Donald Trump's Attacks Against the Media
Every dictator wants to undermine confidence in a free press because an informed public can act as a check on government corruption. Dictators can do this in several ways. They have often done this in the past by arresting or assassinating journalists. But that approach is more difficult to implement in a society where everyone has a smartphone to record what is happening and everyone has access to the internet. The opposite approach is to discredit truthful stories and flood the internet with so many false reports and lies that the public is no longer able to tell what is true and what is false--or as Steve Bannon put it, to "flood the zone with shit." Those who are interested in taking a closer look at how the "flooding the zone with shit" strategy actually works and why it is so effective should read the Rand Corporation's report on The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model.
