What Can We Do About Misinformation?
It begins with taking some personal responsibility…
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As I was finishing up a meal with my family at a local restaurant, three people sat down at the table next to us. One was a middle-aged man seated next to someone I assumed to be his wife. Seated across from them was a younger man, possibly their son. I’m not sure, because I didn’t ask them. There was only about 10 minutes of overlap between the time they sat down and the time we got up to leave. I wasn’t attempting to eavesdrop, but their conversation was loud enough to be heard above the general din of the restaurant. In those 10 minutes, I heard the older man go off on a bit of a tirade about our current political climate. There was one comment, in particular, that really caught my attention.
He told the younger man that Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher, the women who confronted Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator with stories of abuse, were actually being paid by George Soros to engage in this protest surrounding the nomination proceedings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
That statement is not true.
Now, at this point, you may be angry with me because you think the man’s claim to be based in fact, or you may agree with me that it is misinformation. As I’ve written before, I am not always right — far from it. Especially when it comes to politics, I acknowledge that I am often wrong and I need to constantly challenge my own ideas.
However, in this case, I found the truth through a fairly simple search. Let me show you the process through which I came to the conclusion that this man’s statement about Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher was actually misinformation.
I’ll begin by referring you to this article from the Washington Post that lays out all the information clearly and simply. Yes, Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher are connected to the Center for Popular Democracy. Yes, that organization receives money from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. He is not even the largest…
