> Isn't the goal of disinformation campaigns to create a post truth era?
I dunno, and I'm not sure if you are including the major newspapers on the campaigner or victim group... but it would help if they weren't caught in blatant lies all the time.
Gell-Mann amnesia stops working once people hear about the concept.
Anyway, if the NYT published something on the lines of "public person X says Y in public", that would have high odds of being true. But "cybersecurity issue X identified in country-the-us-doesn't-like-Y" is almost certainly bullshit and even if there is something there, the journalist doesn't know enough to get the story right.
It was a rhetorical question. I actually would really encourage you to read about post truth politics if you haven't because it ties into what you're discussing.
I am including the major news organizations and I specifically think they're a major contributor to post truth. It can't happen without them. Being caught in lies enables post truth because the point of this strategy is to make it difficult to determine what truth is. To overload the populous. The strategy really comes out of Russia where they specifically would report lies such as Putin killing dissidents, only for those people to turn up alive. You encourage conspiracies. The most recent example I can think of is how Trump going offline for a few days lit the world with conspiracy theories about him dying. Fucking major news networks bought into that too! It's insane to operate like that. But that's the point. That you have to question everything. I guess to put it one way, you need to always be in system 2 thinking. But you can't always be operating at that level and when doing for long periods of time you'll end up with an anxiety disorder.
I don't know if all major news networks are doing this intentionally or if it's a steady state solution optimization for engagement, but the result would be the same.
I'm saying this because look at my main comments. I'm trying to encourage finding the truth of the matter rather than react (which is what the OP was (rightfully) criticizing WaPo for).