Flair tops Canadian airlines with average number of complaints per 100 flights: CTA

Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press

Flair Airlines Ltd. has the highest number of complaints per 100 flights of all the major airlines in Canada, according to the Canadian Transportation Agency, as airlines have had a rocky recovery year with delayed and cancelled flights. 

Between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023, Flair saw an average of 15.3 complaints per 100 flights according to the report published in late April. 

Sunwing Airlines Inc. came second at 13.8 complaints per 100 flights, and Swoop Inc. was third at 13.2. Meanwhile, WestJet had 6.6 complaints per 100 flights, Air Canada had 4.3 and Air Transat averaged 3.3 complaints.

Flair saw four of its leased planes seized in March because of overdue payments, causing hundreds of cancelled flights. 

John Gradek, a lecturer at McGill University’s aviation management program, theorized that the debacle for Flair was a symptom of cash flow issues at the airline. He said Flair had overcommitted itself and passengers were complaining about issues related to compensation.

This dealt a blow to the airline’s reputation, he said. However, as demand has crept up, Gradek said Flair is charging higher fares and therefore is likely generating more revenue.

“Their cash position has improved significantly,” he said. 

“They're now able to address any compensation claims that are being made by passengers, whether it's for bags or whether it's for delayed flights or cancelled flights.” 

Flair CEO Stephen Jones said in a statement that the airline acknowledges its past customer service performance, and has made significant investments resulting in immediate and noticeable improvement, including investments in contact centre staff and managing customer complaints through the Better Business Bureau. 

The airline's investments in contact centre staff include a dedicated team in Montreal specifically focused on handling CTA complaints, said Jones, and cases are now being resolved within a week, when in 2022 they would take three months. 

"These recent developments demonstrate Flair's dedication to improving our customer service and addressing past shortcomings," said Jones. 

He also said that in May more than 82 per cent of the airline's flights arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time. 

As demand for air travel has soared in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines have at times struggled to keep up and the past year has seen headlines about cancellations, delays and chaotic airports.

According to the CTA, the average number of complaints was lower for all the major airlines for the first three-month period of its report from April to June 2022, with Air Canada seeing an average of one complaint per 100 flights, Flair seeing 9.3, Swoop seeing 6.7 and WestJet seeing 3.9. 

However, as the summer travel season began last year, the airlines tended to see complaints rise. During the peak July through September summer travel season last year, Swoop jumped to 18.5 complaints per 100 flights to have the highest of all airlines, while during the October through December stretch Sunwing was the worst with 20.7 complaints per 100 flights. 

Flair peaked at 20.9 between in the January to March 2023 period when it saw its planes seized, while WestJet also peaked at 10.7 during the same period. Swoop and Air Canada both peaked between July and September last year, at 18.5 and 6.3, respectively. 

Sunwing’s higher complaints levels over the winter likely stem from the disruptions the airline saw during that time period, Gradek said. 

The biggest airlines tended to have the highest number of total passenger complaints, even though the smaller ones are seeing higher averages per 100 flights. In the CTA's report for 2021-2022, Air Canada saw 3,245 complaints and WestJet had 3,288, while Flair had 239 and Sunwing 884. 

Gradek said there’s stiff competition between Canada’s discount carriers, but there may not be room in the market for all of them. 

“There is a place for discount carriers, no doubt about it,” he said. But Gradek said the real test is not how they fare during peak times, but how they do when demand is lower. 

“Will they have enough cash in the bank to survive the fall?” he said. “And will they have enough cash to transition to Christmas?”

Air Canada and WestJet have also both seen recent turbulence, albeit after the CTA report’s timeline.

Air Canada cancelled and delayed flights beginning last Thursday due to technical problems, while WestJet narrowly avoided a pilot strike over the May long weekend but still had to cancel a number of flights.

IMPERIALISM

Meta to test blocking news on Instagram, Facebook for some Canadians

Mickey Djuric, The Canadian Press

Meta is preparing to block news for some Canadians on Facebook and Instagram in a temporary test that is expected to last the majority of the month.

The Silicon Valley tech giant is following in the steps of Google, which blocked news links for about five weeks earlier this year for some of its Canadian users in response to a controversial Liberal government bill.

