as a direct lie, as it can lead to misunderstandings, mistrust, and damage to relationships".

I don't always trust AI, but that matches the dictionary definition fairly closely, and is also close to the way I would have defined it, so I am accepting it. But why was I interested in the concept at all? Because I have noticed recently that it is arguably the primary mechanism the mainstream media use to deceive us.

You might say at this point "What is this? The media are there to inform us, not deceive us!", and you are quite right. But they're not doing what they are supposed to do, and I have noticed it more recently, especially though the use of the lies by omission.

So let me give a few examples...

A few weeks back there was a political poll here in New Zealand where the left-wing opposition scored better than the new government. TVNZ started their evening news bulletin with this, and spent a large fraction of the news discussing it and generally denigrating the government by saying they had already lost the trust of voters.

A few days after that there was another poll which showed the government had slightly increased their share of the vote and would comfortably win an election if one was held at that time. What did we get from TVNZ? Crickets. Not a mention of it, and certainly not an extensive discussion (even if I missed the mention).

The poll was reported in various "alternative" news sources, so it wan't like it was unknown to the media. TVNZ just didn't report it because they didn't want to. Note that at no point did they directly lie about anything, but they didn't need to. It was a lie by omission.

Last night, also on TVNZ (probably the worst major media company in New Zealand) there was a program about "misinformation". It featured various people, including academics, and others who work at the "Disinformation Project", an allegedly independent organisation set up by the previous government during COVID to stop the spread of conspiracies and other poorly supported information.

The Disinformation Project itself has a reputation amongst many people as being more a source of disinformation than an organisation effectively blocking it, and the tone of the program was what I would call hysterical, but that wasn't the big problem. You guessed it, the real problem was more lies by omission.

It discussed several problematic events, such as the January 6 riot in the US, with ominous comments about the far-right. It showed pictures of Trump, and scenes from Nazi rallies in conjunction with what it viewed as serious threats to democracy. But it didn't show a single event inspired by far-left ideology, like the BLM riots which caused many times more deaths and damage.

So without actually saying it, the program seemed to imply that Trump is a Nazi and responsible for various far-right incidents. These are more subtle (actually really clumsy and obvious, if I'm realistic) lies by omission.

I often do a test of the average person's exposure to media propaganda by asking them about sexual abuse claims against Donald Trump. Everyone has heard of these, so I then ask them what have they heard about Biden? No one has heard a thing. So I ask them to go and search for these names: Tara Reade, Lucy Flores, Ally Coll, Sofie Karasek, Amy Stokes, Caitlyn Caruso, DJ Hill, Vail Kohnert-Yount, who are all women who have made claims against Biden. And what about the comments made by his daughter and other young girls?

How much have we heard about that in the media? Very little or nothing.

I agree it is entirely possible that these claims are false or exaggerated, but I equally have to say that similar claims against Trump could be also. So why are they not both equally well known? Because the media are lying to us, by omission.

I'm not saying ignore the mainstream media and get all your news from Facebook, X, or even right-oriented sources like the Platform. What I am saying is that you shouldn't believe a word any of these sources tell you, unless it is also available in sources which are biased in the opposite direction.

For example, the claims against Biden which I mentioned above originally came from an alternative source. Naturally, I didn't fully trust them so I went looking in conventional media as well. They weren't obvious there, but they did exist, in places like NPR and the Guardian. When I find mentions of a subject like this (no matter how deeply buried) in sources who would normally support Biden, as well as in the more suspect places, I can be fairly confident they are genuine.

It's really quite Orwellian isn't it: the news is designed to make you less well informed, the Disinformation Project is there to spread disinformation, and the world's most trusted news sources have never had lower levels of trust. There's a good reason for this: the media is corrupt. They're not always wrong, but they will only tell you what you want to hear. That's a lie by omission!

Comment 1 (7649) by EK on 2024-05-20 at 16:13:39: Tell me something new.

Comment 2 (7650) by OJB on 2024-05-20 at 20:28:40:

You might be surprised about how many people do not realise this though. I’ve heard some people take that garbage on TVNZ last night seriously. Incredibly some people still believe what they see on TV! :)

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