Or at least everyone should have known. In The New York Times Magazine is former InfoWars staffer Josh Owens:
[InfoWars host Alex] Jones told us to file a story that accused the police of harassment, lending credence to the theory that this community contained dangerous, potential terrorists. I knew this wasn’t the case according to the information we had. We all did. Days before, we spoke to the sheriff and the mayor of Deposit, N.Y., a nearby municipality. They both told us the people in Islamberg were kind, generous neighbors who welcomed the surrounding community into their homes, even celebrating holidays together.
The information did not meet our expectations, so we made it up, preying on the vulnerable and feeding the prejudices and fears of Jones’s audience. We ignored certain facts, fabricated others and took situations out of context to fit our narrative, posting headlines like:
Drone Investigates Islamic Training Center
Shariah Law Zones Confirmed in America
Infowars Reporters Stalked by Terrorism Task Force
Report: Obama’s Terror Cells in the U.S.
The Rumors Are True: Shariah Law Is Here!
It’s an fascinating article, and it’s also interesting in that Jones’ lawyer, in a divorce proceeding battle over kids, claimed the Jones persona and information site was nothing more than “entertainment.” Owens article puts a real dent in that assertion; it also suggests InfoWars is an early pioneer in the dubious, but pervasive, weaponizing of information in the digital age. For us old-timers, that would be propaganda, a practice best advanced by the Soviet Union and its successor, Russia.
If you were an audience for Jones and his InfoWars and took it at all seriously, well, welcome to the club, for I daresay that all of us, consumers and producers, have occasionally swallowed weaponized information – lies, half-lies, removal of context, other manipulations, etc – without realizing it. Some information sources try to catch, correct, and notify their audience of the mistakes made. Mainline media is best known for this. Others, like InfoWars, don’t consider standard journalistic practices, seeing this as all about making an ideological case, regardless of reality – or just making money.
How do your sources stack up?
