One thing everyone can believe: Whether it's about agency billings and income or high-stakes geopolitical strategy, disinformation is part of the communications arsenal. Efforts to confuse, misdirect, mislead or confound a public are part of today's world.

--Defining disinformation dispensers, Advertising Age October 20, 1986, p. 17.

Defining disinformation dispensers

The furor over "disinformation" sure hits home.

The Washington Post and other leading newspapers have indignantly charged the Reagan administration with engaging in disinformation. Their anger is directed at a leak to the Wall Street Journal that said this country was preparing a contingency plan for a possible strike at Moammar Khaddafy if Libya's troubled dictator sent his terrorist units back to work. On Oct. 2, the Post's Bob Woodward reported that this story was just some psychological warfare inspired by National Security Adviser John Poindexter, who was eager to drive Libya's el-Flako up a wall. How did Mr. Woodward know? Why, someone leaked a confidential memo to him.

After Mr. Woodward's story appeared, the WSJ said it was still convinced "the U.S. government in late summer believed Libya had resumed its active support for terrorism and . . . was considering a range of options aimed at deterring such Libyan activity." Said managing editor Norm Pearlstine, "It now seems clear that some high administration officials misled us as to the likelihood of employing some of these options. We deplore any such attempt to mislead the Journal."

In unison, let's all deplore attempts to mislead the news media. But as a publication that deals with disinformation all the time, we're prepared to deplore the way some editors react when they think government officials are trying to fake out their reporters.

Our exposure to disinformation involves billings figures, agency executives who deny they are talking about a merger even as they conclude the merger contracts, marketing people who deny that a big advertiser has fired its agency. To us, these people are under some illusion that makes them feel they are protecting their company's interest. Lying to the news media doesn't even count as a lie.

Our reaction is that if we fall for the lie, or let someone fake us out as we attempt to report the events of the business communities we cover, it's our problem. We deal with leaks all the time, and we think we can keep getting better and better at cracking through the walls of disinformation that are all too often erected in the advertising business. We never believed for a second that "leakers" must tell us the whole truth, or that their motives are pure or that they aren't attempting to manipulate anyone.

The fact that major dailies will deal with more government-based leakers than an AA reporter doesn't change anything. Anonymous government sources are still individuals; they still choose what they will leak and to whom they will leak it. If they were acting officially, not as individuals looking to score points for or against someone or something, they wouldn't have to work surreptitiously.

So the basic approach here is that media must embrace the responsibility to get at the whole truth. We evaluate the tips, the denials, the rumors, the confirmations, the information that comes to us. We discard much of what we hear. We publish what we believe to be the truth. If we are fooled, it means we weren't careful enough. We don't go running to the district attorney to demand that he do our job for us.

We suggest that the other news media grow up and get back to the business they're in and stop using their news columns to try to run the government. Disinformation is a fact of life. H. L. Stevenson, the former editor-in-chief of United Press International who now serves as Crain Communications' corporate editor, sent an internal memo last week on the disinformation fuss and concluded: "In Washington and elsewhere, persistent reporters usually get to the bottom of things, disinformation or not."

That's the bottom line. After all, might not the leak to Mr. Woodward about Mr. Poindexter's confidential memo be part of another attempt to manipulate the media? Is an administration official trying to damage Mr. Poindexter by duping Mr. Woodward? And for all we -- or Mr. Woodward -- know, maybe the government now wants to cool the speculation about its psychological warfare campaign against Col. Khaddafy and so is using new disinformation to discredit its old disinformation.

One thing everyone can believe: Whether it's about agency billings and income or high-stakes geopolitical strategy, disinformation is part of the communications arsenal. Efforts to confuse, misdirect, mislead or confound a public are part of today's world. Sorting it all out in order to serve the truth is not an easy task. It would be nice if it didn't exist, if business executives didn't use it and, obviously, if politicians, government bureaucrats, diplomats and professional people, coaches and teachers, never had to engage in disinformation. But news media must drive through this traffic and struggle to maintain credibility as they attempt to deliver reader or viewer benefits. This is where journalistic doggedness and skill come into play. Because we understand how unrelenting the work is, we have no sympathy for those media heavy-weights who suddenly turn into crybabies when they discover that, yes, government leakers can lie, too.

It is unconscionable to cry foul when leaked information proves to be false. If a leaker fools the media, shame on the media. The solution isn't in training people to be better leakers. It's in continually training ourselves to become better reporters and editors.