Bill C-18, which is currently being studied in the Senate, will require tech giants to pay publishers for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.

Meta said it's prepared to block news permanently on Facebook and Instagram if the bill passes, which the government said could happen this month.

Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta Canada, said this first temporary move will affect one to five per cent of its 24 million Canadian users, with the number of those impacted fluctuating throughout the test.

Randomly selected Canadian users will not be able to see or share news content in Canada either on Instagram or Facebook.

She said that could include news links to articles, reels — which are short-form videos — or stories, which are photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours.

However, the experience won't be the same for every user who is subject to the test.

"It won't be a uniform experience, necessarily. Some news links won't be shareable on Facebook, but it might not be that experience on Instagram. It will be a different experience on different surfaces," Curran said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement Thursday evening that the fact that Facebook is still refusing to work with Canadians shows how deeply irresponsible the company is.

"When a big tech company, whatever the size is, the amount of money and the powerful lawyers they have, they come here and they tell us, 'If you don’t do this or that, then I’m pulling the plug,' – that’s a threat and that is unacceptable," he said in the statement.

"I never did anything because I was afraid of a threat, and I will never do it."

Rodriguez added in a tweet that "Canadians will not be intimidated by these tactics."

Meta said it is picking random news publishers that will be notified that some people in Canada will not be able to see or share their news content throughout the test. They will still be able to access their accounts, pages, businesses suites and advertising.

International news companies such as the New York Times or BBC could also have their content blocked in Canada during the test, if they are randomly selected. However, people outside of Canada will not be affected.

"It's only going to impact your experience ... if you're in Canada," Curran said.

Meta is defining news as it's described in the Liberal government's online news act.

"The legislation states that news outlets are in scope if they primarily report on, investigate or explain current issues or events of public interests," said Curran.

Content that doesn't fall under that definition will not be blocked from Canadians. When Facebook blocked news in Australia in 2021 because of a similar bill, there was widespread concern that trusted sources would be unavailable, while pages that published misinformation flourished.

Curran said affected Canadians will still be able to use their platforms to access information from a variety of sources including government pages, organizations and universities.

"We think all of that is good information. They're also seeing and sharing things that interest them and entertain them. We would not classify that as misinformation. That's great information and that will continue to be shared and to be viewable," Curran said, adding that the company will continue to address misinformation on its site through a global fact-checking program.

Meta's test is designed to ensure that non-news agencies don't get caught in the dragnet should they block news permanently.

The company said it doesn't want to accidentally block emergency services, community organizations, politicians or government pages, which happened in Australia.

Legacy media and broadcasters have praised the federal Liberals' online news bill because it would bring in more money for shrinking newsrooms. Companies such as Meta and Google have been blamed for disrupting and dominating the advertising industry, eclipsing smaller, traditional players.

Curran said removing journalism from Meta's platforms is a business decision, and the company makes "negligible amounts" of revenue from news content.

The company said less than three per cent of what people see in their Facebook feeds are posts with links to news articles, and many of its users believe that is already "too much" news.

"We're facing a lot of competitive pressures and competition for user time and attention. We're also facing some pretty serious economic headwinds, and a macro economic climate that's a bit uncertain," Curran said.

"Of course news have value from a social perspective. It's valuable to our democracy. It just doesn't have much commercial or economic value to our company."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2023.

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Meta funds a limited number of fellowships that support emerging journalists at The Canadian Press.

Canada's economy is proving surprisingly immune to higher interest rates

Erik Hertzberg and Sarina Yoo, Bloomberg News

Canada’s economy hasn’t buckled under the weight of higher borrowing costs. On the contrary: strong growth has more economists predicting the central bank will resume raising interest rates soon.

Thirteen of 17 economists surveyed by Bloomberg say the Canadian economy is proving less sensitive to higher rates than previously believed. Almost half now say the Bank of Canada will raise its benchmark overnight rate, currently 4.5 per cent, between now and September. In the March survey, analysts unanimously said Governor Tiff Macklem’s next move would be a cut.

