The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - A Historical Look at Information Manipulation in US Politics | S4Ep19

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Episode Objectives:Historical overview of political manipulation tactics used throughout America’s historyFive key examples of manipulation spanning different erasSix actionable strategies for navigating today's complex political landscapeGodspeed y'all.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy, or perhaps both. That's a quote from James Madison. In today's episode, a historical look at information manipulation in U.S. politics. I'll be sharing examples of information manipulation throughout the U.S. history to better understand today's information landscape. The primary audience is U.S. citizens, but this applies to everybody in the world, right? We're all connected. The objectives for today, we're going to provide a historical overview, right, of some tactics that have been used throughout history.

I'll share five examples from UF history of how information has been manipulated by the news, by the government, by citizens. And then I'm going to share some strategies that I found helpful for today's complex political landscape. I'm not an expert. I'm a 51-year-old guy with a family, and I found these helpful. And before we get into it, just a reminder, this is my two cents. It doesn't represent my current or former employers. So let's get to the ground rules. Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and let's get started with the People Process

Progress podcast. In 3, 2, 1. Welcome back to the People, Process, and Progress podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Pinnell. This is a show that has a people focus, shares best practice processes to help listeners like you make progress in their personal and professional lives. Here's a problem statement we're going to address today. The United States is awesome, right? We as a people have done so much for so many in the world. We haven't been perfect. We've made some grave mistakes. Among our mistakes, I think, is America's long history of political manipulation and its negative impact on

civic discourse, how we talk to each other as neighbors, as family and friends. Even in the amazing information age of 2025, we have a lot of work to do to become more informed citizens, me included. So let's share some historical examples. I had fun looking these up and learning more about some of these that I've heard of, some that I hadn't. And think about modern times as I talk about some of these things from 1-200 years ago. And then we'll circle back to some tips that I mentioned in the intro about what I found helpful to kind of tease out the nonsensical stuff from the truth. All right, y'all, let's go back to 1798, right? So just a few years after the Constitution's ratified, the landscape is divided, right? There's these Federalists, which are known

for support of a strong go figure, national government, federal government, led by John Adams, and their opposition, the Democratic-Republicans, which is, federal government, led by John Adams, and their opposition, the Democratic-Republicans, which is a weird name, which were known as the party emphasizing states' rights and favored strict interpretation of the Constitution that restricted federal power. So total opposites, kind of like today. They were led by Thomas Jefferson. So in a move based on fear of the French Revolution, and there could be dissent here in America, the Federals were like, you know what?

We need to consolidate this power, y'all. So the process they used was to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts. And these laws were designed to stifle criticism of the government. Not a good idea. And the act made it a crime to publish false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government. Imagine that in 2025. It was a direct attack on the First Amendment as stifling people's free speech is. Democratic Republican newspaper editors were targeted, arrested, jailed.

It was a clear attempt to silence the opposition. Sketchy, to say the least. Sounds kind of like some stuff we're going to talk about that happened in the 40s and 50s here in america let's talk about the progress or maybe lack thereof the acts were totally controversial fueled outrage major issue in the 1800 election jefferson won that one from the democratic dash republican party right and it's called the revolution of 1800 because it was the first peaceful transfer of power between opposing political parties. Isn't that crazy?

So it took this nonsense for the country to go, oh, crap, we should chill out. There was some damage done. Obviously, there's dissent. So the relevance of this is government outreach through creation of laws and political oppositions. No good. Fortunately, at the time, and hopefully more nowadays, to quote Officer Franklin from the movie The Hangover, not up in here.

Let's fast forward to the 19th century, the era of yellow journalism, a reporting style that values sensationalism over facts. It's like I'm talking about 2025, but I'm not. This is the late 19th century. At the time, there were some newspaper titans, William Randolph hearst and joseph pulitzer they were in a circulation war they want to sell more papers right sensationalism

sells papers they both got it public's hungry and i'm gonna use a quote here from ancient rome that describes the public not just then but kind of like now indeed quote indeed that is the nature of crowds the mob is either a humble slave or a cruel master. As for the middleweight of liberty, the mob can neither take it nor keep it with any respect for moderation or law. That's from Titus Libius, a Rome scholar. Man, that sounds like mobs online in person today, doesn't it? Okay, so back to 1898 when the USSs main exploded in the jimena harbor right hearst's new york journal and pulitzer's new york world papers were like rabid dogs right they're waiting for the bone

they can't wait and they didn't wait for a thorough investigation which as you know when people try to be first not correct they're usually wrong so they published stories that immediately blamed spain they exaggerated the headlines there was a rally cry remember the main let's go to war guess what president mckinley declared war because public outcry and there was a frenzy based on a lot of influence from these papers right and the cause of the explosion was never fully proven right to be spanish sabotage but we went to war over it. The Spanish-American War resulted in loss of life. The U.S. acquired Puerto Rico and the Philippines. And more relevant to today's episode, it demonstrated the immense power the media can have on manipulating public opinion and driving policy.

