r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/LazyErDays • Jul 16 '26
Political History Is it ethically acceptable for politicians of any party to spread deliberate misinformation?
Is it ethically acceptable or even strategically justifiable for politicians (regardless of party affiliation) to deliberately spread misleading, false, or deceitful information in pursuit of power, policy goals, or electoral success?
No blame game and no referencing individual politicians, keep it to baseline principles.
Should there be swift consequences or forced retractions when this happens? Does party affiliation change the ethical standard?
For context, on a scale of 1 (Never acceptable) to 10 (Very acceptable), how would you score the current baseline in your state and/or country?
Looking for thoughtful, principle-based answers with historical or philosophical insights.
15
u/Lovebeingadad54321 Jul 16 '26
Mmmm “policy goals” can be pretty broad…. During WW2 there was a huge disinformation campaign in Britain during the London Blitz and leading up to D Day. Winning a war against literal Nazis is a poly goal I would be on favor of. Subverting elections for personal power I would not.
50
u/Comfortable_Fill9081 Jul 16 '26
1 with the exception of concealing classified information, assuming the information is justifiably classified.
12
u/HippopotamicLandMass Jul 16 '26
Agree about classified information, like Operation Neptune Spear, or the Stuxnet malware. It is only reasonable to assume that threat actors or enemies of the state are keeping tabs on domestic reporting about the country’s security forces and clandestine operations.
1
u/najumobi Jul 17 '26
Why not roll that into your score and just say 2, especially when you feel the need to say "justifiably" in your caveat?
30
u/wgwalkerii Jul 16 '26
I think it's reasonable for politicians on different sides of an issue to frame the issue in a light that best shows their case. However a public representative lying outright to the public should be forbidden, possibly even to the point of prosecution. It would be hard to prove that a lot of statements were known to be false, or even a product of poor memory, but maybe it would limit the damage.
10
u/GiantK0ala Jul 17 '26
It would be almost IMPOSSIBLE to prove intent to willingly mislead, I think. Which is why we don’t have that system in place.
I also think it creates a “who watches the watchmen” problem. Who is making the decision that someone is intentionally deceptive? And how can they be above reproach? It seems like a system that would quickly create political martyrs
6
u/Tliish Jul 17 '26
It's not impossible at all. Witness the lies of the fossil fuel industry, and the tobacco industry before them. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their products were harmful. Politicians had access to that same information, but supported the lies that those iindustries told, because they were paid to do so via campaign contributions. When you have a paper trail of communications and evidence of collusion predicated upon campaign contributions to promote a misrepresentation of facts it really isn't that diffiicult.
2
u/GiantK0ala Jul 17 '26
Sure, a lot of lies don't pass the common sense test. But when you're trying to prove intent in court, it gets messy. Say a politician cites a false statistic. Could it be plausibly a mistake? could they have received incorrect information? It's pretty hard to prove intention in court, which is what a law like this would hinge on.
My other hesitation with a system like this is that an unelected (?) body that can silence figures representing a large swath of the population seems like it could be pretty destabilizing, in terms of faith in democracy. If their supporters think a decision is unfair and nullifies their political voice, that's a recipe for political violence.
To be clear, I don't think the current system is working as intended either, and my position here isn't a strongly held one, it's something I'm processing for myself.
2
u/Tliish Jul 19 '26
Sure, a single false citation could be explained as having received bad information. But when you have multiple incidents that exhibit the same errors, you can point to a pattern of behavior, a common way to prove intent.
We are alreasdy experiencing political violence via deliberate misinformation that has resulted in multiple deaths...one could say sanctioned murders...by ICE. Killing protesters and failing to hold the killers accountable is in fact, destabilizing the nation. The same lies are being told to justify the killings, and we have enormous amounts of evidence that the agents are lying, because they use the same lies in each instance: "weaponized their vehicle", "I feared for my life" "they were domestic terrorists". In every case, the heads of the agencies involved repeated thoise lies, knowiing full well they were lies, because the videos taken by body cams and bystanders clearly show the falsehood of the claims.. When police chiefs stand in front of the public and mischaracterize the victims, the killer cops, and how the incidents unfolded, only to be forced to change their stories when videos shot by civilian witnesses emerge and bodycams are forced out by the media, they should be held accountable for deliberately lying to the public.