Going into this year, the consensus view was that Canada’s deeply indebted households would quickly cut back spending as they absorbed higher rates. That would in turn cause the economy to slow down earlier than other nations that aren’t so exposed to bloated home prices and mortgage debt.  

The survey data suggest those perspectives are shifting. Canada’s economy grew at a 3.1 per cent annualized pace in the first quarter, stronger than projected, while employers have added 344,000 jobs in six months. Consumer spending has been steady. It’s prompted some to change their minds about how tight monetary policy needs to get to bring inflation to heel. 

“It’s not what, intuitively, I would have thought would be happening at this stage” of the rate cycle, Dawn Desjardins, chief economist at Deloitte in Canada, said in an interview. The economy is proving more resilient in part because a huge increase in savings during the COVID-19 pandemic has given some households a buffer, she said. 

Economists at two of Canada’s major lenders — Bank of Nova Scotia and Toronto-Dominion Bank — say the central bank will raise borrowing costs at its meeting Wednesday, with markets putting the likelihood at almost a coin flip. Nearly 90 per cent of respondents in the Bloomberg survey say policymakers have given sufficient notice to start boosting rates again. 

While it’s difficult to pinpoint the primary cause for the country’s surprising resilience, there’s a growing consensus that fiscal authorities have been working at cross-purposes to the Bank of Canada. Nearly 70 per cent of economists surveyed say Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s generous spending programs and expanded targets for immigration have contributed to a need for higher interest rates this cycle, which saw the central bank increase borrowing costs by 425 basis points in less than a year.

Asked to respond to the survey, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s office defended the government’s “responsible fiscal plan,” noted that Canada has the lowest debt-to-output ratio among the Group of Seven, and said immigration is an important driver of economic growth.

Since the Bank of Canada declared a conditional rate pause in January — a signal supported by four-fifths of respondents — economic data has continued to surprise to the upside. The labour market is showing few signs of strain; headline and underlying inflation are proving stubborn; and housing activity has started to rebound, with sales and prices rising in the country’s major cities.

The survey of 17 economists was conducted from May 30 to June 2.

OTHER FINDINGS

• Rate cuts won’t start until the first quarter of next year, the survey shows
• More than 80 per cent of economists say a soft landing is the most likely outcome, compared with two-thirds in the March survey
• Over three-quarters of respondents see inflation returning to the 2 per cent target in 2024
• Nearly 70 per cent of economists say the Bank of Canada’s policy rate can comfortably diverge from the Federal Reserve by as much as 100 basis points
• Almost 60 per cent say the Bank of Canada could deliver a 25 basis point hike without intending to go any further than thaT

Child care keeping women out of workforce despite COVID rebound: Report

Holly McKenzie-Sutter, BNN Bloomberg

Canadian women’s employment has rebounded since the losses of the early COVID-19 pandemic, but workforce gaps between women and men persist and child care is a significant sticking point, according to a new report.

Authors of the C.D. Howe Institute report titled ‘Juggling Act: Women, Work and Closing the Gaps with Men’ recommended flexible work options and accessible, affordable child care as options to help address Canada’s workplace gender imbalance.

“Reducing disparities in gender participation and employment rates and encouraging women to work in in-demand and high-paying jobs would help mitigate aging’s impact on Canada’s labour force growth, address labour and skills shortages, and strengthen the economy,” Tingting Zhang, one of the report’s authors, said in written statement.

“This requires encouraging greater labour force participation and removing employment barriers for women who wish to work, especially older women and those with children.”

COVID ‘SHE-CESSION’

The report, released Tuesday, looked at Canadian women’s labour force participation before and after the pandemic.

During Canada’s “deepest, but also shortest downturn on record” from March to the end of April 2020, women’s employment in the country fell by more than 17.6 per cent, seeing more than 1.6 million women leave the workforce. Job losses were more significant for women than men because they disproportionately worked in sectors affected by COVID-19 shutdowns like the service industry, tourism, education and child care. Women are also more likely to take on caregiving duties, the report noted.

Child care was a major factor in the gender employment patterns. The biggest decline in labour participation was among women with school-aged children, and the gender employment gap was largest for parents with young children.

