Wakanda News Details

Buyer beware: How to spot misinformation tactics - Trinidad and Tobago Newsday

DIANA MAHABIR-WYATT

There is a deepening international media concern over false advertising, which includes marketing tactics, not just selling products and services, but ideas and beliefs as well.

An example, as foreign exchange becomes harder to obtain, efforts to mask the devaluation of a locally manufactured product by using a local substitute, known to be of a lesser quality than the imported one that attracted customers in the first place, hoping that customers will not notice the difference, as the required list of ingredients remains the same.

There are no regulations requiring manufacturers of comestibles to put quality specifications on the label, just the ingredients. Flour is flour. Hence the warning

caveat emptor, or "buyer beware": the onus is on the customer to do their own investigation about the quality of what they buy.

That warning also applies to adopting political, corporate and religious beliefs being sold to users in this complex and ever-changing economy of promises, hopes, ideas, beliefs and politics.

Why do you think little children in kindergarten are exposed to Aesop's Fables, stories about how people get tricked into believing things that are not true? Remember the tales about Brer Anancy, who deceived everyone and got his way by trickery?

Those tales were written centuries ago to teach children to be cautious before believing what strangers tell them. People have not changed much since, except for the use of technology and AI. Examine how the trickster positions or times his words.

One weekend, a news report pointed out a gap between what the minister in charge of WASA said at a conference in the Hilton, claiming that "between 40 and 50 per cent of water generated was lost between production and end user." Then, less than a week later, a very expensive full-page advertisement in the same newspaper said: "These are the facts. WASA does not lose 50 per cent of its water to leaks and has never released any data to this effect."

That method of manipulation is also used in the corporate world when a senior uses status or position of authority to make an unsupported claim, trusting that no one will dare contradict him.

Saying, for example, that most of those people who oppose property tax own homes abroad is a variation of this method. Most of us? Hello? We do? Are you caught by a statement not supported by facts about who these 'people' are? No specifics about who they are and how they got all that foreign exchange to purchase homes abroad?

A classic counter to that claim is the Bustamante method. Back in the 1960s, when Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante were locking political horns in Jamaica, Manley, an astute and distinguished lawyer, said his political opponent, Bustamante, ran a political organisation that was involved in some questionable financial fundraising practices.

Bustamante responded by bellowing out on a public platform: "He say I does tief? I tell you he is a bigger tief than I ever was!"

He didn't bother to deny the accusation, ju

You may also like

More from Home - Trinidad and Tobago Newsday

Cuisine Facts

Conservative Amy Holmes Scorches Discriminatory 'Stop-And-Frisk'

Facts About Women

Black Sands : Rumble in Kerma Part 2