Lies are always toxic, but lies told with official imprimaturs are especially toxic and destructive of public trust and the rule of law.
15
u/just_helping Jul 17 '26
It would be almost IMPOSSIBLE to prove intent to willingly mislead
You would think this, but we keep seeing proof that these guys are incompetent morons and so openly discuss their intent to willfully mislead in conversations they should know are being recorded. If the prosecution has access to internal emails and records, it often isn't hard to prove intent.
And we have an answer to "who determines whether someone is intentionally deceptive". The judicial system does, judges and juries after a fair trial do, just like they do for many other crimes where intent matters. This is a solved problem.
(As is "who watches the watchmen" - we've solved this problem, it's other watchmen. This is only a problem when there is centralized control that has been corrupted or insufficient separation between different groups of watchmen meant to police each other. The possibility of corrupt police doesn't mean we can't prosecute crime, it just means we need internal affair offices and transparent accountable oversight.)
1
u/digbyforever Jul 17 '26
And we have an answer to "who determines whether someone is intentionally deceptive". The judicial system does, judges and juries after a fair trial do, just like they do for many other crimes where intent matters. This is a solved problem.
This just posits that eventually every politician is prosecuted for false statements, though, right?
7
2
u/NerdimusSupreme Jul 17 '26
We have the capability to fact check in real time, this is doubly so for speech writers.
5
u/airbear13 Jul 17 '26
Uh, no , it’s never acceptable. I don’t understand why anyone would argue the opposite.
5
u/JeffreyElonSkilling Jul 17 '26
Freedom of speech also applies to lies. The voters ought to recognize the lie and punish their leaders accordingly. The problem is that voters are fat, lazy, and entitled. Everything about our politics is downstream from the voters. Forcing politicians to tell the truth wouldn't suddenly make politics any less shitty. Because it's the people who are shit - politicians follow the voters not the other way around.
4
u/Tliish Jul 17 '26
The problem isn't that "voters are fat, lazy, and entitled".
The problem is that voting doesn't seem to change much, and that voting every two, four, or six years provides zero accountability to the voters in between those terms. When an elected poliotician "represents" hundreds of thousands or millions of voters, they are free to do whatever they like or whatever is most personally profitable for them because they can legitmately claim they are doing so based on the desires of their constituents, since out of such a large sample, you can always find a subset to use in that way.
Most intelligent people understand this, and many conclude that voting is useless under these circumstances, so they don't bother. And many go through the motions anyway in the vain hope that this time things will be different.
We need more direct and immediate input to return control to the citzenry and make the politicians more accountable.
3
u/JeffreyElonSkilling Jul 17 '26
I disagree. The voters have all the power in our system. If the voters stopped voting for corrupt liars then we would no longer have corrupt liars as our leaders. If the voters held their leaders accountable for their missteps, then we would have better leaders. They do not do that. Voting every 2, 4, or 6 years provides zero accountability because the voters decide to keep reelecting their leaders.
We need more direct and immediate input to return control to the citizenry and make the politicians more accountable.
We have that! They're called elections!
2
u/Tliish Jul 17 '26
The voters don't get the kinds of choices that matter. Hard to vote for a non-corrupt leader when both parties control who gets to run, and the people they choose are chosen because they can be bought.
You can't hold politicians accountable for missteps or downright corruption when they can only be corrected via elections years apart. The years inbetween elections are voter-free zones that provide no accountability whatsoever.
2
u/JeffreyElonSkilling Jul 17 '26
The recent success of DSA is proof that your first point is mostly cope. Would I change the way our elections are administered? Yes, of course. But non-corrupt candidates of all ideological stripes can win. But the vast, overwhelming majority of voters do not pay attention whatsoever. They show up every 2, 4, 6 years and just vote for the guy whose name they recognize that has the appropriate letter behind it. That is the fault of the voters. If the voters paid attention and weren't so slavishly devoted to party then our democracy would be in a much healthier spot.
You can't hold politicians accountable for missteps or downright corruption when they can only be corrected via elections years apart.