Women’s employment had bounced back and made a full recovery by September 2021. As of February, women’s employment had exceeded February 2020 levels by five per cent. Women had also switched into different industries, with fewer women working in food services and accommodation, and more in professional and technical services – “however, these shifts did not make a significant improvement in industrial and occupational gender imbalances” compared 2019.

PERSISTENT GAPS

Despite improvements since the employment losses of 2020, the researchers noted lasting gaps in employment statistics between Canadian women and men.

It noted that the employment gap has narrowed over the last several decades, but women’s labour force participation has “plateaued” since the beginning of the 21st  century. Women’s employment rose to 62 per cent in the early 2000s from 45.7 per cent in the 1970s. But women’s participation rate was stuck at 61.5 per cent in 2022, and the labour force participation gap between genders was at eight percentage points in 2022.

The participation gap is largest for women aged 55 and older, according to the report. Women are also overrepresented in the part-time workforce, and child care remains a barrier to full-time work.

Among women who aren’t working, personal and family responsibilities have been cited as a main reason keeping them out of the workforce, and women working part time reported that child care was the main reason they are not able to work full time.

There is also a large workplace participation gap between men and women between the ages of 25 and 54 with children. The gap is largest at 18.4 percentage points for people who have children aged five years old and younger.

However, the report highlighted “good news” as there were noticeable improvements for working mothers in 2022, and cited research from the Bank of Canada that suggested federal policies with universal child-care targets helping more mothers enter the workforce.

The “child-care factor” keeping part-time employed women from full-time jobs was lowest in Quebec, which has had subsidized child care since 1997, “highlighting the role of accessing affordable child care in women’s employment decisions.”

RECOMMENDATIONS: CHILD CARE, FLEXIBLE WORK AND STEM TRAINING

The C.D. Howe researchers zeroed in on three recommended areas to boost women’s workforce participation: flexible work arrangements, affordable and accessible child care and skills training to bring women into STEM fields and trades.

They noted that labour shortages have been challenging efforts to scale up affordable child-care offerings across Canadian provinces, and recommended funding to raise wages for early childhood educators in order to attract and retain them in the field. It also suggested employers offer workplace-based child care to attract more woman workers.

Flexible work arrangements like remote work and flexible hours would also help retain women, the report said, and help people in caregiving roles thrive in the workplaces. It would also help improve employment numbers for older women who may want to work reduced hours, the report added, which could be a boon to businesses looking to fill job vacancies.

“It is important to continue applying a gender lens to designing social programs and labour market policy, post-pandemic,” the report said. “Investments in the labour market outcomes of women are essential to Canada’s continuous prosperity and inclusive growth.”

Fire & Flower files for court protection from creditors under CCAA

The Canadian Press\

Cannabis retailer Fire & Flower Holdings Corp. says it has received a court order for creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act.

The company had been pursuing additional financing to raise capital to fund its operations.

It says the board determined that it was is in the best interests of the company to file an application for creditor protection following a review of its strategic options and a consideration of all of its available alternatives.

Fire & Flower operates under several banners including the Fire & Flower, Friendly Stranger and Firebird Delivery brands. 

The company says its board will remain in place and management will remain responsible for the day-to-day operations, under the oversight of a court-appointed monitor while it works to streamline operations and conduct a sales process for the business.

In order to fund the CCAA proceedings and other short-term working capital requirements, Fire & Flower says it has signed an agreement with an affiliate of Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. for a $9.8-million debtor-in-possession loan.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2023.

Stellantis reviewing new offer from federal government on Windsor battery plant

Holly McKenzie-Sutter, BNN Bloomberg

Stellantis NV said it is reviewing a new written offer from the federal government on an electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ont., after the company halted construction last month in a disagreement over funding.

“Stellantis and LGES are in receipt of a written offer that is currently under financial and legal review,” Stellantis spokesperson Lou Ann Gosselin told BNNBloomberg.ca in an email on Tuesday.

“We have nothing further to add at this time.”

The plant, a joint venture between the multinational automaker with South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution, was first announced in March 2022. Stellantis paused construction last month, saying the federal government had not met its commitments.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently said Ontario has committed to pay a third of the costs needed to save the $5-billion project, which is anticipated to create about 2,500 jobs when it becomes operational in 2025.

