By Dennis D. McDonald

I saw a hideous video posted on Linkedin this morning showing small children on a bloodstained floor, mangled, bloody, and spurting blood from open wounds. Perhaps the poster was a Palestinian sympathizer trying to document “What the Israelis are doing to Palestinian children.”

I could not tell for sure. Given how social and legacy media are being used in connection with this conflict, there was no way for me to know when the images were created or if the suffering kids were Palestinian or Israeli. The images themselves may have been real. It’s also possible they were faked by a sophisticated AI based video generation program.

You may wonder, “What’s the difference? Subjecting any kids to that type of pain and suffering is inexcusable!”

You would be right, of course, but that’s not my point. When I see images like this, whether Israeli or Palestinian, I immediately think of my own children and grandchildren and a tightness in my heart occurs. But it’s becoming harder and harder to tell what’s real and what’s not when it comes to how modern social and legacy media are being used; the current war in Gaza is making that clear.

How to combat this is anyone’s guess since it’s becoming more difficult to implement a “Only use trusted media” strategy. Which media are trustworthy?

While long ago I gave up TV news because of its inherent shortcomings (and annoying commercials) I have also learned that even legacy media such as The Washington Post with its clickbait headlines and its tolerance of fake commenters with pseudonyms can’t always be trusted to avoid false equivalence or shading the truth for political or economic considerations.

Now, add the fact that AI based software can help prepare and disseminate audio, video, and textual content in near real time that is indistinguishable from the real thing, and you can begin to understand why democracy in the US is increasingly threatened given a possible decline in “a well-informed public.”

Warmakers have always employed propaganda and misinformation to promote their view of things, and media companies have always craeted realistic fantasies (e.g., the WAR OF THE WORLDS radio program in 1938).

Anti-religion propaganda has existed for centuries. For a fictionalized account of how anti-Jesuit, anti-Catholic, anti-Mason, and anti-Jewish stereotypes and cultural bigotry have been promoted over time read Umberto Eco’s entertaining but disturbing novel, The Prague Cemetery.

That the sides in today’s conflicts are employing modern technologies to influence public opinion should surprise no one.

Text copyright (c) 2023 by Dennis D. McDonald. The illustration at the top of this article was created by DALL-E via the Bing search engine in response to the prompt, “Please create a colorful illustration to visually represent the degradation of public trust in media over time, while also showing that people are aware and taking steps to protect themselves from misinformation.”