Comments by "Meh Pluribus Unum" (@pluribus_unum) on "Israel-Hamas, the media war: How to verify information? • FRANCE 24 English" video.

In the United States, the Republican party paved the way for disinformation to succeed as well as it does here. They taught their voters to not trust science or experts about smoking, and then about human-induced climate change, and now about our elections. Friends don't let friends vote Republican. #Vote2024
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@bridgettstephens5582 - "This “weaponization of transparency” can be traced to the 1990s and the tobacco industry’s efforts to poke holes in the science linking smoking to disease, particularly the dangers associated with secondhand smoke (also called “environmental tobacco smoke” or ETS). During the 1950s, a series of powerful epidemiological studies funded by the American Cancer Society and the British government identified a strong link between smoking and lung cancer — a disease that had been all but unknown before the rise of the cigarette in the early 20th century. Tobacco companies quickly sought to undermine this evidence by “creating doubt about the health charge,” as one internal industry memo later disclosed in state litigation put it. Such arguments became difficult to sustain as the evidence piled up. After the surgeon general declared unequivocally that smoking caused lung cancer in 1964, the tobacco companies re-centered their efforts on building a defense against the charge that nonsmokers were being harmed by ambient cigarette smoke. It was much more difficult for scientists to demonstrate conclusively that secondhand smoke caused disease, but by the 1980s, emerging research was convincing government authorities that smoke-filled rooms posed a danger to bystanders. Internally, the tobacco companies acknowledged this reality, but nevertheless stuck with their self-described strategy of “throwing up a smoke screen” on the science."
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