Humanities & Cultures

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You may not know the term ‘Gish gallop‘ but you’ve seen it in action if you have watched any Donald Trump performance. It is a firehose of lies and disinformation employed to sow chaos rather than educate. It is dishonorable.

The technique is named for creationist Duane Gish who used it in his debates with biologists [and described in the Scientific American].

His tactic consisted of talking fast and with confidence, bombarding opponents with falsehoods, non-sequiturs and enough cherry-picked factoids to confuse the audience. Scientists debating him faced the challenge of sifting half-truths from outright lies and finding the right evidence to refute them systematically, all within the few minutes allowed in response.

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Nothing that Trump does is in good faith nor does he comport to norms. If that were the case, he would not still be trumpeting lies from eight years ago.

This scenario sounds eerily similiar to how news organizations, “[d]espite eight years and two election cycles,” continue to normalize Trump’s speeches by providing a coherence that is missing from the original.

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It is the news media’s job to point out untruths. Period. Not parrot them or slide them under the rug.

Scientific American calls this integrity. I think of it as ethics. To that end, today’s journalists need to revisit the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists:

Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity (emphasis added).