What is disinformation? The answer varies

By Hafijur Rahman

Recently, an article in the Wall Street Journal accuses China of "pouring billions of dollars annually into a global campaign of disinformation" with tactics, ranging from fake authors to bot armies, to promote its geopolitical aims.

The term "disinformation" is currently one of the wildly propagated words, wielded extensively, not least by the Western media and its political elites, when they seek to discredit one's claim or unleash an attack on information deviating from the mainstream ideals. Trump's relentless denigration of the established Western media as "fake news" further popularized the conversation over disinformation and propaganda.   

Disinformation, by definition, is false information deliberately and often surreptitiously sent to a rival power or media by a government entity to mislead or influence public opinion or obscure the truth. In light of this definition, disinformation has a long historical legacy. The revolution of information technology, which began in earnest at the beginning of the 21st century, has added novel dimensions to this malpractice.

The notorious Operation Mockingbird, a clandestine U.S. government effort allegedly operated by the CIA to implant pro-U.S. propaganda in American media and front groups, fits perfectly to this defining feature of disinformation. Starting in the 1950s, just at the beginning of America's Cold War with the Soviet Union, the CIA began to "hire and contract students and people in the media to write false stories or embellish stories to favor the U.S. government." British author Deborah Davis claims that Operation Mockingbird extensively affected the activities of front organizations and enlisted prominent American journalists into a propaganda network.

Under the operation, CIA support of front groups "to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes" was first exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. "The CIA and the Media," written by Carl Bernstein in 1977, detailed the scope of the CIA-sponsored operation which involved paying some journalists more than $500,000 for their work while also engaging in more extensive relationships with the CIA, including sharing notebooks. Despite the lack of supporting proof, some claim that these activities and front companies are still operating today.

In its current strategic competition with China, characterized by some as a "new Cold War," the United States has continued to take pages from its old Cold War propaganda playbook and apply against China. According to the report by The American Prospect, under the China-centered America COMPETES Act that has already been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, a whopping $500 million was earmarked by Congress for media outlets to churn out negative news coverage on China.

In a flagrant deviation from the principles of "media independence" and "media objectivity" that are frequently self-proclaimed by the U.S., the act has allowed the U.S. government to manipulate and fund their broadcasts heavily, in resemblance to what it did during the McCarthy era in the 1950s, to direct disinformation against China. A majority of the half-billion-dollar fund would go to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), a state-run media service that oversees Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe (RFE), and Radio Free Asia (RFA). It is reminiscent of the Cold War era's Smith-Mundt Act that earmarked 30 million dollars, with the stated aim to "promote a better understanding of the United States in other countries."

However, beyond this widely accepted form of definition, there is an additional aspect in stipulating the term "disinformation" – mostly predominant in the West. It has widely been seen across the Western media and political establishment to dismiss anti-mainstream and anti-establishment narratives as disinformation. For the U.S., the legitimacy of establishment politics and the vested interests, a certain set of elites at the top of the power mechanism that the system has long been serving, largely depends upon the longevity of Americans' blind subscription to the pro-establishment narratives.

For that, the current system, often described as "of the one percent, by the one percent, and for the one percent," needs to be fed with manufactured and manipulated narratives in favor of shielding their sordid wealth-extracting empire. In this regard, the vast corporate media machine sponsored and patronized by the establishment moguls works as echo chambers to implant and ingrain those establishment-serving narratives. Recently published "Twitter files" have revealed how a subtly-built collusion among the American establishment elites, media, social networks, and security agencies is actively in play to suppress what has gone against established notions and amplify purported ideas that feed their self-serving elitist system.     

A similar pattern is also being played out in the U.S.'s desperate efforts to maintain ever-eroding global hegemony. The United States has a strong tendency to instantly dismiss any sort of narrative that stands in contrast or is critical of its hegemonic strategic assertions across the world. The recent U.S. State Department report that accuses the Chinese government of expanding disinformation efforts fits this pattern perfectly. When China points the finger at the U.S. misdeeds, it's disinformation, but when Washington does it, it's value promotion.

Hafijur Rahman, a special commentator for CGTN, is a columnist and Security and Strategic analyst, working in a prominent Strategic Studies Center in Bangladesh.