Dan Gillmor weighs in on “Misinformation and the 2010 Election”, a survey from the University of Maryland that finds “the public knows most political ads are bogus, but people still believe things that are false.”
Gillmor, in his Salon.com column writes:
The report, from the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, won’t surprise anyone who’s been paying attention to national affairs and the media. We have an information crisis. Influence peddlers and opinion launderers can now spend unlimited amounts of money, much of it raised from anonymous sources, to push political issues and candidates. A system that has absolutely no accountability is almost guaranteed to become a sewer, and this one certainly has.
What’s clear, based on studies like the Maryland report, is that we have a major media-education task ahead of us. And part of that job is going to be persuading those of us who have been part of a passive audience to become active consumers and participants in media. I’ve just published a new book, called Mediactive, which aims to further that goal. I’ll be posting excerpts from the book here early next month.
via Survey: Political misinformation is the rule – Dan Gillmor – Salon.com.