How a news story is made

The twenty-second entry is a desinformação, and the English that answers it is not one word but two. Careful English usage separates « misinformation » from « disinformation », and the line between them is drawn at intent. « Misinformation » is anything false that circulates: a wrong figure repeated in good faith, a photograph captioned with the wrong year, a rumour somebody believed. « Disinformation » is false material put out on purpose, by someone who knows better and wants the reader to be wrong. The word entered English in the middle of the last century as a rendering of the Russian dezinformatsiya, and it has kept that flavour of an operation with a purpose behind it. Portuguese has the second of the two and lets it cover both, so that a desinformação corre mais depressa do que um desmentido says nothing about who meant what. Where the difference matters, Portuguese spells it out — informação falsa, notícia falsa, desinformação deliberada. The practical lesson runs one way only: rendering desinformação as « disinformation » puts an accusation into a sentence that may not have made one.