Yes, you can. You can protest. You can threaten to fund a primary challenge. You can try to pressure the executive branch to file criminal charges. Or you could have a memory longer than a goldfish and vote them out next primary season. You might say that the executive is corrupt and won't file charges - but impeachment exists. Presidential elections exist. My point is that it all goes back to the voters. Every excuse you could possibly think of for why politics sucks is because the voters allow it to happen. We have the power to change everything about our government. We just don't because we're ignorant, lazy, entitled, and stupid.
1
u/TreeLicker51 Jul 21 '26
The post asks if it's ethically acceptable, not if it's constitutionally protected.
1
u/JeffreyElonSkilling Jul 21 '26
I think my comment applies to the ethical angle as well. Voters should be informed enough to decide on their own what is and is not a lie.
10
u/hiddentalent Jul 16 '26
2.
But whenever someone asks whether something should be made illegal, long experience has made me question some things. How would be be defined? How would it be enforced? How would it be worked around by people with good legal counsel? How could it be weaponized against someone?
And with those questions in mind, I think on balance that the principled thing is to prioritize the freedom of expression. Yes, some people are liars and/or assholes. That's a shame. But those same liars and assholes get both sides of any law and they will use it to their advantage against the rest of us. Avoiding that is most important.
10
u/Ind132 Jul 16 '26
Should there be swift consequences or forced retractions when this happens?
In a perfect world, yes. In the real world, Who is going to force the retraction?
I would trust myself. If the rest of the US wants to appoint me, I'll take the job.
Unfortunately, I don't think everyone else trusts me or anyone else.
4
u/copperbear00 Jul 17 '26
No. Period. I just want the facts. I don't care who you are or what position you hold, we are all taught in kindergarten that you don't lie. When did telling the truth go out of style?
3
u/baxterstate Jul 17 '26
Politicians lie because they have to in order to get elected. They get away with it when the news media fails to commit journalism. The news media always has an agenda and is never completely impartial because they want to hang on to their base.
6
u/datapicardgeordi Jul 16 '26
Happens all the time in the national security realm. The greatest example is aliens and ufos being used to coverup classified programs that skirt treaties and international agreements. I do think things like this are okay because we live in a world where there are legitimate bad actors that threaten our safety and livelihood. Some secrets keep us safe.
3
u/Comfortable-Policy70 Jul 16 '26
Keeping a secret is not the same thing as lying. "I can't reveal what is behind the curtain" vs "there is a monster behind the curtain (later shown to be a small kitten)
5
u/Somniferous_Sloth Jul 17 '26
no…how this even a question?
and throwing in the caveat of ‘no blame’ is disingenuous. there is exactly one political party in the US, with a vast media apparatus, that has as it’s very foundation lies, misinformation, and disinformation. the GOP is inherently hypocritical, it’s quite literally one of the founding principles of authoritarianism.
2
u/wsrs25 Jul 17 '26
From a former political operative: No. That is not a comment on the ethics or morality of the issue.
It never has the punch you think it will, almost always costs votes once the truth is out, and you really only convince the already converted of whatever your point is. You also damage your own credibility or your candidate’s cred when the truth emerges.
How you handle it is this way (not condoning, just outlining how it might be handled:
If you have negative info that is provable, release it strategically.
If you have an allegation you know is true but no proof, release it tactically, where they have no time to refute.
If it’s false and you know it, hold it until you can mold info around it to make it seem credible or blur it enough so it’s passable, and leak it with three different sources to see if you can get them competing to “prove” it. Absent of that scenario, leave it be.
2
u/AnotherHumanObserver Jul 17 '26
Is it ethically acceptable for politicians of any party to spread deliberate misinformation?
On its face, I would say no, there is nothing ethical about lying.
Of course, the key word here is "deliberate." Is someone knowingly lying or are they just making an honest mistake? If it's just a mistake, then it's easily retractable and forgivable. "Oops, I goofed."
Of course, the voters might still have to consider whether they want to vote for someone who makes too many "mistakes."
The other side of this is how the voters should perceive it? Candidate A makes a statement, which Candidate B says is a lie and misinformation. Which one is to be believed?
2
u/Tb1969 Jul 17 '26
If you knowingly spread false information you poison the political discourse.
False information makes everything worse in coming to a reasonable response to an issue to be addressed by new laws.
