Misinformation, disinformation and AI worry Connecticut officials as election approaches

Political insiders were stunned recently by a poll regarding the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.When asked whether President Joe Biden or former President Donald J. Trump is more responsible for overturning Roe, 17 percent of registered voters in key battleground states said it was Biden.Another 56% said it was Trump, who nominated three conservative justices who all voted to overturn the abortion decision. The remainder said they did not know, refused to answer or said that both or neither of the candidates was most responsible.The problem, lawmakers noted, is that Biden had nothing to do with overturning Roe and instead strongly supports abortion rights. Biden has appointed only one member of the Supreme Court, and that came after the abortion decision. Trump’s three appointees helped make it possible to overturn the national law that had been in effect for nearly 50 years.The polling result provides an example of the large amount of incorrect information that voters believe as a crucial debate is scheduled Thursday night between Biden and Trump in the 2024 presidential election campaign. Charges and countercharges are expected in the debate that will keep fact checkers busy as millions tune in on national television.“I have never seen misinformation and disinformation take such a toll on accurate awareness on the part of people generally,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal told The Courant in an interview. “There are definitely some people — it’s a small minority — who want to believe whatever they believe, regardless of the facts. There is also a strong current of misinformation in social media that is spreading this stuff.”In his role as chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy and technology, Blumenthal has been pushing for reforms to reduce misinformation in popular social media outlets that are viewed by millions of Americans.One of the key examples of disinformation came when Biden’s voice was manipulated by artificial intelligence in New Hampshire as part of robocalls that discouraged thousands of residents in January from voting during the presidential primary. Biden never made that call, but voters said the fake voice sounded authentic as he told residents to “save your vote for the November election.”A Democratic political consultant who admitted commissioning the deep fake has been indicted on 13 felony counts of voter suppression and 13 misdemeanor counts of impersonating a candidate. The consultant, Steve Kramer, said he was trying to sound the alarm, like Paul Revere, that regulations are needed on artificial intelligence and show how easily a voice could be faked.The voice was created with artificial intelligence software by Paul Carpenter, who Blumenthal described as “a guy who is basically a street clown or a roadside entertainer” and not a high-tech engineer with an advanced degree in computer programming from MIT.“There is a need for some oversight and regulation of artificial intelligence,” Blumenthal said. “I have a bipartisan framework with [conservative U.S. Senator] Josh Hawley to establish an entity to evaluate AI models much as the FDA looks at new drugs for safety and effectiveness.”Another issue concerns TikTok, the highly popular video-sharing app that is used by 170 million Americans. A survey by the Pew Research Center said that the number of Americans who get their news from TikTok had doubled from 2020 to 2023.“I’ve strongly supported the sale of TikTok so that it is controlled by Americans and not by the Chinese, who have spread a lot of misinformation,” Blumenthal said.TikTok could be sold by January 2025 under a bill signed by President Biden, and American companies and investors have expressed interest in making the purchase. The sale is being pushed because many lawmakers are highly concerned about the Chinese government obtaining the private data of millions of Americans who use the app.State Republican chairman Ben Proto said one of the problems is the splintering of where voters get their news through social media. Instead of watching the three major television networks like in the 1970s when millions watched Walter Cronkite anchoring on CBS News, some Americans get their news from a wide variety of sources like TikTok, Facebook, and X, which was formerly known as Twitter.“The disinformation side is wholly a byproduct of social media,” Proto told The Courant in an interview. “Go on X right now and search Supreme Court or Supreme Court news. It’s just people who are writing about stuff that comes out of the Supreme Court. They’re not reporters, but people see that and they read it.”While many older voters still read traditional newspapers that are designed to tell the complete story, the younger generations do not.“If I read something on Twitter or TikTok, where most people under the age of 40 or 45 get their news, they don’t know who is writing the story,” Proto said. “They see it and believe it. Social media has really advanced the whole concept of misinformation and disinformation because we live in such a short timeframe world in our lives now. They look at it for 10 seconds because that’s the length of their attention span on digital media, and therefore it’s true. Social media has become the real purveyor of disinformation, and I think online news has become the purveyor of misinformation.”Mark Mirko/The Hartford CourantState Republican chairman Ben Proto says voters tend to believe what they read on social media sites that are not written by professional reporters. Here, Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, fakes an elbow jab to the gut of the Republican chairman during a charity event in downtown Hartford.PoliticsThe most prominent example of disinformation, observers said, is that Trump maintains that he won the 2020 presidential election, something repeated by his supporters for more than three years. That misinformation helped cause the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that led to more than 1,000 rioters being arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol and trying to stop the Electoral College votes that eventually confirmed Biden as president.The ongoing clash has led to a nationwide battle on the facts that has not cooled.While political disputes have been around for centuries, the rhetoric and polarization are speeding up with partisan media outlets and distorted information on social media and the internet.Nationwide, millions of voters agree with Trump that the election was stolen. At the same time, millions of Democrats and independents have polar opposite views, saying that January 6, 2021 was among the worst days in American history. The two political parties also split sharply over issues like gun control, crime, climate change, abortion, immigration, and Hunter Biden’s business dealings.A CBS News/YouGov poll showed last year that the Trump voters believe that Trump is telling them the truth more often than anyone else.When asked who they believe “that what they tell you is true,” 71% said Trump, 63% said friends and family, 56% conservative media figures and 42% religious leaders. The same poll showed that 77% of likely Republican voters said the criminal charges against Trump in Georgia for seeking to overturn the 2020 election are motivated by politics.Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden will face off in their first debate of this presidential campaign on Thursday on CNN in a debate that will be simulcast on other networks.Fox News vs. MSNBCThe worldview of voters is often shaped and reinforced by the news outlets that they watch and read. Many conservatives watch Fox News, while liberals favor MSNBC. People watching those networks often have completely different views, shaping their opinions on issues like whether Biden is too old for the job and whether he should be re-elected. It also reinforces their views of Trump, the FBI, law enforcement in general, and Ukraine, among others.Fox viewers get a steady diet of Hunter Biden, immigration problems at the border, and crime in Democratic-run cities. MSNBC viewers see plenty about Trump and little about crime.In a TV appearance last year, longtime broadcaster Bob Costas said, “If you were someone from outer space and somehow you understood English, and you watched CNN for a week and you watched Fox for a week, you’d have a much better understanding of what was happening in the world from watching CNN than from watching Fox.”When he is asked to speak at college classes, Proto has a regular habit of asking the students where they get their news.“How many of you watch local news — Channel 8, 3, 30, 61? Almost none,” said Proto, who delivered the New Haven Register in his younger days. “I say not even for the weather? And they say, No, I get that on my phone. How many of you have ever read a newspaper by holding it in your hands? If I have students in the class who are older, they will have done that. But most students have never read a newspaper by holding it in their hands, getting the ink on their hand while they’re drinking their coffee in the morning. It never happens.”Turning to national news, most students raise their hand if they have ever watched CNN, MSNBC or the Fox News Channel. But most watch only one channel and have no crossover viewing habits.“You watch cable news, which is not really news, but opinion,” Proto said. “You agree with the cable station before you turned on the television. You agree with what they’re going to say. If you watch MSNBC, you should watch FOX for at least an hour a day just to learn what the other side is doing.”Even fact checkers questionedWith so much misinformation on the internet and in the public sphere, voters sometimes do not know where to turn to get accurate information. The logical place normally would be the “fact checker” articles in newspapers and online. But some conservatives have charged that the fact-checkers themselves are liberals. A national poll by the Pew Research Center in 2019 showed that 70% of Republicans believe the fact-checkers favor one side, while only 29% of Democrats believed that — and 69% of Democrats said the fact-checkers deal fairly with all sides.Besides policy issues, many Republicans and Democrats cannot even agree on whether nonpartisan public servants have performed well, including former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley and infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci. Trump has described Milley as a traitor, who, in a previous time, would have been executed.But Milley, in his often-fiery retirement remarks, responded that the military would continue to defend the Constitution.“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or a tyrant or a dictator,” Milley said. “And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”Texting groupWhile Blumenthal is known generally as a liberal Democrat, he is actually in frequent contact with conservative Republicans on the political fringes.“I have a very active text exchange with a number of the far-right people in Connecticut,” Blumenthal said. “They’re just ordinary guys on the street. Somehow they got my cell number. Over the last few years, I’ve had this exchange, which is very enlightening for me. That 17% — or maybe it’s 20% — I have a pretty good idea of what is going through their heads. Sometimes I will know that someone said something on Fox [television], and within an hour or two, it will come to me through one of these texts — almost verbatim. There is no doubting the power of Fox.”Some voters, he said, are engaged with the daily news but are reinforced constantly by the same partisan sources.“They may be paying attention, but they’re just not paying attention to reality,” Blumenthal said. “Trump is pretty untethered to reality a good part of the time that he is talking on the campaign trail. People are believing him because they want to believe him.”For example, before he was convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in Manhattan in connection with paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn actress, Trump complained on his Truth Social platform that his lawyers were being forced to deliver their closing arguments first before being followed by the prosecution.The problem with his argument, though, is that the defendants in criminal trials always go first, and the prosecution always goes last because the government has the burden of proof to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.In all capital letters, Trump wrote : “WHY IS THE CORRUPT GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO MAKE THE FINAL ARGUMENT IN THE CASE AGAINST ME? WHY CAN’T THE DEFENSE GO LAST? BIG ADVANTAGE, VERY UNFAIR. WITCH HUNT.”Blumenthal, a former federal prosecutor, responded, “That’s the way it has always been, from the founding of the republic and going back to the English common law.”APFormer president Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal have been at odds for years. “Trump’s actions threaten our democracy,” Blumenthal said years ago. “But the greater threat would be if America became a place where such misdeeds went unpunished.”New York Times pollWhile most adults have heard about Roe v. Wade, there was a variety of opinions when 3,380 registered voters in six battleground states were asked about it in May by The New York Times and Siena College. The survey questioned voters in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia.The poll asked : “Who do you think is most responsible for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to an abortion: Joe Biden or Donald Trump?”Among Republicans, 22% said that Biden was more responsible for the ruling, which was higher than the 17% overall who cited Biden. Among Democrats, 12% said Biden was more responsible for the decision, compared to 78% saying that Trump was more responsible.With the amount of incorrect information being spread around, Proto said he was not surprised, even if the Biden responses made little sense.“Think about it. Joe Biden has appointed one member of the Supreme Court. Late in the game,” Proto said. “But 17% — almost one fifth of the population — thinks Joe Biden is responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. It’s mind-boggling.”Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com  

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