Press Club Communicators confront disinformation challenges

The National Press Club Communicators Team hosted a virtual “Candid Conversation on Combating Global Disinformation” on April 14 to discuss how public diplomacy, military, and intelligence community communicators can navigate increasingly complex and muddied information environments.

Jen Judson, Club president and the land warfare reporter for Defense News, led a discussion on the topic in a virtual space with U.S. Army Lt. Col. Charles “Kip” Patterson, who leads the Public Affairs and Communication Strategy Directorate at the Department of Defense Information School (DINFOS), the primary training institution for professional military communicators in the fleet and field; Stevie B. Hamilton, II, who serves as the director of the Interagency and International Coordination Cell at the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC); and Caroline Ferrari, deputy chief of public affairs for the National Security Agency.

Patterson, who trains military public affairs and communication strategy professionals, defined the different types of information disorders.

“We go with academia: misinformation is an error or mistake and is fixed by correcting the record. Disinformation is content created with an intent to distort, and malinformation is private or secret information used in a harmful way to hurt another human being,” he explained.

He also described how contemporary commanders look to their public affairs staff for advice in dealing with mis-, dis-, and mal-information, noting that such attacks affect not only the commands, but also individual service members and their families. He added that such attacks have the effect of breaking trust, and that broken trust affects readiness.

Hamilton, whose primary responsibilities are leading, supervising, and managing GEC liaison officers dispatched to and from select government departments and agencies, and international partners, said we can see the effects of disinformation in Ukraine now. Disinformation, he noted, usually starts with some element of truth.

“The Russians know where our fissures are and provide just enough truth to plant a seed of doubt,” Hamilton said.

Building on Hamilton’s response, Ferrari added, “The emotional connection is critical: sowing fear or anger arise from effective IO ops.”

Hamilton said he believes the solution to the problem of state-sponsored and non-state sponsored global disinformation, ultimately rests with interagency and intergovernmental organizations in which people “…with different backgrounds come together [and] really do come up with better solutions.” He also explained how GEC solves these problems by working across agencies and countries to arrive at a common operating picture of the disinformation narrative and then develop and share new products to combat it. 

Ferrari, who is charged with telling the story of how NSA's missions, programs, policies, and authorities have an impact on national security and the defense of American citizens, half-jokingly explained that one of her biggest problems is that, for years, NSA stood for, “No Such Agency” and, as a result, people don’t know what NSA does.

“There’s lots of misinformation,” she said. To correct this, the NSA today is transparent about its role in foreign signals intelligence and cybersecurity. The NSA public affairs staff monitors media to prioritize and contextualize the information that’s out there.

“Being proactive and filling the communications void are key for us. Being first is important,” she said.

When asked about ways to identify disinformation, Hamilton suggested news consumers should be more skeptical and know our sources. Patterson agreed, “We want people to be skeptical…to ask questions…but [we] want them to stop once they hit a credible source and we want to be that credible source.”

Asked about the most effective means in breaking through the clutter to counter disinformation, Ferrari suggested that building relationships with reporters outside emergencies is vital. Patterson said DoD conducts cyclical exercises during which PAOs practice building such relationships.

A delicate balance exists between being responsive to a reporter’s questions and protecting methods and sources, Ferrari said.

Hamilton observed that large amounts of information come from the private sector so relationships among commercial technology companies, the public, and media are crucial.

In the end, all three leaders agreed that one of the most effective means to combat disinformation is through digital literacy on the part of the citizenry. As Patterson said, “[We need to] understand how disinformation is manufactured and what perception of the truth it is trying to latch onto; we need to inoculate ourselves through education and critical reasoning.”