The Art of the Deal You Tell a Lie Three Times

• by  @mp_joemandese, January 28, 2017

"If you echo a lie enough, it becomes the truth."

That quote has been attributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. I say attributed considering even though there are many reports of him maxim information technology, there is no public record that he actually did.

In other words, it could be a lie that has become the truth simply considering it was repeated enough times.

I learned that fact while researching a similar quote I've seen attributed many times to Donald Trump:

"You lot tell people a lie iii times, they will believe annihilation. You tell people what they desire to hear, play to their fantasies, so you lot close the deal."

One written report said it came from the book "The Fine art Of The Deal," which was written by Trump and author Tony Schwartz. It is a lie that is easily proven simply by reading the book.

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Merely that lie has been repeated enough times that a significant number of people now believe it to exist true, even though there is an indelible public record proving information technology is non. This phenomenon is not new, only it is one that seems to be growing -- I believe -- because of digital media, especially social, and its ability to spread misinformation so apace and among so many people. Goebbels would exist proud.

The miracle has a proper noun. It'due south called the "Mandela Result," because it was a mass false remembering of the life -- and particularly the expiry -- of the South African leader that coined information technology.

"The term 'Mandela Consequence' was coined by self-described 'paranormal consultant' Fiona Broome, who has written on her Spider web site that she kickoff became enlightened of the phenomenon after discovering that she shared a detail simulated memory — that Due south African human rights activist and president Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s (he actually died in 2013) — with many other people," explains an entry on Snopes.com.

I'm sourcing Snopes, considering there is no reference for information technology on Wikipedia, which simply redirects the term to an entry for "false memory."

I first learned virtually the Mandela Issue when my friend Tom Siebert asked me if I remembered something from the 1980s James Bond moving-picture show "Moonraker."

"Do you lot recall the character Jaws?" he asked.

"Of class," I said as my encephalon instantly produced images of giant Richard Kiel, and the prosthetic metal teeth his character was named for.

"Practise you recollect his girlfriend,' Tom asked?

"Mayhap, sort of," I replied.

"Practise you remember what attracted Jaws to her?" Tom asked, adding: "Practice you call back she had braces?"

"Not really," I said equally cloudy images of a young adult female with braces began to form in my head.

Tom, an ad human (Initiative, Huge and Digitaria) and journalist (Adweek and MediaPost), writes a regular column for San Diego alternative newsweekly San Diego Urban center Beat, and had just written about a Mandela Effect in which people retrieve Jaws' girlfriend Dolly having braces in the picture show, even though all public records bear witness her without them -- even original analogue VHS tapes.

Tom's cavalcade explored potential conspiratorial reasons why Dolly no longer has braces and subsequently he published his cavalcade he said he was even contacted by quantum physicists who said it potentially could be show that culling realities are slipping into the ane that almost of the states consider to be real.

I offered Tom my own theory: That the shift from analog to digital media makes information technology difficult for people to source and cite indelible public records to confirm what really happened. Digital media inherently are more malleable and fungible than analogue media.

Yes, y'all could always manually retouch photos, pigment phony versions of masterpieces or publish fake copies of Adolph Hitler's diary, but it was harder to replace bodily facts with culling facts in analogue than digital media. And information technology was easier to find when something was altered of faked when someone did.

Another big problem with digital media isn't how information technology distorts the public record of facts and information, simply how it alters the way people perceive it. Information technology is more difficult for people to discern "real" information from "fake" data in many digital interfaces. Hence the phenomenon of "imitation news," not just as a new kind of publishing enterprise, but in the way nosotros think about, disseminate and spread information to each other.

If you lot search the faux Trump attribution "you tell people a prevarication 3 times" on Twitter you will meet the top of the feed features a tweet from someone citing it as fact, and also embedding a video GIF showing two Donald Trumps slapping skin.

I first became aware of this digital news-filtering problem before social media or even the Web existed. Another friend and public relations research expert Mark Weiner, who is now head of Prime Research, conducted some inquiry in the early days of commercial online services and found average people could not distinguish between the PR Newswire and the Associated Press when they read it in their newsfeed on CompuServe.

Apparently, neither tin the White House, which broke from tradition during the first official press conference of the Trump Administration by taking its first question not from the AP, but from the New York Post.

Politics aside, the danger of Trump's "running state of war" with the media is that if it removes standard protocols for working with the printing so it threatens to alter the public record of true information from the top downwards, equally opposed to the bottoms up way it has been happening to engagement: social media, fake news, fringe conspiratorial theories, etc. I'm dubbing this the Trumpela Effect. If my theory is right, that volition somehow become part of the public record. Non just because information technology was published past MediaPost, only because of the malleable distortionary nature of digital media, and how it can alter the public record.

