Is There a Name For This Kind of Lie? Because We Need a Name For This Kind of Lie. By Parker Molloy

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Is There a Name For This Kind of Lie? Because We Need a Name For This Kind of Lie.

Parker Molloy

3 - 4 minutes

Hey, all. Parker here. Today’s newsletter will be a quick one!

Earlier this week, conservative commentator Vince Coglianese tweeted out the following image along with the text, “From today’s DC appeals court ruling. Apparently, Trump’s not entitled to the presumption of innocence.”

As you can see, he highlighted the words, “At this stage of the prosecution, we assume that the allegations set forth in the Indictment are true.” To someone without any legal training (see: me), that might read as odd. However, even I can read the very next sentence:

    We emphasize that whether the Indictment’s allegations are supported by evidence sufficient to sustain convictions must be determined at a later stage of the prosecution.

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As a swarm of lawyers in Coglianese’s replies were quick to note, this exact language is perfectly normal in a response to a motion to dismiss and it wasn’t some declaration that Trump was being held to unfair standards. In other words, Coglianese was being dishonest.

This led University of Illinois International Relations Professor Nicholas Grossman to tweet:

    Weird type of lie, which we saw a lot in the “Twitter Files,” is to make an assertion in a social media post while including a screenshot that directly disproves the assertion — in this, the next sentence — knowing that the likeminded are so eager to believe the BS they’ll repeat it.

He’s right, and I wish there was a specific name for it. While the tactic of using misleading evidence could simply be called “cherry-picking” or “quote-mining,” with a dash of “Gish Gallop” in there for good measure, I suppose. But it’s that plus the use of priming1 and evidence-dumping2 on social media that makes this all the more insidious and seemingly effective. That is what I’m trying to pin down a name for.

Baseball, brains, and bad words: understanding what happened with Lewis Brinson, a mascot, and a fan.

This happens constantly when it comes to videos. Someone will pull a misleading quote from a video they are posting in hopes that the audience either won’t watch it or will have been primed to view it a certain way, even if it is incorrect and they wouldn’t have otherwise viewed it that way.

The tighter a video is clipped, the less inclined you should be to share it.

I debated sending emails to some linguistically-minded misinformation scholar types but then realized that explaining the phenomenon I’m talking about is newsletter-length as it is, so why not just openly ask?

Plus, this goes a bit with yesterday’s post about the importance of context:

Context is For Trying to Understand Reality, Not Winning Arguments. That's the Problem.

So, is there a name for this?

That’s it for me today. Thanks, all.

Parker

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