Disinformation

In the world of espionage, two obvious tasks are spying on other side and keeping the other side from spying; but there is a third task: feeding wrong information to the opponent to deceive him. For this task to be effective the messenger must be credible, like the spies of the other side themselves are recruited to feed back wrong information. British intelligence service claimed it had every German spy on its payroll during WWII for this purpose.

So, in the age of information, it must come as no surprise that these old techniques of the espionage world are now practiced in the governments of so-called modern democracies as a way of control. A little after the September 11th terrorist attack, it came out that U.S. military was planting disinformation in the mainstream news media in the forms of legitimate news items as part of their so-called war on terrorism, the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) it was called. There was some grumbling among journalists that their integrity was compromised, OSI officially closed down, but its practices were generally justified as a necessity of war and as another legitimate weapon for defeating the enemy, the weapon of deception.

But now it is becoming more and more apparent, that these practices of disinformation are getting a more wide-spread use. From the paid commentators that pushed Bush’s agenda in the public opinions, to now these Public-Relation video segments produced by U.S. government disguised as news items and presented by media as real news.

In the societies that want to keep the appearance of freedom of press and democracy, there is only one way to make the interest of few appear as the interest of many, and that is to manufacture the public opinion by bending the truth, distorting it, and creating an alternate reality for the millions of their captive audience. In the age of information, news media has become the “trusting” double agents feeding the unsuspecting side, the people, disinformation.