And to me, it's a stark reminder of the dangers of unchecked sensationalism and the importance of critical thinking for us individually. Right. And so there's a history in the media of fabricating exaggerating stories to push political agendas on all sides of the aisle. So nobody has a monopoly on doing better or worse, depending on which way these different media companies or, you know, online media, we don't really do a lot of print media these days, but you'll get it. So let's go to example three. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, the overreaching like, hey, nuclear wars coming, the Cold War was hot and heavy. It was near the end, right right getting into the

early 90s it did make for some great u.s versus russia movies but i digress so let's go back to early in the cold war the mid 40s and 50s senator mccarthy you remember this one it's similar to the scare that we heard from the federalists but it's a red scare it's communism's coming right and people were terrified of communist subversion, and it's in the government. And McCarthy explored that so much. He said, so-and-so is a communist, and they're with the Russians. I think I've heard that a few times over the past couple years, however long. So he used unsubstantiated claims and accusations and public hearings to target individuals without any evidence, right? Ruined careers, destroyed repudations.

People were scared, suspicious of their neighbor. It's crazy. Anyone suspected of having communist sympathies was vulnerable. Right? Which could just be a witch hunt. Huh, sounds like witches. Right? It sounds more like 2024 than 1954. Sheesh. All right, so eventually McCarthy overreached It sounds more like 2024 than 1954. Sheesh.

All right. So eventually McCarthy overreached when he accused the army of communist infiltration. Now, that's a big body of people with a lot of power. And McCarthy was like, hey, you're infiltrated in the army. He's like, let's not go there. You would think it would leave a lasting scar. And some of the sources I looked at this were like, it left a lasting scar, but we're still doing it, right? Just last year, we heard similar claims about different party candidates, potential staffers being puppets for shadowy regime or another country. Right?

And how is this related to now? Well, fear has been and will most likely continue to be used to control populations. It's a strong last 2024 election. And it may continue to happen but as i'll talk about later we can do our part to not feed into it the fourth example vietnam war right deeply divisive period american history nixon administration we know what happened there was gon to war in the back rooms, right? And in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, who was a military analyst, decided, I got to put this out there. That's also happened over the past couple of decades. So Ellsberg leaked papers. It let folks know the origins of the war,

what progress was actually happening versus what was reported, right? Are we winning? Are we not winning? Up for debate on your perspective, but the truth is out there. And so the administration was like, no, we got to get rid of it. We can't have that out there. And Supreme Court said, nope, press, you can publish those documents.

So it was all out there. The Pentagon Papers, they were called, right? And it highlighted the importance of transparency from the government of a free press. So it was kind of a dual, hey, we need to be open with the government needs to be open, free press. It was kind of a dual, hey, we need to be open with the government needs to be open, free press, we need to have access, right? In this case, to me, it was good objective reporting, right, that provided valued insight to American people.

So kudos to the Pentagon Papers. And it's another example to me how government, right, can manipulate the public through holding information like yellow cake that may or may not have been found or whether someone is or isn't fit for duty, right? Because we don't have all the inside scoop unless somebody from the inside gives us the scoop. And let's get to something that's more modern. So everyone with a smartphone, which is about 7 billion people, which is crazy thanks to the Google, has the ability to spread lies and information to everybody. You can just shoot stuff out there, right? Particularly true on the heavy hitters like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube.

A lot of people put super good-natured stuff, helpful content. I hope I do that. I've benefited from that when I've been anxious and depressed sometimes. There's great stuff out there, but a lot of other people put crap out there and just want to shock people, get clickbait, spread lies, because they like it. They're like, oh, another like, another subscriber, but not for the reasons that, hey, these are people I'm helping. It's just they're getting money or they're getting something else, right?

So to me, as AI grows and the algorithms adapt, they simply adapt, right, to what we want. And that means we're gonna get more and more negative if you keep clicking on those things. It's gonna be more sensational, more emotionally charged. And I wanna share a 2022 study from Dartmouth, right? And this is something that speaks to how powerful positive is versus how powerful negative is.

Quote, Dartmouth College's Naila, I'm going to kill these names, or Badeyeva and two colleagues, Lisa Cavanaugh and Daryl Dahl from University of British Columbia, they showed 300 NFL fans a description of a league-branded hoodie, right, in either a one-star or a five-star review by a Cleveland Browns fan. Then the participants answered questions about their similarity to the reviewer and their interest in buying the garment. And so when people thought they and the reviewer were alike,

their purchase intent was lower if they saw a one-star review rather than a five-star review. But when they felt unlike the reviewer, the one-star review generated significantly higher purchase intent than the five-star review. The conclusion was negative reviews can boost sales even more than positive ones. This is one example. I remember talking to a friend about this years ago where it was more like news stories, right?

