Somewhere in the Skies - Mininformation, Disinformation, and a Deeper Look at the Condon Report

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

This episode is in Loving Memory of Ryan's mother, Susan Sprague, who passed away on May 3rd. She was one of our biggest fans and supporters and we will miss her dearly. Read full obituary, written by Ryan, and where donations can be made to Sue's favorite charities: https://rebrand.ly/6fq0xke On episode 355 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Chrissy Newton returns to give her presentation, titled, Misinformation, Disinformation, and the Deeper Look at the Condon Report. Public Relations practitioner and podcaster for The Debrief, Newton, will take a closer look at what disinformation, misinformation and fake news is, in contrast to past historical documents and events such as The Condon Report and The Robertson Panel. Featuring video interview clips with former Politico journalist, Bryan Bender, and defense writer, Tim McMillan, from The Debrief. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try and get on your way to being your best self. Visit: www.betterhelp.com/skies Follow Chrissy Newton at: https://lnk.bio/G2vh Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies PayPal: [e-mail] Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2024. Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Part of the eOne Podcast Network and produced by Lionsgate Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan Sprague. Hi, everybody, Chrissy Newton here. First of all, I like to start off by saying thank you for joining me today. And also a big thank you to Ryan Sprague. Today, I'm going to be speaking about what is fake news versus what is disinformation and misinformation? We live in a time right now where especially within the UAP topic, it's really, really hard to decipher maybe who's telling the truth or what is fact, especially with the whistleblower David Grush and all the claims that are coming forward. So I thought I would break down what is disinformation and misinformation along with fake news

and have people such as Brian Bender, former Politico writer, journalist, and also an amazing journalist and co-founder of the debrief and friend of mine, Tim McMillan, to help me along with this presentation and break down these terms for all of us. So first of all, I would like to start off with my bio. I am a public relations practitioner, producer, and host, and podcaster. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree at York University in Toronto. I also have my postgrad and corporate communications and public relations. I am the founder of vocab communications, a PR firm that's operated across North America for over 14 years.

Clients of mine consist of the debrief, aerial phenomenon, a movie directed by Randall Nickerson that some of you might be familiar with. Jacques Valet, Microsoft, Rexall, Columbia Sportswear, Paramount Plus, just to name a few. And I've been very grateful to work with all of these clients throughout my 15-year career. I am a partner, podcaster, and director of media and PR for the debrief. And you can go to the debrief.org if you're not familiar with that outlet. We are science, technology, and pro-academically pro-UAP-based news site. I also have my podcast, Rebelliously Curious with Chrissy Newton and Alt-Pop Repeat.

All of these can be found on YouTube. Rebellysly Curious is a video podcast, but it is also streamed on all major streaming platforms. First off, I would like to define the term fake news. And what does fake news mean? Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity or making money through advertising revenue. The reason why I think it's important that we understand what is fake news, because we hear

that conversation, we hear that buzz term all the time from former president Donald Trump all the way then to the average news media and the average person, because fake news does exist. Before I get into my clip with Brian Bender, former Politico-Journalist, I wanted to break down a chart and look at the different branches of fake news and how other forms of misinformation are weaponized into fake news. Let's start off with the first bubble on the top, in which is satire. Some fake news sites may claim to be satirical or satirist, but do not openly advertise themselves as satire. therefore suggesting an intent to deceive.

An example of one of these outlets would be the onion. The onion is a satirical outlet. It's not a news outlet. It's not there to deceive, but it also is there to make light and shed light in a humorous way about social political or just other political or other things that are happening around the world by using humor to do so.

Thankfully, though, we know the onion is not, one of those types of outlets that are looking to deceive us, but they are using satire. And sometimes those satirical jokes can be shared as actual news when they're not. They're just jokes. Now let's look at propaganda. Propaganda can be packaged as fake news for the results in both A, untrue, and B, designed to appear real. We see lots of different propaganda from all different countries, not just North America. We see this within World War II.

We know that there is a drastic amount of propaganda that would happen within many political parties. So we do know that propaganda is still very prevalent today and does feed into the fake news system. So now we get into misleading information or out of context information. Misleading information or out of context information does not on its own constitute fake news. this kind of information is not entirely fabricated, but it can exist within a news report that is based on actual events that occurred. Sometimes we see misleading information on tons of news reports. Sometimes things are not fact-checked appropriately.

Sometimes they're not looked into. Sometimes that something is misunderstood or misquoted. So there is misleading information, and it is out of context, unfortunately. There's times where we see interviews and only snippet of it's have been actually taken, but it really doesn't actually prove the point that the person was speaking about. It was taken out of context. So we do see that a lot and it does factor into fake news and we should be mindful of that. Now we get to conspiracy theories.

