While the true impact of misinformation can never be measured, we can look at a few examples to see how powerful a threat this can be. In early 2000, fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger came under attack, when chain emails began circulating that he made a racist comment on ‘Oprah’ and that people should boycott his clothing line. Despite the fact that Hilfiger did not appear on Oprah, or make any such remarks, the emails persisted. In 2007, he appeared on Oprah because the situation had become so dire, to refute the remarks. I am sure this type of misinformation cost his business money, as well as attacked his integrity.
The government today warned the Anil-Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) to desist from “misinformation” propaganda that it had conducted through newspaper advertisements against the petroleum ministry and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on pricing and allocation of natural gas from RIL’s KG-D6 field.
But, undaunted, ADAG’s Reliance Natural Resources Ltd said that the petroleum ministry’s statement “clearly demonstrates its bias and partisan approach of favouring RIL and enabling it to wriggle out of binding contractual commitments with NTPC and RNRL”, as the ministry’s statement did not provide any response on a large number of issues pointed out by ADAG ads.
Earlier in the day, the ministry said: “Suffice it to say that parties to a dispute would be well advised to reserve restraint in the matter of projection of facts as well as inferences.” It said that since the government “cannot enter into needless and unnecessary controversies”, it was issuing a “limited clarification” so that there was “no element of public misinformation”.
