This week is National Media Literacy week, a time to highlight the power of media literacy and its essential role in education across the country. The timing couldn’t be better. Just last week, my office had to shut down our phone lines because the system was overwhelmed by out-of-state callers responding to misinformation about the Oregon voters’ pamphlet.
This unfortunate event meant Oregonians with legitimate questions about the election were unable to get a quick answer, providing a clear example of the real harm caused by misinformation.
Many of the calls my staff had to endure were abusive, vulgar, and offensive. Several were explicitly threatening violence. I know how discouraging it can be to operate in our current toxic political climate. But we must not turn away or tune out because it’s the easy thing to do. We can do better.
I hope this incident and its timing during National Media Literacy week can be an opportunity for us to do better. To that end, I’d like to give you an overview of the incident we just experienced and some helpful information about how to avoid misinformation in elections.
The voters’ pamphlet, which is mailed to all Oregon households, includes candidate statements submitted by campaigns. Elections officials do not have any say over what is in those statements or whether a candidate chooses to participate. This year, neither Donald Trump nor JD Vance submitted a statement to the pamphlet. We expected this would cause some confusion for voters.
On September 3rd, we issued this press release to announce the final list of candidates for the offices of President and Vice President, and to make it clear Donald Trump (and some others) would not appear in the voters’ pamphlet. Many Oregon media outlets published a story to explain why. Voters’ pamphlets were mailed around October 9th or 10th, at which point some social media accounts noted the absence of the statements — and began speculating (incorrectly) as to the reason why.
Responding to false information can be tricky. Our goal is to provide accurate information without amplifying the incorrect information. After careful consideration, we decided the benefit of responding directly to the post outweighed the risks. On X, this had the useful side effect of leading to a community note with clarifying information attached to the post. We did reach out to the Oregon Republican Party, who later made a statement confirming that the Trump campaign decided not to submit a statement.
On October 17th, there was a 2nd post on X and also on Instagram from a different account. The same day, the phone calls started pouring in. We received about 400 calls Thursday morning alone, the vast majority of them coming from out-of-state callers. Unfortunately, all the efforts we’d made to publicize accurate information about this situation paled in comparison to the reach of a big, active social media account.
I was struck by how many people immediately believed a social media post from an unofficial source with no connection to Oregon, without checking credible news sources or looking for official information from elections officials. All of the information needed to check the claim was available through a quick Google search, but neither the owner of the X account nor the many callers bothered to check the claim’s accuracy. It comes as no surprise, but it is nonetheless disappointing.
Here’s how we do better.
First, it’s important to remember that you just can’t trust everything you see online. We recommend you Pause, Research and Verify any information you see online.
When you’re getting information about the election, ask yourself where your information is coming from. Is the person trustworthy? What is their motivation for sharing the information? False information is often intended to incite fear, anger, or other strong emotions.
Now let’s go a step further. I strongly encourage everyone to use official sources of information, such as OregonVotes.gov or their county elections office, to make sure the information is nonpartisan and accurate. This is what journalists do when they are researching an article. They verify the information before repeating it.
Finally, we all need to continue our education as the information landscape changes around us. Now is a great time to take advantage of the media literacy resources from the National Association for Media Literacy Education. Their resources for parents, adults, and media literacy events happening this week are a great place to start.
We can do better to model good behavior and promote media literacy. Together, we can fight back against misinformation.