Oh, the wonders of conspiracy theories. A conspiracy theory is an explanation or interpretation of events that is based on questionable or non-existent evidence of supposed secret plan by a group. And often these groups are considered the media or the government, and they're there potentially from what conspiracy theorists would say were to obscure events or historical events. Now we get into clickbait. Clickbait pieces are articles that feature headlines designed to get people to click on them, often by presenting a misleading or warped sense of what the post is about. The New York Post is a really, really great example of that. We see tons of clickbait lines for them. Again, this goes back into the definition where we're using fake news to increased revenue. So this is the idea that when clicking a post, when the headline doesn't actually maybe match what the article is about, but it's getting you interested and it's using a clickbait line. I think a lot of us have fallen for it. And we are media outlets use it from, you know, small media outlets. We call those. tier one, some of the best media outlets, all the way down to tabloids that end up using clickbait

lines to make more money. Now let's get into the clip with Brian Bender, former Politico writer. You mentioned fake news. And obviously for any of us who've spent our professional lives in this business, that's very much a loaded word. And I think it's totally misunderstood. I mean, to me, fake news is someone for propaganda purposes who sets out from Go to publish misinformation, the publishings that are not true, or maybe are half true, but are presented in a way, put out there in a way that is, like I said, from the get-go pushing a particular point of view or agenda. It is factually bankrupt.

That to me is fake news. Now, the term fake news has been applied to all kinds of media outlets from the New York Times to Politico to, you know, it's sort of become a moniker for like, oh, the lefty media that is pushing fake news. It's not what, you know, major media organizations do. It doesn't mean they don't get things wrong. And as soon as they get something wrong, that's what. when the people pass and they say, look, fake news. But that's different than making it up from the beginning, right? I mean, if you're in the course of reporting, trying to get to the truth and you get bamboozled by a source,

or you're human, you make a mistake, people see that, pull that out and say, oh, look, fake news. That's very different from somebody who's literally their job is to get up there and throw bullshit out there on purpose every day to basically mislead. And so, you know, when I hear fake news, I'm like, well, what do you mean by that? Because to me, I think most people just don't understand the difference. And there's a real difference. Now I'd like to fast forward back to 1953 and talk about the Robertson panel. In 1952, a significant number of UFO sightings were reported in the United States, prompting the CIA to propose the creation of a group of expert scientists to investigate the phenomenon.

The resulting panel led by Howard P. Robertson, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology consisted of other physicists, an astronomer, and a rocket engineer. In 1953, the Robertson panel convened for three days and conducted interviews with military officials in Jay Ellen Heineck, the head of Project Blue Book. Additionally, they scrutinize photographic and film evidence of UFOs. Now I'd like to play a little clip from Jay Allen Heineck speaking about his experience on the Robertson panel. I was called into the meeting on Thursday. The panel members were seated around this table.

It was a rather somber and impressive occasion, actually. I was a junior member, and I remember feeling considerably nervous and apprehensive about being in front of this powerhouse of scientists. But then for the past four years, I had been scientific advisor to the U.S. Air Force on this very problem. There were two films that were of particular interest to the panel. at that time. One was a film taken by a Navy officer while on vacation in Utah, near Tremontan, Utah.

And the other was a film taken in Great Falls, Montana by the owner of the local baseball team. The Utah film had already been subjected to some thousand or so man hours of analysis by the Navy's photographic interpretation laboratory. So the panel got up in their chairs and crouched around the walls to examine the films, they asked to have the films run several times, as a matter of fact.

Now, the Navy had, on the basis of their detailed analysis of the Utah films, they had concluded that the objects shown on the films could not be birds, balloons, aircraft, and so forth, but indeed that they were self-luminous, unidentified objects. Despite this conclusion, the panel rejected it and concluded that the objects were birds. They couldn't be unidentified, therefore they had to be birds. I came away from the meeting and from the room with the distinct feeling, however, that the panel had deliberately moved to debunk the whole subject and not to give it the serious scientific attention which it deserved.

The panel's conclusion, astronomical and meteorological phenomenon responsible for a significant portion, approximately 90% of the reported CUP sightings. No obvious security threats. Could pose an indirect threat by overwhelming standard military communications due to public interest in the subject. No evidence to support the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Now let's fast forward to 1966 to 1968 where we had the Condon Report. It's historically important that we remember the Condom Report and reference back to it because potentially this was disinformation that was recommended by the CIA to be used against civilians as a disinformation campaign to scrutinize people, along with discredit the UAP topic.

In 1966, the Air Force requested the creation of a second committee to explain the most noteworthy data collected by Project Blue Book. After conducting a thorough analysis of 59 UFO sightings, the committee released its findings in the form of the publication, scientific study of identified flying objects, which became referred to as the Condon report. Edward C. Condon, a physicist, led the investigation. The National Academy of Sciences, formed a special committee to review the Condon report. We have to remember that the Cold War was very real at that time.

