Housing Advocacy

10 Ways to Speak Truth to Powerful Lies

How to engage, inform, and fight back against falsehoods.     In an era of fake news, alternative facts, and downright lies, it’s a daily struggle to promote the continued […]

How to engage, inform, and fight back against falsehoods.

 

 

In an era of fake news, alternative facts, and downright lies, it’s a daily struggle to promote the continued benefit of our social justice work and a positive, inclusive vision for our country that’s rooted in truth and fairness. And when the loudest and most virulent falsehoods come from the highest levels of government, this challenge can feel overwhelming.

 

Research and experience point to clear ways that we as advocates, journalists, and citizens can overcome the fiction and push reality. Here are 10 of them:

 

 

1. Understand the Strategy Behind the Lie

 

Political lies are not random. Each one has a clear purpose. When pressure was growing for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign after falsely telling Congress he’d had no contact with Russia during the presidential campaign, President Trump tweeted, falsely, that President Obama had surveilled Trump Tower during the campaign.

 

The news media took the bait, engaging in a feeding frenzy that has yet to subside, which obliterated the Sessions story. That was just as intended.

 

Other lies are meant to energize the supporter base, undermine sources of accountability like the judiciary and Congressional Budget Office (CBO), or to tarnish reliable sources of information like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and respected news organizations. Still, other lies are intended to demonize vulnerable groups or political opponents.

 

Some lies do all of the above. Remember, liars are playing the long game: for instance, they want to undermine the CBO because they know it will be one of the few independent sources of information during the coming debate about tax breaks for the wealthy. Understanding the likely purpose of a lie helps to avoid assisting in that purpose.

 

2. Tell Your StoryDon’t Repeat the Lie

 

Research shows that repeating a myth, even to refute it, merely deepens the inaccuracy in the minds of your audience. Plus, many people will not have heard the myth until you’ve shared it with them.

 

Linguist George Lakoff says that if you tell your audience, “Don’t think of an elephant,” there’s only one thing they’ll be thinking about—and it’s got big ears and a trunk.

 

Instead of saying “the ACA is not in a ‘death spiral,’” try:

 

The Affordable Care Act represents progress for our country’s health, including expanding health care coverage to 20 million more Americans, and ensuring that pre-existing conditions and job changes don’t threaten families’ coverage. Anything new has to meet and improve on that foundation, or it’s a threat to the health and financial security of the American people.

 

Instead of “President Trump is wrong when he says crime and violence are on the rise around our country,” try:

 

Crime remains at record lows in the United States, and especially in communities that have begun to emphasize prevention and community policing instead of incarceration and overly aggressive tactics. Take New York City, which is now the safest big city in the world, due in part to smart criminal justice reform.

 

3. Lead With Shared Values

 

A major lesson from the presidential campaign is that most people are immune to facts that don’t fit within a narrative and a set of values to which they can relate.

 

Instead of leading with dry counter-facts and data, or hot political rhetoric, consider leading with the values that you share with your audience.

 

Instead of “Congressman Chaffetz is wrong when he says that poor people are choosing iPhones instead of health insurance,” try:

 

Our country is strongest when everyone has the tools they need to provide for themselves and their families. Under Congressman Chaffetz’s plan, many of his constituents would have to make impossible choices between food for themselves and medicine for their kids, between needed surgery and paying the mortgage. We have to do better than that as a country.

 

4. Call It “False,” Not “Unprecedented”

 

Pundits and journalists often think that by calling the president’s false and outrageous accusations “unprecedented,” “stunning,” or “remarkable,” they are somehow discrediting them. But it is, and always has been, his aim to be stunning, unprecedented, and a disrupter of the D.C. establishment.

 

The next time a federal court halts one of the president’s actions as patently unconstitutional—to pick just one example—and Trump criticizes it as a political decision, don’t call his statement “unprecedented.” Say that the charge is “false and reckless, and threatens the independent judiciary on which we all rely to protect our freedom.”

 

5. Don’t Use Quotes (No, Not Even Air Quotes)

 

If you find yourself putting quotation marks around a phrase like “law and order,” “criminal alien,” or “repeal and replace,” find another phrase. The need to use ironic quotation marks, or to precede a phrase with words like “so-called,” is a strong indication that you’re advancing a false narrative or, at least, arguing within your opponent’s frame.

 

Instead of “law and order,” try “punitive and harmful.”

 

Instead of “repeal and replace,” try “deny coverage and care.”

 

Instead of “criminal alien,” try “parents, workers, or caregivers who were convicted of a crime, often years or decades in the past.”

 

More words, to be sure, but those words tell your story, which is the point, after all.

 

6. Consider Social Math

 

For non-experts who may be consuming the information you put out, it can be hard to process the meaning and impact of accurate numbers and data. Consider using social math, which places numbers in a context that is more easily understood—and believed—by a variety of audiences.

 

For example, instead of “Undocumented immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens. Census data from 1980 through 2010 show that among men ages 18 to 49, immigrants were one-half to one-fifth as likely to be incarcerated as those born in the United States,” try:

 

Diversity is one of our country’s greatest strengths, and the same is true when it comes to public safety. Border cities like El Paso and San Diego with thriving immigrant populations are among the safest large cities in the country. And several studies have shown that, as an immigrant population increases, incidents of crime actually decrease.

 

7. Educate Gatekeepers—In Private

 

It is important to educate some actors on the inaccuracy of widespread falsehoods, so they’ll stop inadvertently spreading or enabling them. For example, it has been important to educate political reporters and other journalists on the fact that accusations of significant voter fraud in U.S. elections are simply false and politically motivated.

 

Over time, that’s made reporters more likely to demand evidence from people making those claims, and when the claims are made on air, to immediately inform audiences that there’s no evidence to support them. Those conversations should be had behind the scenes with reporters, rather than during an interview that runs the risk of further spreading or deepening the myth with audiences.

 

A related point is to urge reporters to simply stop reporting demonstrable falsehoods, especially when they are about vulnerable people or communities.

 

8. Highlight Solutions

 

Lies work best when they trigger fear and invoke a sense of crisis that drives people toward extremist responses. Highlighting concrete solutions to legitimate concerns like public safety or economic hardship can counter fear and channel anger toward constructive approaches. For example,

 

Texas has increased public safety and reduced costly incarceration through smart reforms that prevent crime and uphold our values of rehabilitation and accountability. Solutions like improving drug and alcohol treatment as alternatives to prison are the kind of innovations we need in our state.

 

9. Equip the Base

 

Many people consider friends and family to be their most trustworthy source of information. That means it’s important for people who’ve embraced facts and the truth to share that information with others—in ways that follow the other lessons outlined here.

 

Nearly all of us have constituents and members in our networks who are struggling with the barrage of claims, accusations, and data thrown about in the current political environment. And we now have the tools, particularly social media, to engage and inform them (and be informed by them) wherever they are. But try not to be a nag.

 

10. Tell the Truth!

 

An important part of countering lies is to be rigorously accurate in your own communications. Accurate does not mean wonky or jargon-filled. It just means that we should check our facts and avoid the trap of repeating unverified conventional wisdom, whether it helps or hurts our cause in the short term.

 

A version of this post originally appeared in Alternet.org

 

(Image: Environmental Illness NetworkCC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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