Funding negotiations with Stellantis reopened after Canada announced another battery plant with Volkswagen AG planned for St. Thomas, Ont., which could be worth up to $13 billion over a decade.

Federal Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said last week that a deal was close after he made a similar offer to the one Ottawa gave Volkswagen.

With files from The Canadian Press

 

Fatoumata Diawara in Concert - 30th Africa Festival Würzburg (2018)

Africa Festival Würzburg -

Woman power from Mali - Fatoumata Diawara live in concert at the 30th Africa Festival Würzburg in 2018. Her debut album ´Fatou´ (2011) featuring the hit “Sowa“ conquered the charts of the world music scene. She was the lead of several movies and theatre plays. Her last projects were the collaboration with Cuban musician Roberto Fonseca (”At Home“ / 2015), the fusion album “Lamomali“ (2017) with French rock musician Matthieu Chedid, as well as the documentary “Mali Blues“. Last year she performed on stage at the Africa festival with Tuareg Ahmed Ag Kaedy, one of the protagonists from this movie. By popular request we have invited the fighter for the rights of women in Africa again to make the festival tent boil. In 2013 she received the Africa Festival Award. The Africa Festival Würzburg has been established in 1989 and is the largest festival for African music and culture in Europe. More than 400 groups and individual artists from 56 African and Caribbean countries have performed live on stage in Würzburg so far and represented the cultural wealth of the African continent to more than 2.100.00 visitors.

Is it real or made by AI? Europe wants a label for that as it fights disinformation

Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — The European Union is pushing online platforms like Google and Meta to step up the fight against false information by adding labels to text, photos and other content generated by artificial intelligence, a top official said Monday.

EU Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said the ability of a new generation of AI chatbots to create complex content and visuals in seconds raises “fresh challenges for the fight against disinformation.”

She said she asked Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and other tech companies that have signed up to the 27-nation bloc's voluntary agreement on combating disinformation to work to tackle the AI problem.

Online platforms that have integrated generative AI into their services, such as Microsoft's Bing search engine and Google's Bard chatbot, should build safeguards to prevent “malicious actors” from generating disinformation, Jourova said at a briefing in Brussels.

Companies offering services that have the potential to spread AI-generated disinformation should roll out technology to “recognize such content and clearly label this to users,” she said.

Google, Microsoft, Meta and TikTok did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Jourova said EU regulations are aimed at protecting free speech, but when it comes to AI, "I don’t see any right for the machines to have the freedom of speech.”

The swift rise of generative AI technology, which has the capability to produce human-like text, images and video, has amazed many and alarmed others with its potential to transform many aspects of daily life. Europe has taken a lead role in the global movement to regulate artificial intelligence with its AI Act, but the legislation still needs final approval and won't take effect for several years.

Officials in the EU, which also is bringing in a separate set of rules this year to safeguard people from harmful online content, are worried that they need to act faster to keep up with the rapid development of generative AI.

Recent examples of debunked deepfakes include a realistic picture of Pope Francis in a white puffy jacket and an image of billowing black smoke next to a building accompanied with a claim that it showed an explosion near the Pentagon.

Politicians have even enlisted AI to warn about its dangers. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to craft the opening of a speech to Parliament last week, saying it was written “with such conviction that few of us would believe that it was a robot — and not a human — behind it.”

European and U.S. officials said last week that they're drawing up a voluntary code of conduct for artificial intelligence that could be ready within weeks as a way to bridge the gap before the EU's AI rules take effect.

Similar voluntary commitments in the bloc's disinformation code will become legal obligations by the end of August under the EU's Digital Services Act, which will force the biggest tech companies to better police their platforms to protect users from hate speech, disinformation and other harmful material.

Jourova said, however, that those companies should start labeling AI-generated content immediately.

Most digital giants are already signed up to the EU disinformation code, which requires companies to measure their work on combating false information and issue regular reports on their progress.

Twitter dropped out last month in what appeared to be the latest move by Elon Musk to loosen restrictions at the social media company after he bought it last year.