Where generally a negative is going to get more views, more clicks these days if it's online than a positive one, which sucks for us as humans. So the progress I think we can make from this one is being careful, right? What we allow in our social media feeds, what we click on, who we follow, more importantly, what we take at face value as fact, right? We have a lot of power in the information that we take in on the different platforms, and we should exercise it, right? And as I've shared throughout this episode, political misinformation, it didn't start in the past couple of years,

five years, 10 years, but now in 2025 in this always on culture, nonsense can spread even faster. So Kevin, you may say, I'm listening to your podcast. What do you have to say about how to navigate TLA's political landscape? How do we find the truth? Well, I'm gonna share how I. What do you have to say about how to navigate today's political landscape? How do we find the truth? Well, I'm going to share how I found it helpful, right?

This is what I've done to kind of sleep well at night, feel like I talk through things and I'm objective and fair with a caveat that I will also continue to share funny memes. So a quick hit thing to do to try and find more truth is use fact-checking websites like Snopes, PolitiFact, or factcheck.org. And even those, you've got to balance how different or what they're saying is true or not true or partially true or mostly true or untrue and all the different grades they have.

But it's a start, right? And it's not asking your buddy who believes the same thing as you. It's also not getting feedback from someone who's completely opposite of you or doesn't like you. It's just a website you can go to. It's emotionless. Second thing is to focus on the decision and the outcome, not just the person who made it that you don't like. And I heard a great analogy of, you know,

someone may not really care or disagree with necessarily a decision that was made, a discussion that was had, but they just don't like the person. And then that clouds their view entirely. But just like in the business world, sometimes you have to make tough decisions and I'm speaking about changes in the government that are happening, it's happened in the past month. But in general, look more into just the headline, right? So that's the second, the third one, dig into the details beyond the headline that is intended for us to click on things, right? Or that someone cherry picked from a full story and said, Oh, did you

see this? And then you found out, yeah. And then 10 lines into it. I also read this where the headline said it was, it was this way, but they also said, but in addition to that, this, this, and that. So you got to dig into the details because the headline is just clickbait. And I know that from a strategy of trying to get people to click on a podcast title or a YouTube video. There's strategy to all of that. And boy, is that ramped up when it comes to folks where that's all they do. The fourth thing is be wary of overuse of adverbs of frequency.

These are the always, usually, often, rarely, sometimes, never. And as a bonus, if someone uses literally 100 times as they share a quote fact, I don't know if I'm going to believe that fact a whole lot. Use what's called the Socratic questioning. And so that's just asking open-ended questions, probing questions, encouraging critical thinking, uncovering underlying assumptions, guide someone right to reach their own conclusions. This is kind of like the coaching and consulting. I want to ask a question so that you lead yourself there, or I'm going to give more of my opinion, but it's not simply, oh, well, you gave that answer, but I'm just going to

tell you this is right because it comes from me. That's nonsense. And lastly, I mentioned this earlier, clean up your feed, unfollow and unsubscribe from negative and nonsense producing feeds. If you think that's me, do it up. But we have control over these devices we use and I get it. They're very influential. It feels good. Dopamine hit all that likes and subscribes thing. But if you keep seeing, let's see, like fights kept popping up on my feed because I clicked on one before.

So I said, I don't want to see any more of these. You can tell the algorithm you don't want any more of it. Or you keep seeing a whole bunch from this side of the story or that side of the story or only this side of the story. Then you're only going to get the bias of that side of a story. And that's all you're going to know if you're not open to having discussions with anybody else or reading other content. So I think reaching a unanimous political agreement is near impossible feat in America. I think what we can strive for is a culture of more open mindedness and critical thinking. And

again, I'm not perfect this, I get bullheaded. I get hard thinking about some topics as well. But I think we can have a little more diverse perspective, right? And even those we strongly disagree with, like, let's look at what they're saying. Let's evaluate what they're saying or the source they're quoting and dig into it a little bit. And not just the person that holds them, whether we like them or not, or their political beliefs or not. I think humor and social media interactions are part of modern life, right? But we also should work to avoid the trap of labeling someone as evil solely for their political choices, especially if you don't know that person or you do know that person and you

know they're not evil. We should reserve judgment for positions that directly promote harm or violate like fundamental human rights. Like I'm all on board for that. But also let's be vigilant against misinformation and just nonsense that's out there. We know what's nonsense. It's pretty obvious when something's a BS story. Thank you so much for listening to this brief history lesson.

My two cents on this topic. Some hopefully helpful suggestions on how to clean up your feed, how to be more critical thinking, the Socratic questioning, right? Let's ask opening questions and let's be open to others asking us those things. You can follow me if you choose to here on Apple and Spotify and wherever podcasts are, the People Process Progress podcast. I am at Penel5Fit, P-A-N-E-L-L, the number five F-I-T. That's the YouTube channel.

That's X and Instagram because I have a garage gym. It's the Penel 5 Fitness Club where I exercise and my family does. And I share videos on the YouTube channel, fitness 15, 20 seconds at a time, cold plunge stuff, jiu-jitsu after action reports. Thank you so much. Please keep keeping people first. Work together on shared processes

and be outcomes focused to achieve progress together. Stay safe, everybody, and Godspeed, y'all.