Can we handle the truth?

Barbara McQuade, BA ’87/JD ’91 (Image courtesy of U-M Law School.)

History’s most heinous dictators have long relied on disinformation to destroy free societies and claim absolute power over nations.

Today’s agents of chaos tend to be regular citizens, using social and traditional media as well as artificial intelligence to pollute the information ecosystem with lies and conspiracy theories. And in a sinister twist, modern-day extremists living in the U.S. are taking cues from history’s worst offenders — Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini — to wreak havoc here at home, says Barbara McQuade, BA ‘87/JD ’91.

“For American democracy to survive, U.S. citizens need to make truth our national purpose,” says the professor of practice at Michigan Law. McQuade also is an MSNBC legal analyst and the author of the new book Attack from Within (Seven Stories Press, 2024). She hopes to spark a national, bipartisan discourse about how to combat disinformation amid the exponential dangers posed by the Internet, partisan media, artificial intelligence, and more.

“We can’t be a democracy of self-governance if we cede all our power to those who are trying to manipulate us,” McQuade says. “These almost-simplistic tools and tactics that worked in the past are still working today. But now you can spread the word with the touch of a button and reach millions of people. Not only that, you can also adopt a false persona online and use bots to amplify your message.”

The author reflects on her freshman year as a sports reporter at The Michigan Daily where she learned the “most important component in news is accuracy.” That simple tenet still shapes her career, from the courtroom to the classroom.

“Truth matters,” McQuade says. “And yet we live in a world where truth is treated as this almost cosmic, religious concept — as though truth is unknowable. Maybe so. But facts are knowable. Facts are black or white. And you have to accept the facts even when they are not to your liking.”

From outrage to apathy

Propaganda is no stranger to politics, but the forces at play today are more dangerous ever, McQuade says.

Research shows that humans are wired with the compulsion to be right — and to win, sometimes at all costs – even when irrefutable evidence negates one’s argument. In the political arena, one may be tempted to “go along with the con,” just to see the preferred candidate or party prevail. “We want to believe,” McQuade notes, which seems less painful than admitting an error in judgment or risking “cancelation” by one’s peers.

And while human minds are adept at identifying patterns, making connections, and simplifying complexity, these traits also make us vulnerable to conspiracy theories and “big lies” about everything from COVID to climate change, McQuade says. Consider the myriad interpretations of the First and Second Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, often invoked to justify the actions of armed people who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The stated goal by many who have since been incarcerated was to take back a “stolen election” in response to lies propagated by partisan players.

“There’s a quote from Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson [1941-54],” McQuade says, “that we have to use practical wisdom to make sure we don’t convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact. And it seems like we are on a collision course with that.”

The repetitive and relentless assault on truth is designed to leave us paralyzed and passive, she says.

“It’s this abuse of our rights through disinformation that will lead us over the abyss.”

On the edge

(Seven Stories Press, 2024)

All hope is not lost, McQuade says in Attack from Within. Research indicates when people are presented with opposing views and more information about a scenario, they can shift their position and moderate their views. The former U.S. attorney uses the book to deliver pragmatic solutions to defeat disinformation, noting “a little regulation could go a long way.”

“This is not a partisan argument; it’s about the essential need for truth. Most of America is really quite moderate and we have the capacity to appreciate nuance,” McQuade says. “But I think in our complex world, we rely too much on proxies to tell us what to think about things instead of learning all those facts for ourselves.”

Regulation could force transparency online — from exposing the true identities of internet actors to revealing what entity is paying for which campaign ad. Artificial intelligence could be used to detect/debunk fake news. It could identify bots and expose fake accounts on social media.

To combat the algorithms that reinforce personal bias in one’s customized “news bubble,” AI could flag counterprogramming, opposing arguments, and ads with a position contrary to the content one usually receives. Regulators could require websites to disclose the methodology behind their algorithms, often designed to push outrageous content that keeps users engaged on their platform. Such disclosure would mean users could knowingly visit a site created to “gin up” their grievances or opt for a more measured editorial experience.

“Democracy is all about an informed electorate,” McQuade says. “And if we’re not just an uninformed but a disinformed electorate, it becomes very difficult to make important decisions for self-governance.”

A wise investment

McQuade says some experts even suggest media outlets eliminate paywalls and replace them with a system of user credits as a way to keep the marketplace of ideas open for low-income consumers and avoid a society of informed versus uninformed citizens. This could offset one of modern media’s biggest challenges: monetizing and subsidizing robust news organizations, especially at the local level.

Perhaps the most effective strategy to combat disinformation is to focus more on the actual “town square” than the virtual one.

“One of the things we need to do is invest in social capital by getting out of our little bubbles and embracing our shared humanity,” McQuade says. “It happens in faith communities, labor unions, sports leagues. Whenever we can see people from across the political aisle with whom we have more in common than we have differences, it makes it much harder for authoritarianists to demonize us. The more we can get away from a world of ‘us and them’ and focus on the ‘we,’ the better off we’ll be.”