The exit drew a stern rebuke, with Jourova calling it a mistake.

“Twitter has chosen the hard way. They chose confrontation,” she said. “Make no mistake, by leaving the code, Twitter has attracted a lot of attention, and its actions and compliance with EU law will be scrutinized vigorously and urgently.”

Twitter will face a major test later this month when European Commissioner Thierry Breton heads to its San Francisco headquarters with a team to carry out a "stress test," meant to measure the platform's ability to comply with the Digital Services Act.

Breton, who’s in charge of digital policy, told reporters Monday that he also will visit other Silicon Valley tech companies including OpenAI, chipmaker Nvidia and Meta.

___

AP reporter Jan M. Olsen contributed from Copenhagen, Denmark.

What are disinformation and extremism? And why should troops be aware?

By Nikki Wentling and Allison P. Erickson
Jun 5, 2023
  

88th Readiness Division hosted a stand-down to address Extremism in the ranks at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin. 04.16.2021. Equal Opportunity NCO, Master Sgt. Pamela Collins leads a portion of the discussion. (Sgt. 1st Class John Freese/U.S. Army)


On Jan. 6, 2021, myths about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election drove supporters of former President Donald Trump to the U.S. Capitol, where they attempted to stop Congress from certifying the results. About one in six people charged for storming the Capitol that day had connections to the military.

That event and others like it have opened a flood of debate about veteran and military communities being targeted with disinformation and the rise of extremism among the ranks.

Consider how Jan. 6, 2021 is described: as the “Capitol riot” or “insurrection” by most Democrats and many independents and centrist Republicans, or a “peaceful protest” by GOP supporters of President Donald Trump, shows a deepening divide between the two main U.S. political parties – a gulf arguably widened and supercharged by political-party- and nation-state-sponsored disinformation, leaving disgruntled followers potentially vulnerable to extremist ideology.

As part of an 18-month project through a partnership between Military Times and Military Veterans in Journalism, we’ll be reporting about disinformation and extremism as the issues relate to veterans and military communities. To start, we’ve compiled a list of frequently asked questions about extremism and disinformation in the military we will update throughout the year.

What is disinformation?

To start with, in the broadest definition, disinformation is any false information that is created deliberately to mislead people. It’s often spread covertly with the intention of influencing public opinion or obscuring the truth, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary

U.S. government leaders have taken a more nuanced approach. The Department of Homeland Security says disinformation can be targeted toward an individual, social group, organization or country. It’s typically spread with malice or greed and in pursuit of political, social or financial agendas, according to the Anti-Defamation League. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Department of Defense said the most harmful disinformation is that which sows global mistrust and confusion.

This kind of disinformation can come in various forms and includes hoaxes, propaganda and spear phishing, according to the United Nations.

Another tool for spreading disinformation, known as synthetic media, is becoming more prolific following recent advances in artificial intelligence. Synthetic media refers to AI-created text, images and audio. One of the most notorious forms of synthetic media are deepfakes, images or videos in which the face of one person is overlaid onto another person, often in real time.


Images created by Eliot Higgins with the use of artificial intelligence show a fictitious skirmish with Donald Trump and New York City police officers posted on Higgins' Twitter account. The highly detailed, sensational images, which are not real, were produced using a sophisticated and widely accessible image generator. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

What is misinformation?

Among the slightly varying descriptions of disinformation from dictionaries, government agencies, nonprofits and international organizations, one key word is consistent: “deliberate.” The deliberate nature of disinformation is what differentiates it from misinformation.

Misinformation, while also false, is not shared with the intention of causing harm, DHS says. Or as the American Psychological Association put it, misinformation is getting the facts wrong.

How about the lesser-known term, malinformation?

Unlike both disinformation and misinformation, malinformation is based on fact. It’s true information that is used for harmful or manipulative purposes, according to DHS.

In many cases, malinformation refers to situations in which facts are used out of context, such as editing a video to remove key information. It can also refer to information that stems from the truth but has been exaggerated to mislead, the Government of Canada said in a recent report. For example, some alternative media sites that rely on outrage to generate views will distort headlines, a tactic known as “click-bait.”