And there were reasons why the Condon report did have some recommendations. It doesn't mean that they were right, but some of those reasons were to help to decrease their vulnerability, to being easily swayed or influenced by malicious propaganda that has harmful intentions, presents numerous opportunities for exploitation from the Russian government during the Cold War. Now let's get into some recommendations by the CIA. One, was a public education campaign could be undertaken? Programmer reduced public gullibility.

Psychologists take part in a mass psychology, Dr. Healy-Contrtle, from Princeton University was suggested. Use of mass communication and advertising experts. Radio broadcaster Arthur Garfrey was suggested as he could reach the masses on certain levels. The use of Walt Disney cartoons and Jam Handy Coe, who made War II training films in motion pictures and slide stripes were suggested.

Use of amateur astronomers as talent to spread the gospel. focus on training and debunking, proper recognition of balloons, aircraft, reflection, meteors, and fireballs. The last recommendation was business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations which show a documentary or motion picture, showcasing true cases, first, the mystery, and second, the explanation, as they thought it would be powerful. So now let's move into what is misinformation and what is disinformation. My friend Tim McMillan will be helping me to break down these terms along with them. Talk a little bit about historical past references that he found to be very interesting and also for myself, very enlightening. So I'd love to share them with you as well.

Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. Misinformation is false or accurate information, and it's getting the facts wrong. Now let's move into my clip with Tim McMillan, the debrief co-founder, and also an amazing defense writer. Hey, everyone. Ryan Sprague here, host of Somewhere in the Skies. If you've ever thought about supporting us, we have great two easy options for you right now. If you listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, you can click the subscribe button at the top of your Apple feed. Or you can join our Patreon at patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Both of these options give you the same benefits, early access to the main show, bonus episodes and content, and priority to ask our guests, your listener questions.

So to help support somewhere in the skies, click that subscribe button on Apple or visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you so much for your support. keep looking up. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply.

The terms misinformation and disinformation. They're kind of used interchangeably a lot of times, but they are two totally separate things, at least in the context of how they apply in-in-vo operations, that type of stuff. So misinformation is actually a lot more prevalent. That's a lot more what you see out there. But that relates to information that is incorrect or false, but unintentionally shared. So this is people sharing information that they're. misinformed on. So they're not intentionally trying to deceive anybody. They're just sharing bad

information, but they believe it. And so misinformation is kind of the benign of the two siblings here, whereas disinformation is something that someone is telling to intentionally deceive someone else or kind of in the context of how it applies today. Really, you're trying to deceive a larger mass, a populist society. You're trying to deceive somebody. And so disinformation is very much an intentional thing. In short, it's a lie. And you're telling a lie, but you have an intended purpose behind it.

Now, the goal behind disinformation, though, is to initiate the spread of misinformation. So they're very closely related, but that's where all disinformation campaigns, let's say. So if you're organizing something, your goal is, ultimately to put bad info intentionally deceive people by putting bad info and then get them to share that organically on their own. They're misinformed because that's kind of how it spread,

and that makes it more authentic. Because when somebody's telling you something that's false, but they believe to be true, it comes across very true. So you're more likely to upset. So the concept of disinformation and misinformation are two different things. And particularly one kind of the best ways to relate to it because most people when they think disinformation, so the intentional sharing of bad info to deceive people, that that comes from the government, you know, psychological warfare, which it can and does. And I'm sure we'll get into that. But, you know, disinformation is around us all the time in other contexts, but we accept it. And the most obvious example is in marketing. You know, marketing every day, we don't think of marketing as

disinformation. But, you know, take for example a car commercial. So your average car commercial, if they're trying to sell you that car, you know, they would show you what the car does, the specifications, here's its performance characteristics, here's what it's made with. That's not what they show you in a car commercial. You know, oftentimes you see very little of the car or a fleeting glimpse, but you have some celebrity. And there was a great one. I don't remember what car manufacturer did it off the top of my head. It was a great one with Matthew McConaughey where he's sitting in the car. It was like a bowl in the middle of road and he's waxing poetic.

And really, you see Matthew McConaughey the whole time. You don't even see the car. And so we don't think of that in the context of disinformation, but in fact, what it is doing is trying to, really the more cunning side of deceptive disinformation is it's striking to the core of psychopathic. It's striking to the core of people's psychiatry. It's trying to elicit a psychological response.

