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00:00In these final days, misinformation, unproven claims, often deliberately spread, in many
00:05cases about alleged voter fraud, have run rampant, also notably on the Internet, rather.
00:10And it's already laying the groundwork for Donald Trump and his allies to contest the
00:14election if they do come up short at the ballot box.
00:18For more, France 24's international affairs commentator Douglas Herbert joins me now on
00:22set.
00:23Hi, Doug.
00:24Hi, there.
00:25So, disinformation, of course, is not a new theme when it comes to recent elections, but
00:28it has become more sophisticated since 2020.
00:32Foreign actors seem to be more active than ever in their efforts to both pollute the
00:37landscape and also divide voters.
00:39Absolutely.
00:40Not just foreign, but domestic.
00:41Look, the whole thing.
00:43Bill Adair, who founded an organization called PolitiFact back in 2007, the ultimate fact
00:49checking network, basically says disinformation is now, in this election cycle, worse than
00:55he has ever seen it.
00:56When he founded PolitiFact, it was merely a matter of holding politicians in their speeches
01:01to account, taking things that they say and then rating them.
01:04Are they true, partly true, false, or pants on fire?
01:07It was a famous little rating they made up.
01:09That almost looks quaint by today's standards of judging politicians' statements in political
01:14speeches.
01:16The problem, he says, and others who are far more expert in fact checking than myself in
01:20disinformation, say that it's now emotions and feelings which have sort of trumped, excuse
01:27the pun, facts.
01:29And that facts themselves, when you present voters, people with facts, I'm not talking
01:35about alternative facts, but the actual facts, the consensual facts, it is seen as a fact
01:40could be seen as ideologically charged.
01:42They're not facts.
01:43They're subject to, do you have an agenda?
01:45What is that fact you're pushing on me?
01:48So even fact checking has become a suspect science for some.
01:53By the mere act of fact checking, you sort of label yourself in the eyes of those who
01:57are not susceptible to believing facts as someone who has a politically motivated and
02:03ideologically motivated agenda.
02:05Now look at some of the most blatant falsehoods, lies of this election cycle.
02:10Perhaps the most prominent, the ones that got the most headlines, were around the recent
02:14back to back hurricanes in the Southeast of the United States, uh, Helene and Milton.
02:19And what did we see in those cases?
02:20We saw literally conspiracies, conspiracies spread across the internet to the effect that
02:26these storms were created by Democrats in order to help Democrats with their electoral
02:31chances that they cut a swath through Trump voting areas specifically that they were actually
02:36created and formed by lasers, uh, the, these storms and sent just to create havoc to favor
02:42the Democrats created by Joe Biden, presumably, and the Democrats.
02:46Now that sounds, perhaps you roll your eyes, you say, oh, that's, that's outrageous.
02:49People are not going to believe that obviously.
02:51And yet the fact of the matter is because of the nature of disinformation today, because
02:55of the, the bubbles, the filter bubbles and the places people get their information or
02:59misinformation and disinformation as the case may be, they are so insulated from the outside
03:04world.
03:05So insulated from even, even having the reflex to look for or to question the information
03:11being fed to them in these filter bubbles that yes, they do believe it.
03:15I'll remind our viewers that there's a good size of America, chunk of America that still
03:19believes Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States.
03:22That was a quaint little lie, the birther theory way back when, uh, and they also believe
03:26Barack Obama is a Muslim, um, which he isn't, he's a Christian fact.
03:30So anyway, disinformation growing work worse.
03:33And it's also being abetted by Russia, Iran, China who are drawing on and even using Americans,
03:40Native Americans to propagate information on their behalf, to sow distrust, discord
03:46and doubts about the integrity of the US election process.