Doxxing – the practice of publicly revealing someone’s private information without consent – also falls under the umbrella of malinformation, the Anti-Defamation League said.
Who is deploying disinformation?

A variety of sources from homegrown extremists to foreign adversaries create disinformation targeted toward the American public.

Disinformation is spread by foreign states, including Russia, China and Iran, as well as transnational criminal groups and human smuggling organizations. Other governments have accused the U.S. of spreading disinformation in their countries, too. China said earlier this year that the U.S. spread rumors about data security issues with the Chinese company TikTok in an effort to suppress foreign businesses.

The State Department works to counter disinformation from Russia, which creates and spreads false narratives in order to confuse people and advance the Kremlin’s policy goals, the agency said. Russia and other actors spread disinformation to exploit the American public, and they often target the country during national emergencies, according to DHS.

Particularly after disasters, disinformation spreaders use social media to deny the event ever happened or claim it’s a “false flag,” meaning a covert operation by authorities that frames someone else. One of the most recent examples of this came after a train carrying hazardous items derailed in Ohio, when conspiracy theories spread that the wreck was a planned, deliberate attack by the U.S. government.

Disinformation can also come from U.S. citizens. Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former security chief, went so far as to say in 2020 that “the future of disinformation is going to be domestic.”

So-called domestic disinformation, which comes from message boards, websites and social media accounts, is created by both far-left and far-right individuals. However, two recent studies from the University of North Carolina and New York University found it’s more often a right-wing phenomenon. This homegrown disinformation bubbles up from message boards and finds its way onto ideological websites and social media. Its consequences are sometimes deadly. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, reported there were a historically high number of far-left and far-right terrorist attacks in 2021, and far-right attacks were more lethal.

Elected officials also have participated in the spread of disinformation. The University of Oxford found that politicians running for office in 45 democracies, including the U.S., have shared false information to gain voter support.

What is extremism?

When officials talk about extremism in the military, they generally focus on extremism in terms of religious, political or social ideologies.

The Pentagon lists one broad definition of extremism in the Department of Defense Instruction 1325.06. The directive makes clear that the actions matter most, specifically, violent action: “Advocating or engaging in unlawful force, unlawful violence, or other illegal means to deprive individuals of their rights under the United States Constitution or the laws of the United States…” And also advocating, engaging in, supporting or encouraging things like subversion, sedition or unlawful discrimination.

Each branch develops its own policies to enforce the DoD’s top-down guidance.

However, anti-extremism watch groups and academia break down extremism into non-violent extremism and domestic violent extremism.

DHS and Federal Bureau of Investigation use the term domestic violent extremism to refer to domestic terrorism threats, or U.S.-based, non-foreign influenced actions “through unlawful acts of force or violence dangerous to human life.” There’s an emphasis here on the “action,” since harboring extreme or hateful opinions or ideology may be considered protected under the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. You can have a hateful thought or opinion, you can voice that thought or opinion, but you can’t perform a hateful act without legal consequences.

One report by the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), an academic research center, collected data on instances of extremism since World War II and defines non-violent extremism as “individuals who engage in illegal extremist activity short of violence or who belong to a violent extremist group but do not participate in violent activities.” Again, the key here isn’t simply having an extreme belief, but acting violently from or on behalf of that belief.

White nationalist demonstrators walk into Lee park surrounded by counter demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 12, 2017. (Steve Helber/AP)

How widespread is extremism and disinformation among military communities?

The extent to which extremism has seeped into military and veteran communities is a contentious debate on Capitol Hill and around the country. The argument about whether it’s a problem has heightened since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when some Trump supporters believed the election was stolen and sought to overturn his loss.

There’s a lack of data about the infiltration of extremism in the active-duty military, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan, nonprofit think tank. Experts generally agree that only a small number of service members have been involved in extremist activities, but some argue that even a tiny proportion could damage the military’s reputation and harm U.S. security.

There’s more data available about veterans’ adoption of extremist views, and research in this arena has increased in the past two years.

Here’s a snapshot of what the data says:

• Of the rioters in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, 17% were veterans, Harvard University found. The same study showed that nearly all participants in the siege that day had shared or received misinformation about the 2020 election on social media platforms.