In the case of that commercial, it's reaching out with the people to think, oh, wow, if I buy this car, I'll look as cool as Matthew Conahe. One of the best, I think one of my favorite examples of disinformation and how it turns into misinformation, even later down the road, is during World War II. The British Royal Air Force in 1939 had invented the first airborne. radar systems. So air intercept radars that were in the planes. And so before this, you didn't have yet. There was some ground-based radar, but we're really on the cusp of radar technology. But they had developed it and put it in planes. And where this really came into handy was night aerial combat. So flying at night and intercepting German fighters at night that were coming to attack Great Britain. They wanted to keep that technology secret. So they didn't want

Germany to know that they had invented this technology because once somebody knows it exists, somebody's going to try to replicate it, or they're going to try to come up with a way to combat it. So they initiated a campaign where they put up, you know, they had flyers, posters put out, they even had interviews and newspapers where they said the reason that they're, the British Royal Air Force night fighters were getting so many night kills on German planes is because, and they even used one specific pilot, they attributed it to his, his diet, his carrot-rich diet where he ate a lot of carrots that had vitamin A and vitamin A improves your vision, particularly night sight. And so they put this out there.

And if you look on the internet, you can find these great, you know, posters that are, you know, help us win the war, eat your carrots and greens. And, you know, vitamin A improves your night's sight. This was all not true. It was all intentional misinformation to deceive the jury. Germans from realizing what the technology they had. And it was put out there in the public space. It later, you know, has become misinformation because even as a kid growing up, I could remember my grandma telling me, you know, make sure you eat all your carrots. It'll help your eyesight. I don't, unfortunately, she's passed away so he can't ask her, hey, did you know that that

wasn't true? But the more likely explanation is she had heard it from that, you know. My grandfather was in World War II. She was, you know, in her early 20s during this time frame, she would have heard it. And so she retold it to her brand kids and it just kept going on. So that's how disinformation become misinformation and that example that's going on for decades. There's probably people that right now they'll hear this and go, wait, care is on a group outside? You know, I've heard that in my life. And so it really all stems from this disinformation campaign. So when you talk about what laws restrict the goal.

government in particular. So the federal government from sharing disinformation, so intentionally trying to deceive people. The first thing that's really important to understand is there is no walls that prohibit them from intentionally trying to disinform foreign nations or people who aren't U.S. citizens. And so they certainly can and do target adversaries, Russian, and China, with disinformation to try for a host of reasons. But in terms of targeting, you've, U.S. citizens, the public, and the media. So that kind of spirals out. So all of these included, there's a couple of legal prohibitions on it. And all of these are really kind of wishy-washy. You know, it's a slippery slope here. The first one would be the Posse Comitatis Act. So, and this was

signed in 1878, so over 100 years old. And what this does is this prohibits the United state's military from operating on U.S. soil in an official capacity such as law enforcement or a domestic military force. Now, there's a caveat to that. There's a couple exceptions to when the U.S. military can operate on U.S. soil. One of them is for enforcing federal laws. So you'll see U.S. military, particularly the Coast Guard, that helps out with drug smuggling enforcement, stuff like that on the border. So you will see them. and they can enforce federal laws. The other is during emergencies.

So, you know, any kind of natural disasters. And the caveat in relation to disinformation would be important is that they are allowed to operate and function, you know, in their official capacity to protect federal property and federal functions. So there is that slippery slope with just that particular act where you could say, you could particularly. potentially the Department of Defense going, well, you know, we're engaged in disinformation here, but that's to protect a secret program that we're working on or protect a classified facility, something like that. And under the POSCOMONATAS, they would be okay with it. However, you know, the other one that would come up just for the Department of Defense specifically would be, there is law in Title X, a U.S. Code, so Title X relates to the middle.

military in the Department of Defense, which prohibits the DOD from publicly engaging or engaging the domestic audience in propaganda, disinformation, or, you know, trying to covert influence. This law specifically prohibits them from engaging in it and, you know, using federal funds to do it, I should say. So federal FOIA, you can't do it. They can't use any federal funding to do it. So that alone is where it makes it illegal for the DOD to engage in it. The intelligence community, so now we're talking about the 19 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, NSA, all of these. They operate under a different section of U.S. Code, so Title 50.

Title 10 is the DOD. Title 50 is the intelligence community. There, again, is this weird slippery slope. Under federal law, somebody like the CIA is not allowed to operate on U.S. soil. So they engaged in COVID operations on foreign soil. However, there was an executive order signed by President Reagan in 1981 that expanded the intelligence community's authority and capabilities and allowed the intelligence agency to engage in operations on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens under certain parameters.

So counterintelligence, this type of stuff. However, even though that order has been kind of widely criticized, because it expanded so much of what the intelligence community could do. It did, however, explicitly limit the intelligence community from having the ability to engage in any covert action directed to influence the U.S. politics, the political process, public opinion, policies, or media. So that executive order both expanded their authority, but specifically limited them to where the, and the television can't target the U.S. populace with this information. They're not supposed to. I would put it that way.

I'd like to say thank you for joining me today, and you can follow me on all social media platforms on Instagram, at being Chrissy Newton, on Twitter and Facebook, Chrissy Newton. And you can also go to chrissynewton.com to learn a little more about me. And also, don't forget to follow us at the debrief at the debrief.org. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One podcast network.