Horowitz 22 [Eli Horowitz, 6-26-2022, "Capitalism Is the Real Information War," MR Online, https://mronline.org/2022/06/26/capitalism-is-the-real-information-war/, DOA: 7-7-2022, SMarx, JTong]
Bigger Is Badder: Disinformation Economies of Scale
As if all of this wasn’t already bad enough, capitalists also engage in coordinated disinformation campaigns. You likely already know about some of these: the infamous “tobacco industry playbook” that protected cigarette revenues for decades against the threat of cancer lawsuits; the National Football League’s history of muddying the waters on concussions; and, of course, the fact that the oil industry knew about global warming nearly fifty years ago and chose to cover it up rather than lose out on profits. But corporate-backed disinformation programs like these are much more common and much older than you may think.
Instead of admitting that its products poisoned millions of children, the lead industry threatened to sue television networks and ran public relation campaigns blaming parents. The industry-backed National Rifle Association has been pushing pro-gun propaganda for decades. Not satisfied with having hidden the reality and severity of climate change from us for decades, the oil industry is now spreading lies about electric vehicles. Coca-Cola and Georgia-Pacific have been known to launder their propaganda through flawed publications in science journals. Sometimes, corporations even wage these campaigns against one another, as in the recent case of Facebook hiring a right-wing political strategy firm to spread false claims about TikTok, one of its competitors.
Nor is the problem limited to corporations that want to downplay specific dangers so as to protect their existing business models. More and more, falsehoods are the business model.The capitalist need for deception has become so widespread that there’s now an entire “disinformation-for-hire” industry whose entire purpose is to mislead and confuse the public. At the same time, traffic-oriented businesses like Facebook have learned to build themselves around anything that grabs users’ attention, even if those things are misinformation, manufactured controversies, or lies.
Epistemology Outweighs – Capitalist media is based around propaganda and lies