• Veterans were responsible for 10% of all domestic terrorist attacks and plots between 2015 and 2021, according to the CSIS. Veterans make up about 5% of the overall adult population in the U.S., according to data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics in May.

• Individuals with military backgrounds make up 15% of the cases in a database kept by the University of Maryland that tracks people who were driven by their extremist views to commit criminal offenses. Together, veterans and service members account for 6% of the U.S. population as of May.

• The University of Maryland’s data shows a “significant uptick” in the past five years of people with military backgrounds who have committed extremist offenses. From 1990 to 2010, an average of seven people with military histories were added to the database every year. That increased to 63 people per year from 2018 to 2022.

Protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC, to protest the ratification of President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. A pro-Trump mob later stormed the Capitol, breaking windows and clashing with police officers. Five people died as a result. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

A brief history of violent military extremists

Acts of violent extremism aren’t new to the U.S. military. The DOD tried addressing tensions following the Civil Rights Movement in a policy in 1969, but incidents continued.

Then in the early 1980′s former Army Green Beret and retiree Frazier Glenn Miller started a white nationalist paramilitary group called the White Patriot Party in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Miller’s recruits wore Battle Dress Uniforms with Confederate flag patches sewn onto the left shoulder. Miller had plans to start a race war and used active-duty soldiers to create a weapons cache. Federal agents infiltrated the group before a major catastrophic event.

On April 19th, 1995 a former Army sergeant and special forces selection washout named Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City killing 168 and injuring 684. That event is known as the deadliest domestic extremist act in the U.S. to date. Federal investigators later found McVeigh harbored antigovernment extremist ideology and even visited the Branch Davidian compound in Waco before the federal standoff there. The bombing in Oklahoma City prompted the Department of Defense’s next revision of its extremism policies.

Nidal Hasan’s name went down in infamy on November 5th, 2009. The then Army major opened fire on soldiers and civilians preparing to deploy at a readiness processing center on Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos) near Killeen, Texas. Hasan killed 13 and injured more than 30 others. Prosecutors later argued in his trial that he had planned his attack to align with his views on Islamic extremism. He acted alone, but under the umbrella of a hateful or extremist ideology.

In terms of disinformation, one example occurred in March 2015, when residents in small towns across Texas began hearing whispers among social media networks that an annual military exercise known as “Jade Helm” was actually an attempt to suppress the locals, seize guns, and enforce martial law. The uproar kicked up enough of a ruckus that the governor enacted the Texas State Guard to oversee the national military’s operations. Years later, a former Central Intelligence Agency director revealed that Russia had launched a disinformation attack against the U.S. government.

This undated photo shows the north side of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the damage caused by a car bomb explosion on April 19, 1995. Former Army Sgt. Timothy McVeigh was convicted in the bombing. (AFP/Getty Images)

What is Congress’ role in helping solve these problems?

Republicans and Democrats disagree about whether it’s necessary to address extremism among military and veteran communities.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, Democrats urged the Pentagon to do more to counter extremism in the ranks, and they pushed the Department of Veterans Affairs to intervene when veterans show signs of being susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups.

Many Republicans, however, have attempted to halt Defense Department training aimed at countering extremism, criticizing it as a distraction from military preparedness and an effort to politicize the armed forces. Some Republicans have taken issue in particular with a daylong extremism “stand-down” in 2021, a military-wide training on the dangers of extremist ideology.

Lawmakers opposed to such training were able to cut seven of eight measures aimed at combatting domestic extremism from the annual defense policy bill, a legislative fight that is sure to come up in defense budget wrangling again this year.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism.

About Nikki Wentling and Allison P. Erickson

Nikki Wentling covers disinformation and extremism for Military Times. She's reported on veterans and military communities for eight years and has also covered technology, politics, health care and crime. Her work has earned multiple honors from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors and others.

Allison Erickson is a journalist and U.S. Army Veteran. She covered military and veterans' affairs as the 2022 Military Veterans in Journalism fellow with The Texas Tribune and continues to cover the military community. She has written and reported on topics such as migration, politics, and health.