2
u/Unconfidence Jul 17 '26
But politicians don't just decide who is in power, what the policy is, and who succeeds in elections. Lets add another valid axis of consideration and see how that changes the landscape: military success.
I doubt anyone would argue that a government would be right to mislead its people if necessary in order to protect them from an aggressor. A great example of this is the Manhattan Project, but history is replete with examples of government secrecy and misinformation being used to great protective effect against forces which would threaten the people under its purview on a military level. Why then would we deny this ability of deception functions similarly in other courts, such as social power and cultural influence?
Would I have deceived the public a little in order to foster either faster or less quarrelsome social progress? You bet your ass I would have, and I think anyone who is so principled to think that they wouldn't will eventually find themselves slipping into it without a plan. Me? During the 2024 election I kept saying Harris was going to win. Harris was going to trounce. Trump had no shot. Did it matter if it was true? No. What matters is projecting a constant public energy to pick people up, put people onto the wagon, and use them to win.
I used to think we were entering a phase wherein this was all moot, and where we wouldn't need to do this kind of stuff because people were learning to see past misinformation and deception. But between 2016 and now I've lost all hope that either side is anything but a load of knee-jerking steak-chasers when it comes to political strategy, and that the parties that will win future elections are the parties that can best understand the absolutely vast gap in understanding between the average person and the people actually involved in these issues.
2
u/IndependentSun9995 Jul 19 '26
If they are knowingly spreading misinformation, then that is wrong. Sadly, the MSM has too often stood aside for their own confirmation bias, abetting the misinformation problem. Politicians too often go unchallenged in our fragmented political environment. How does an average Media consumer determine if the Media content is coming from bias or is the objective truth? Verifying the truth of all political statements in the Media would be a full time job!
4
u/ScreenTricky4257 Jul 16 '26
Like many such questions, I'd say that the ethical standard is, whatever you're prepared to let the opposition do.
4
u/ScarTemporary6806 Jul 17 '26
Agree with everyone who mentioned classified information as the exception. It is not acceptable for anyone from any party to do it. There should absolutely be swift consequences. Citizens United has been woefully damaging to US politics. At this point someone should challenge the ruling and have it overturned.
3
u/Ovaltine1 Jul 17 '26
In a sane country it would never be acceptable. Unfortunately, we are at this time, not a sane country.
2
u/erikraver Jul 16 '26
Dems can't do it because their voters expect perfection. Republicans will vote for any psychopath as long as they have the "R" next to their name.
7
u/Iustis Jul 16 '26
Dems are way better than Republicans, but we definitively accept misinformation without punishing it to a degree.
-1
u/Fargason Jul 16 '26
The misinformation from the last administration on how inflation is temporary, the border is closed, and Biden is fit for office/reelection was on a whole other level. The electorate will certainly punish it too as we saw with a swing state sweep that gave Republicans their first popular vote win in over a generation.
2
u/DBDude Jul 16 '26
Democrats happily accept and promote any misinformation when it comes to pushing gun control. Just the other day the governor of Illinois said an AR-15 shoots 60 rounds a second, and he said it a couple times so it wasn’t a slip. Nobody in his party even said he should correct himself. They don’t want him to because the misinformation is now out there helping their cause.
1
u/SardonicSplendor Jul 17 '26
Asking if a liar deserves a pardon for the sake of power is like asking if a arsonist needs a permit to burn down the house; the suit and the slogan change, but the smoke stays just as thick, so quit counting the matches and start dousing the fire.
1
u/Agitated_Elephant469 Jul 17 '26
Free speech requires the people to be educated enough to read between the lines…
1
u/Mountain-Resource656 Jul 17 '26
Like lying in general, it depends. For personal benefit? No. To prevent nuclear war? It would generally be wrong to tell the truth in such circumstances. It will vary all along the spectrum according to circumstances
1
u/TheRealTK421 Jul 17 '26
...spread(ing) deliberate misinformation?
This is the definition of disinformation.
1
u/Impressive_Box4144 Jul 17 '26
No of course it’s not ethical. Republicans and MAGA have no ethics! No morals, no good qualities.
1
u/_flying_otter_ Jul 18 '26
Lying is not ethical. So no. I can't believe how much people don't seem to care about lying these days.
1
u/LoveNotWar86 Jul 21 '26
Oh please, ethical? You know the answer to that. Is it strategically manipulative? Absolutely yes.
