Fighting Disinformation Must Be Part of Disaster-Relief Efforts
Misleading claims about California’s efforts to combat the fires ravaging greater Los Angeles have taken a nasty turn as prominent public figures like Elon Musk and Donald Trump have posted disinformation on online platforms to politicize the most destructive disaster in the city’s history.
It’s gotten so bad that many officials focused on fighting the fires have had to divert time and resources to confront and fact check the scourge of falsehoods about relief efforts.
Musk has spearheaded the spread of disinformation, using X to amplify lies about official efforts to fight the conflagration. California Governor Gavin Newsom had to go on the platform to debunk a Musk retweet that baselessly claimed that California Democrats had “literally decriminalized looting.”
“Stop encouraging looting by lying and telling people it’s decriminalized. It’s not,” Newson responded to Musk. “It’s illegal — as it always has been.”
Disinformation is a form of looting, an attempt to pillage and distort the public record to sow chaos and serve political agendas. (This is hardly the first time Musk has spread lies on social media to serve his purposes.)
And Musk is not alone in weaponizing his social-media reach to spread disinformation and “stick it” to foes. Incoming President Donald Trump has also used natural disasters to serve his goals, regardless of the accuracy of his comments. In a series of Truth Social posts, Trump called on Newsom to resign. The reason? According to Trump, Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration” that Trump falsely claimed would have directed millions of gallons of water to areas that are burning.
In reality, Los Angeles’ water district had an ample water supply following years of above-average rains statewide. The fires’ real accelerant was a dangerous combination of a more recent Southern California dry spell with Santa Ana winds that reached speeds of 80–90 miles per hour. Lies about all of this can interfere with efforts to extinguish the flames and get aid to people who need it most.
Fact checking Musk’s lies on his own turf
The sad truth is that any disaster-relief effort must now include deploying a robust team of disinformation fighters who are tasked with fact checking lies designed to exact a political toll and disrupt efforts to provide assistance to victims of natural and human-made catastrophes.
On Jan. 11, Newsom launched a page on his campaign website to combat online disinformation. Whether other leaders see more official fact checking as a necessary component of any disaster-relief efforts remains to be seen.
To be fair, the Federal Emergency Management Administration has, on occasion, released statements attempting to counter the spread of disaster-related myths with accurate information. Such efforts, though, are no match when compared to the reach of disinformation spreaders like Musk and Trump, who have privileged access to online megaphones with hundreds of millions of users in the United States.
And any fact checking during national emergencies must do more than merely call out and debunk lies. It must confront the liars on their turf and cut through the information chaos with easy-to-share fact sheets, video responses and other digital-friendly tactics. “Official” fact checkers also need a degree of autonomy; oftentimes the lies they expose come from official sources.
Amid this runaway disinformation, everyone must realize the critical need to increase support for efforts to provide accurate civic information during emergencies and consider ways local, state and federal governments can help separate fact from fiction.
That such tragedies have become an ongoing reality of the climate crisis makes it even more urgent to fight disinformation. Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s self-dealing claims and capitulation, fact checking is not a form of censorship or bias, but an effort to hold accountable people — from inside and outside the government — who seek to leverage emergencies for political gain.