I can tell you this, because I recently had my own firsthand experience distorting the public tape for political purpose. While I was alive-blogging MediaPost's Marketing: Politics conference in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 17, I posted a verbatim comment made by Bob Garfield who was moderating a panel that was, ironically, about the role social media, fake news, Cyberspace trolls, etc., played in the 2016 presidential election. His console included a top media operative for Bernie Sander'southward campaign, Revolution Messaging'southward Jenn Kauffman.

To illustrate the betoken, Garfield turned to Kauffman and said, "I would never put words in your mouth, but we're alive blogging this effect and practice y'all think the headline could be something along the lines of 'Jenn Kauffman: Hillary Entrada Staff, Not Hillary, Should Exist Thrown In Jail.'"

And because I always have my cues from Bob Garfield, I blogged that -- verbatim -- including the headline. I tin tell you it is verbatim, because I have an indelible public tape of it and you can fifty-fifty watch it yourself 15 minutes and ix seconds into the embedded conference video beneath (unless someone forces me to take it downwardly later).

Most immediately following the post, I began receiving emails from colleagues, Kauffman herself, her boss, my boss and a barrage of supporters asking me to take it down or modify the headline.

I responded to all of them that nosotros have an editorial policy of not altering the public record of what we publish, but that when we get something wrong nosotros publish new information in the form of corrections, clarifications, addenda, etc. to set the record straight. We likewise cross-link the new information with the original publication and add together a note to the original item explaining that.

This is an old school approach to journalism. It comes from the print era when you literally could not alter the public record of what you published, because it was printed on ink and newspaper and already on newsstands, in mailboxes, or in readers' hands.

This policy is not pop, but I've tried my all-time to maintain it for the xiv years that I've edited MediaPost for the reasons I cite in a higher place: because I call back indelible public records are more than important than e'er. Even when they are incorrect, because they are a part of the historical fact, and when they are incorrect should be corrected as part of the historical fact, not covered upwardly by a digital redo.

I lost the boxing and was forced to a alter the headline of the "alive" blog post, but I believe that but creates a distortion of what really happened, considering there are email versions of the original headline still in people's inboxes, and because some people had already read it.

Ironically, ane of Kauffman'south main arguments for united states of america to change our headline was because digital media like Google searches and distribution via social media would decouple the headline from the full mail that explained the context of it. I say it's ironic, because some of those digital memories nonetheless exist, merely there is not public record explaining why the headline was changed. Well, until now, which is why I am cross-linking to the original blog post so anyone reading it will know exactly what transpired.

Nosotros live in an era when truth has become so malleable in large function because of digital media, that it is more important than always before to have enduring public records so people can decide for themselves what the truth is.

Based on the outset week of the Trump Administration's state of war with the media, I'm not optimistic that will be the case. It is remarkable that the first boxing was over facts for which enduring public records existed. In the case of the administration's outset salvo -- the battle over coverage of Trump's inauguration audition size -- there was photographic testify besides as eyewitness accounts, and even mass transit ridership statistics. In the instance of Trump'southward claims that the press had conspired to misrepresent his disharmonize with the intelligence community, at that place is video of his own public statements.

In hindsight, I call back the major news media take done a remarkable task of maintaining their sophistication and not allowing Trump's team to allurement them into an bodily war. They have, for the most part, covered the culling facts put out by the Trump Administration for what they are.

It must be incredibly difficult for them, especially when Trump strategic counselor Steve Bannon eggs them on, telling the media to "shut upwardly" and labeling them the "opposition party."

I've tried to understand what the play is. I think there are many reasons. Some of it is the vivid art of misdirection that Trump has demonstrated so well throughout his career. Some of it is only to lower the baseline of truth so that when really important problems come upwards for the media, the assistants will simply reiterate its boxing with the "dishonest" media and their "fake" news. Some of it, I suppose, is but to rattle, fatigue and disrupt the media so they accept less energy and focus on the really important problems.

I don't know, but we will all soon find out as history creates itself before our very eyes -- whether we believe or not, and whether nosotros alter information technology or not -- in the media, and in our memories.

I'd similar to end by quoting a source who tried to explain it. And at that place is an indelible public record, because it is from a volume he wrote himself:

"All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true inside itself—that in the large prevarication in that location is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily autumn victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves oft tell small lies in little matters but would be aback to resort to large-calibration falsehoods.

"Information technology would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which testify this to be and so may exist brought clearly to their minds, they will still uncertainty and waver and volition continue to think that at that place may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie ever leaves traces backside information technology, even later on it has been nailed downwardly, a fact which is known to all skilful liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

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Source: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/293924/the-trumpela-effect.html

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