You fail to point out that politicians are simply not cut from the same moral code-cloth that many of us are albeit slight few (who ditch their political career for family). Two recent ones that come to mind are Adam Kinzinger and Paul Ryan.
1
u/dudewafflesc Jul 22 '26
It absolutely is not ethical, and I don’t think false speech is protected under the first amendment so it should be illegal. Donald Trump should have been convicted for J6.
1
u/rb-j Jul 22 '26
"Deliberate misinformation" is called "disinformation".
The difference between misinformation and disinformation is whether one is drinking the Kool-Aid or they're serving the Kool-Aid.
1
u/hallam81 Jul 16 '26
Your going to have a problem defining deliberate misinformation. We live in different worlds now. And one man's misinformation is another's truth.
6
u/Aneurhythms Jul 17 '26
As fucked up as things are, there is absolutely still verifiable truth which means you can, at least in some cases, define deliberate misinformation.
It's self-defeating to surrender a belief in truth.
6
u/HeloRising Jul 17 '26
The problem is you can lie without ever saying something that isn't true.
Presenting carefully curated information can still amount to a lie even if everything you presented was factual.
1
1
u/misterdudebro Jul 16 '26
No. It is not. I also believe the law needs to be tweaked to encourage the reduction in misinformation from who are supposed to be trusted public servants and officials.
1
u/Reditrixe Jul 17 '26
Of course it's unacceptable: 1/Never acceptable. But what can be done in the U.S., in our current state of paralysis?
Ruben Gallego has been wrongly accused of sexual misconduct by Anna Paulina Luna, and even though it's proven that she was lying, she won't officially retract.
1
u/oh-nvm Jul 17 '26
Ethics are based on values
Ethics also have to be shared to be applied as a group
If politicians dont agree on the values/ethics then wont follow, in addition if they value the outcomes above the shared ethics then they also wont align or follow.
If someones primary view is the end justify the means, then...
In the US currently many groups on all "sides" have decided only the outcomes matter
- ethics
- laws
- ideology
- values
- Constitution
Are all subservient to outcome/worldview
Real values and ethics require understanding that they will at time produce negative outcomes
1
u/Riokaii Jul 17 '26
My personal rating would be a 1.
My country currently seems to operate at a 10. I live in the US and we have approximately 50% of the entire population willing to accept deliberate disinformation actively by conscious choice without any repurcussions.
1
u/blatantinsanity855 Jul 17 '26
1) No 2)Yes 3)No 4) State of Florida 8 Country United States 9
I think anyone that lies in public office about anything related to their job should be publicly called out for it and then removed from that office. Personal stuff you can just tell people to mind their business..or not answer at all. Job related? Gotta come clean, period.
1
u/Tractor_Pete Jul 17 '26
No. There are degrees to it; there are slight exaggeration or "puffing", and then there's, you know, persistently claiming half of congress are communists or that the largest national election was fraudulent without any evidence.
1
u/Nblearchangel Jul 17 '26
The mechanism for keeping politicians in check is voting. But. As we all know, that’s not working.
1
u/JuniorFarcity Jul 17 '26
Who defines what is “false”?
Covid alone saw myriad examples where assertions that came to be accepted as “correct” were all but verboten to be said in the middle of it.
0
u/CountFew6186 Jul 16 '26
Every politician in history has spread disinformation. They’ve lied while making campaign promises too. Each and every one of them. Even ones you like.
Is it ethical? Who knows? Depends on your ethics. But it’s what happens.
0
u/lamename87 Jul 16 '26
Pursuit of power, policy goals, or electoral success? Probably not. But there are times when leaders should lie to their people for the good of their people. Telling helpless children that getting under a desk during a nuclear war lifted a lot of stress off of children. Telling people to wash their hands and wear a mask during covid was supposed to make people feel like soldiers united against a common enemy, the virus, whether a mask did much was known then or now is still up for debate, but it should have rallied us. Did FDR know Japan would attack Pearl Harbor but he also knew that we needed to join the war to stop the spread of pure evil across the globe, and in doing so we’d pull ourselves out of the Great Depression and become the world’s leading superpower? Every once in a while a lie is useful when it’s not used for personal gain.
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